6mm ACW  Fight over the Shoe Factory

Setting up the game

The challenge for this game was having a scenario which had three players, one of whom, although an experience wargamer did not know the rules.  The approach was to have one experienced player control two Confederate forces in a strong defensive position and for the other players to control a larger attaching Union force of four commands (two each).

Hidden command selection

Each side had a pick list of eight commands to choose between, ranging from one cavalry unit with a horse gun  to four conscript infantry units with a conscript foot artillery battery.  The pick list approach meant that  each side know roughly the size of the opposing force but not they mix between troop types or their quality.

Hidden deployment

The initial deployment was by the defending confederates but with their units replaced by cards.  Each card representing 1-4 units and 4 dummy cards being used. This gave the attacking union forces a rough idea of the deployment of the defending forces but little idea of their number or exact placement.

Map v’s reality

The attacking Union forces had a map pf the battlefield but hadn’t seen the actual table, until the day of the game.  This giving the defenders a better chance to plan their tactics for the terrain.

Rules

The game was fought using STK’s Flames in the South, ACW rules. These rules are very quick to pick up, see my review.

The scenario can be downloaded here.  

Forces Selected

The union chose the following four commands

(1) Regulars with attached Artillery 2x regular Infantry Coy (4 bases) 1x Smoothbore Field Gun battery (1 base) Jolly Good chap Gentleman	(2) Raw Infantry & attached artillery 4x Raw Infantry Coy (4 bases) 1x Raw Smoothbore Field Gun battery (1 base) Jolly Good chap Officer
(3) Cavalry Force 1x Cavalry Sqn with repeater carbines (4 bases) 1x Smoothbore horse battery (1 base) Jolly Good chap Officer	(4) Regulars with  Skirmishers 2x regular Infantry coy (4 bases) 1x Skirmishers sqn (3 bases) Jolly Good chap Officer

 

The Confederates selected

(1) Regular Infantry with Artillery 4x Regular infantry Coy (4 bases) 1x Smoothbore Field Gun battery (1 base) Jolly Good chap Officer

(2) Veteran Infantry 2x Veteran infantry Coy (4 bases) 1x Veteran Skirmish Coy (3 bases) 1x Veteran Cavalry Sqn (4 bases) Jolly Good chap Officer

 

The Union forces attacked from three directions. The 1^st force from the east, the 2^nd from the north and 3rd & 4^th from the west.  The confederates had their veterans facing the west and their regular forces facing the north and east.

 

The Union forces attaching from the west took heavy casualties from the defending foced who were sitting behind stone walls and repulsed. The Union forces from the north did better than the forces on the east but had some unlucky breaks, combined with being raw and where held off my the outnumber confederate forces. The union forces on the west became bogged down in a sniping del with the more experienced veteran Confederates. They were just starting to break through the confederate defenced when time brought the battle to an end.

A victory for the Confederates  and a good test of the SKT rules.  

Thanks to my friends Ian & Paul for a great game

Review of SKT Wargaming Rules

This is a review of the American Civil War (ACW) wargaming rules by Steve Thompson (SKT Wargaming) Flame in the South

Firstly, let me start by saying this is a review of Steve’s Flames in the South rules for the ACW. The SKT Wargames site contains a suite of rules, each customised to cover the foibles of the period but build around a common core covering orders, firing, melee combat and moral.

Although this review is focus on the ACW rules I have also used the "Will Victoria be amused"  rules covering the Sudan war (1884) and "Carry on up the Raj" covering the Indian Mutiny (1857). Other sets in the range include:

•        Zulu’s Thousands of Them – 1879’s Zulu wars.
•         Good old Hook nose – Napoleonic
•         Kampfe in Reihen – Lace wars (WSS)
•         An Uncivil Affair – English Civil War (ECW)
•         Landsknecht – Renaissance

Price

Always a question of interest to wargamers with a lead mountain to buy. The rules are free! But Steve does ask for a charity donation to Combat Stress, which seems an appropriate charity for us to support.

Style

The rules feel sized for a “traditional” wargame, e.g. a dozen units per player for a afternoon game. They do not feel like a military simulation intended to refight a major historical battle in an evening. As much as I don’t like comparisons between rules they are more “Blackpower” than “Blucher”. Having said all this, Steve regularly collaborates with Mark Frith at the War Games Holiday centre  War Games Holiday Centre (wargameshc.co.uk) to run huge multiplayer (8-12 player) battles lasting a weekend.

Scale

The rules are figure scale agnostic. Units consist of a number of “bases”, typically 4. In my last 6mm game we used 30mmx30mm as a base and as my figures are bases to the standard Baccus 60mmx30mm, each physical base counted as two logical bases.

Equipment

When the rules were written Steve was using a pack of cards (red & black) to generate success or failure. Lately he’s moved to dice with three red sides and three black sides. The game plays perfectly well using any 50/50 mechanism, if you don’t have these special dice, I’d suggest a d6 with 1-3 fail and 4-6 success.

Command & Control

To me C&C is one of the great strengths of these rules. The fashion in wargaming for command and control has changed over the years. In the early days commanders got to move all their units exactly as they wished. Many felt that this did not capture the “friction” of command & control. The fashion moved towards a limited pool of command pips, forcing commanders to focus on the area of the battlefield they really wanted to win. The downside of the pip system was that some units would sit unused through the battle when in “reality” their commanders would have been following their pre-battle orders.

More recently a number of rules have introduced activation rolls to get a unit involved. Various flavours exist in rules such as Blackpower, Bloody Big battles (BBB) and the Twilight of the Sun king. etc.

For those of you who prefer guided missile control of you units consider that it’s not the units refusing to follow an order but rather unknow factors, e.g. the Prussian infantry at Kolin (1757) advanced through a meadow and found themselves mired in the mud of several drained unmapped ponds At the Battle of Minden (1759), the entire Cavalry Right Wing under Lieutenant-General Lord Sackville failed to advance and engage the French. Sackville was court-martialled after the battle. A number of people I play with do not like the activation roll approach as they don’t like their command sitting around unwilling to do anything. It may be realistic but it’s not fun. The SKT rules have a more fun/generous approach to unit activation. A commander can take a single activation for a unit (more or shoot) but if he wants to gamble with the command dice he can get two or even three activation…or loose his activation altogether. It’s a nice mechanic as a commander can have a unit ”plod” along but when the actins gets hot he can push his luck, at a risk. These rules make you feel like it was your choice to push for an extreme activation rather than you roll your dice and sometimes you don’t get to go.

Shooting

The shooting rules are quite straight forward with a unit having 3-4 bases and one firing die being rolled for each base, plus or minus a number of dice to allow for situational factors.

Melee Combat

This is fundamentally the same as the shooting rules.

Moral

Units take hits from combat. Once a unit has taken one hit for each base subsequent hits are moral hits. At the start of each turn units with moral hits test to see if they stand, retire, or flee. Players need to be able to track hits and moral markers on units. In the games I’ve played we’ve used two dice to track hits and moral both held in a double dice holder.

Customisation

The rules allow for elite, regular and conscript troops as well as various types, dragoons, skirmishers etc. Some rules (e.g. Blackpowder) will give “special powers” to units. In these rules customisation is applied to the commanders as “Style of commanders”; e.g. The Cavalry Commander - This chap loves the service and the feel of a horse under him in combat. Add one in combat if against foot, and two against other cavalry.

There are also commander cards which can be used to enable a commander to tip the battle at the right point, ranging from “+1 Shooting” to “Where the hell did that come from: place a 6” round piece of marsh on any open terrain within 20” of the commander at any time!”.

I have played both with and without the Style of commander and commander cards and without them. They add a touch more random chance to the game but are in no way necessary.

Overall

Pros	Cons
Very easy to learn. 1-2 turns to pick up the basic rules and by the end of the fist game you’ll have picked up all the rules. Great price Give a fun game Point system for sizing armies	Rules give a feel for the period and the way command and control works in war.  They make no claim to be overly historically accurate.             Players need to be able to track hits and moral markers on units which adds clutter to the table.

Warburg 1760 SYW - in 6mm with Might & Reason

Might & Reason - a review

Might & Reason (M&R) are intended to fight large-scale “grand-tactical” battles of the mid-eighteenth century.  I've always been a fan of Sam A Mustifa's rules.  They always play well and they are very clear, readable and understandable.  Might & Reason are an old set of rules which I have come to late.  It is easy to see a number of points in these rules which have influenced the design of later rules.  I don't claim to be an expert in these rules but I've tried to capture my initial thoughts based on having fought two battles.

Units have SP (strength points) which reflect their performance in combat.  This is very similar to a unit's Elan in Blucher.  As a game mechanic it prevents units being unbeatable killing machines, even the strongest, most elite guard unit will be worn down after a series of combats.  Although I enjoy playing BlackPowder2 with my friends it is possible for a elite unit to fight multiple combats and still be almost at strong at the end of the battle as at the start.  This is not the case in M&R.  In M&R sending in fresh reserves can have a huge impact as fresh troops will cut a swath through even the best of troops who have been worn down in a series of combats.

These rules and those in Sam's Fast Play Grande Armee share a similar approach to command.  The command system is based around the rating of the commander and in non-historical battles, poor commanders are given large armies to help compensate their command shortcomings.   The better a commander is the more command dice (CD) he receives.  These CD allow commanders  to improve the activation of their troops and influence combat odds.  Game turns have a variable length of 1-4 phases which adds an interesting challenge to commanders , deciding whether to save their command dice to later phases or to blow them all in the first phase or two.  

The rules have very comprehensive army lists for all of the major and minor powers of the period.  They also contain not one but two campaign systems.  For those of you who have always wanted to fight a campaign you may find these rule interesting even if you fight other systems.  I suspect they will be good between the Thirty Years War to Napoleonic's. 

The rules are very playable and reflect the feel of the period.  I found them a little slow when compared to Blucher but that may be my lack of familiarity. I have used, a slightly modified, Blucher to refight SYW battles and they do it very well once the power of Napoleonic cavalry is restrained.

Warburg is one of the example battles which are detailed in the rules. Chronologically it was after the Battle of Minden, which was the subject of my last blog post. See below for useful links:

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• Kronoskaf: Warburg
• British Battles: Warburg 
• The King's Royal Hussars

The plan

The Anglo-German plan was to refuse their left flank and swing the elite troops of the right flank into the side of the French and roll them up. The french plan was to react to the Allies and not move very much due to their poor leadership.

The plan started well. The Anglo-German right wing swung to attack the French left flank. The French commander personally took command of the left wing and lead them towards the incoming Grenadiers.
Meanwhile the poor level of generalship resulted in the French cavalry and right wing sitting still and take no action.

The fight between the Anglo-German elite troops and the best infantry of the French was a hard fight but in the end the French broke but not without wearing down the fighting capability of the Anglo-Germans.  The French cavalry eventually managed to get going and swung into combat with the weakened Anglo-German grenadiers. The intervention of the cavalry saver the French army from being rolled up from the flank.

The French reserve frustrated by the lack of motion of the French righ wing, advanced past the French front lines towards the Anglo-German centre.  The French right wing, bizarrely, taking over as the reserve.  The British cavalry in the centre bravely charged the advancing French foot, who repulse the British attacks.

By now the daylight was fading and the Anglo-German's had inflected more casualties than the French had on them however when the commanders rolled for moral they both decided that is was best to withdraw from the field.  The final result was a draw but a minor moral victory to the French as defenders.

Minden 1759 - in 6mm using Blackpower

The battle of Minden on the 1st August 1759 was a major battle between an Anglo-German army and the French towards the end of the Seven Years' War. Many years ago, I lived near Minden in Germany and this battle has therefore always been one in which I have been interested. For further details please see:

• Web site: Kronoskaf Battle of Minden
• Web site: Wikipedia Battle of Minden
• Book: Like a Brazen wall by Ewan Carmichael from Helion publishing

I'd casually suggested to my gaming friends that I'd like to refight Minden and found myself on the hook to arrange the battle, something I was very happy to do.  The next month was busy creating the order of battle, deciding on the attributes of the units and painting an extra sixteen battalions and three cavalry regiments. One of the joys of 6mm is I can paint and base a battalion of 24 figures in about an hour.

The Battlefield

Wikimedia Commons Battle of Minden - Situation at 6:30 a.m.

The forces

I was keen to try and reflect the historical advantages and disadvantages of the forces engaged in the battle, especially the performance (or lack of performance) of Sackville commander of the British contingent at the battle.  I'd always written him off a poor commanded but having read more about his courts martial in Like a Brazen wall by Ewan Carmichael I now wonder if he was thrown under the proverbial bus for political reasons. 

It was important to give the British troops stats that gave them a chance to perform as well as they did at the battle.  I was also aware that French battalions at the battle were in general smaller than those of the Anglo-Germans.

As the battle was going to be fought on a 6'x4' table in a morning, I reduced the number of units represented to One Battalion per two battalions actually present and each of my cavalry regiments represented about five squadrons. 

• Order of Battle and Blackpowder stats and special rules.
• Labels for the Generals with command rating and break point for their command.

The re-fight of the Battle

I was joined by three of my friends, Mark Browne, John Dance and Paul Smith.  Mark and I took the French-Saxon and John and Paul the Anglo-German.  Each of the commanders were labelled with their name, command rating and the break point of their command.

Pre-Dawn at the Anglo-German HQ

View of the Battlefield from Kutenhausen towards the French lines with Malbergen in the mid-ground.

French Right Wing

The assault by the French right wing played out historically correct.  The French Grenadiers bravely lead the assault on the Anglo-German left under Von Wangenheim.  Although brave the French forces could not withstand the bombardment by the allied artillery backed up by their Converged Grenadier Brigade and Hanoverian forces.  The French grenadiers under Comte de Saint-Germain's broke leaving the remaining French forces out numbered by the allies behind their field entrenchments. 

French assault reduced to by half after the loss of the Grenadiers de France & Grenadiers Royaux.

French Centre

The French centre pushed forward and took the village at Malbergen.  It was a good defensive position and they held off the frontal assault by the Anglo-German centre but the collapse of the French right wing left the right flank open and the command had to be given to withdraw back towards Minden.

French centre holding steady 

Flanked

The French Left

The role of the French left was to quickly smash the Anglo-German forces between Hahlen and the woods and then to turn the flank and then join the forced at Malbergen in the centre of the battlefield. Wave after wave of  French horse changed the allied forces, supported by French foot.  Unfortunately the British heavy cavalry were able to activate and advanced into the fight.   In the end the French won but had to throw in their Saxon reserve under Prince General Xavier.  

French push north from Hahlen the British just the other side of the woods

The French reserve (Saxon's under Prince General Xavier

The End

Despite a victory for the French on their left but to little and too late.  The French right was lost and the centre could not hold without support.  Maréchal de Contades was forced to concede defeat.  The battle fought out pretty much the way it did in history. The French righ were wiped out by Anglo-German artillery and the huge French cavalry force were wiped out, although in this version by Hanoverian Infantry and the British horse. 

Aftermath

It was wonderful to be able to play a game with friends after such as long lockdown.  I'd like to give a huge thanks to my friends, John, Mark & Paul, for indulging me  I bit off a little more than I could chew with this battle as I'd hoped we could run it in 2-3 hours and it took 4. Sadly several players had to leave and missed the last hour. I have some ideas on how to make our next battle quicker....