Having spent the last few months painting up my American Civil War collection I was keen to put them into action.
So for the test game we simply lined up two equal forces to
see how they would get on. The battle was fought on a Table 6 foot by 12 foot.
The infantry regiments consist of four bases each of four
figures so 16 figures in a regiment, eight figures in a cavalry unit, three
guns and crew and an artillery battery.
So the battle started well for the union who for the first
couple of turns seemed to have the advantage however the Confederates fought
them to a stalemate on their left flank and their position was weakened when
one of the regiments refused to face a confederate charge and ran only rally
when it reached the edge of the table but too late to play any part in the rest
of the battle.
In the centre the game developed into a battle of attrition
between firing lines which the confederates won due to superior luck. Union
brought their artillery to close range to try to give them an advantage but by
the time it happened it was too late to change the course of the battle. Union right
now collapsed in the face of superior confederate numbers.
The whole game using the Neil Thomas rules only took about 2
1/2 hours to play, the number of units on each side was 12 infantry regiments
one cavalry unit and two artillery batteries.
The figures are a mix of manufacturers including BMC, IMEX, HAT,
and a lot of Call to Arms. Cavalry are Britons.
Because we were trying out the rules for the first time I did
not have a complex scenario it was simply a case of matching up two equal
forces.
The rules used were adapted from the Neil Thomas Napoleonics
rules and with the amendments they worked really well for American Civil War.
The amendments to the Neil Thomas rules for Acw including
move distances and range actually worked really well.
I will post these in a later post as I'm going to make a few
amendments to them.
The command rule worked well it gave just enough friction for
the game too little be a little bit unpredictable without it being dominant.
My original idea was that a failed morale test would result
in D4 casualties, but actually we played it as per the rules so a failed test
meant loss of another base.
The inter penetration rule worked really well because it
meant that we could bring forward fresh units to replace those that were
degraded, though there is a risk that the interpenetrated unit would suffer
more casualties as a result.
The exception was that if an interpenetrated unit failed a
morale test as a result of being interpenetrated, then it threw a D4 to see how
many hits it took. This works really well 'cause it means that sometimes an
interpenetrated unit takes no casualties at all, or if you're unlucky you might
lose a base, which I think reflects the loss of morale which could happen if a
worn unit was replaced by a fresh one.
The test to charge and test receive rules also worked well
and were just right for Acw. So we had cases when chargers refused to charge, and
in one case a fresh charged unit refused to stand and ran off instead. They ran
for two more moves and only rallied when they were just about to leave the
table.
So most of the time the infantry stood and shot at each
other, and then there were occasional charges when the opposing generals
thought that they had the advantage, which I thought was very American Civil
War.
Coming into range rule did not work, it's easy to forget
which units have come into range that turn so it's a little bit of fiddling. What
I am planning to do is to adopt the system from Rank and File. So in Rank and File
players take turns to move but firing is simultaneous which I think is a better
system.
Neither of us knew what to do with our cavalry so both of us
ended up charging each others guns, which is probably not very American Civil
War and also I forgot that the cavalry would need to test to charge.
