Fictional Battle of Woodville Railhead ACW 1862 - Swift & Bloody Rules

 

In early October I sat down with my friends, John Dance, Ian Davies & Steve McCulley for a second game using the "Swift and Bloody" rules for the ACW.  

My preference in rules are ones which follow this philosophy:

Simplicity and Fun:

1. The rules aim to be enjoyable and easy to play.
2. They avoid excessive complexity or overly serious simulation.
3. Friends should be able to pick up the rules and start playing within minutes.

Command Friction:

1. Not everything will go exactly as the general intends.
2. Units are not like guided missiles; there’s room for unpredictability.

 Clean Tabletop: 

1. They minimize clutter—no excessive counters or labels, ideally jsut figures, terrain and maybe casualty counters. 

The scenario for this battle was much more confrontational than the previous Battle of Goober Hill as it involved two Union brigades attacking two small confederate brigades in defensive positions.  The intention was to investigate how defending a town or prepared positions hampered an attack.

• Scenario 
• Podcast on the rules

The Union forces entered the table from the right with the confederates on the left.

This was the first outing of my Hornby railway track planing set (£10) which was a pain to decide how to paint but looked ok on the table and scaled well with the 6mm figures.

The Confederates set up first as the defenders, however we used hidden deployment cards to obscure their deployment. Each regiment was represented with two cards but a third of the cards were dummy.  This allowed the Union forces to have a rough idea of the Confederate deployment but not to know the location of the green regiments or those armed with smooth-bore muskets. (The wipe clear cards were a cheap purchase from Amazon and I've used them with success in other games.) 

The confederates set up a strong position with troops occupying the town of Woodville and dug into positions on the hills behind the town.  The confederate forces on their right flank were positioned behind walls and defenses running around the fields to the flank.

 The Union left flank crossed the shallow creek and advanced on the in-cover Confederate right.  There followed a drawn out long range fire fight between the Union regiments and the Confederate defenders, with Union parrot guns raining considerable damage on the Confederate cavalry.

Encouraged by their general the union troops advanced to close range and although they took more casualties themselves the focused close range fire of several regiments wiped out many of the Confederate defenders.

On the Union right flank the Zouaves skirmished forward covering the advance of two regiments of infantry while the other two regiments attempted to use the cover of the woods to flank the confederate position. 

One regiment quickly learnt the folly of charging infantry defending a town and totally failed in their assault. The troops advancing through the woods found themselves safe in the cover of the woods but unable to advance out of the woods. The Zouaves fought a brave fight across the Confederate defences but hesitated too long and allowed the Confederate infantry to re-occupy the defences giving the confederate the advantage.

As we'd spent a very enjoyable time chatting rather than gaming we had to call the battle at this point.  As night fell the Confederates still held their position but knew that the troops on the Union left flank were about to sweep down their line and attack from behind their defences.  Victory for the Confederated but with an overnight withdrawal unless reinforcements arrived.

We were happy to see that the rules enforced "realistic" lessons:

1. Attack in strength on flanks where you outnumber the enemy and they can't bring all their guns to bear.
2. Don't assault entrenched troops until you have softened them up.
3. Woods disrupt your attack while providing protection.

Fictional Battle of Goober Hill ACW 1861

 

In October I sat down with my friends, John Dance, Ian Davies & Steve McCulley for a trial game of "Swift and Bloody" rules for the ACW.  

My preference in rules are ones which follow this philosophy:

1. Simplicity and Fun:
1. The rules aim to be enjoyable and easy to play.
2. They avoid excessive complexity or overly serious simulation.
3. Friends should be able to pick up the rules and start playing within minutes.
2. Command Friction:
1. Not everything will go exactly as the general intends.
2. Units are not like guided missiles; there’s room for unpredictability.
3.  Clean Tabletop: 
1. They minimize clutter—no excessive counters or labels.

To this I like to add the "rules" identified by Bod Cordery in his Portable Wargames:

The First Rule: ‘Nothing can be done contrary to what could or would be done in actual war.' - From 'The Rules of the Naval War Game' by Fred T Jane

 The Spirit of the Wargame: ‘Wargames are played, for the most part, without the supervision of an umpire. The game relies on the integrity of the individual players to show consideration for other players and to abide by the rules. All players should conduct themselves in a disciplined manner, demonstrating courtesy and sportsmanship at all times, irrespective of how competitive they may be. This is the spirit of the wargame.’ - Adapted from 'The Spirit of the Game' in 'The Rules of Golf' as published by the R&A Ltd

Podcast on the rules: Swift & Bloody (50.4MB) 

The Goober Valley 1861

For this battle we use fictional scenario of two brigades encountering each other whilst on a foraging mission.  Scenario: Goober Valley 1861

Turn 1: The Confederate forces matched on in column on the left of the pictures and the union from the right. 

Suppliers are "liberated": The valley was covered in a number of small settlements and loan cabins and the troops soon started to marshal the wagons back to their baseline.  Randon card were pulled when each foraging party reached a settlement.  We had 15 waggons and two flocks of sheep, so … guess howe many could be collected.

Shots are Exchanged: The two flanks each took a different approach as they encountered the enemy.  One the right flank (Steve V John) the sides both deployed skirmishers and although there was a lot of shooting there were few casualties, with both sides focusing on liberating supply wagons.

On the left flank, both generals were here to fight! The Regiments lined up and exchanged volleys with the Union gaining the upper hand although the shotgun welding Confederate cavalry proved to be first class sheep rustlers and succeeded in a rare cavalry charge...at a mostly unarmed wagon train.  

As Night fell: The Confederates had taken slightly more wagons and flocks of sheet to their backlines that the Union had, although the Union had more still in the field.  The battle was ruled a winning draw to the Confederates.

A good test of the rules.  The next battle will be a bloody full on assault.

Useless but interesting snippet:

Casualty Rates amongst Generals: During the American Civil War, 426 men were commissioned generals by Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress. Eighty (19%) died of battle wounds (versus 8% in the Union army) and 3 per cent died of disease. During the war, 211 (49%) were wounded; of these, each was wounded a mean 1.9 times. Where non-combatants are excluded, 52 per cent sustained wounds. Of those who served in five or more major engagements, 62 per cent were wounded; of those who fought in more than 10, 71 per cent sustained wounds.

 Replaying Part of the Battle of Gettysburg

Over the years what I have wanted from a set of rules has changed.  Forty years ago I was very taken by the “scientific” approach such as carefully reflecting the comparative frontage of different nations battalions depending on their strength and whether they were in two ranks or three. Rules had to cover all the minutia of events which could occur in a battle.

These days my criteria have changed:

•  I want rules which can fight a battle to the end within 2-3 hours. 
• They need to be simple enough for friends to pick them up so they can join in a battle and not be at a disadvantage from not knowing the details of the rules.
• They need to broadly reflect the feel of the period.
• I like some “friction” in command with units generally following orders but with occasional issues.
•  I want armies to look like armies and not like the regimental colour party.  
•  I’d prefer to refight actual battles, or parts of them, rather than “balanced” games.

Last week I came across the excellent “Junior GeneralEducation Resources” web site.  It was originally developed as a aid to teach history through wargames.  The rules and scenarios are simple, aimed at schoolchildren however I felt they would meet many of my criteria above.

I selected The American Civil War - The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) as both sides have few and similar troop types. Also I have 6mm ACW armies.  I read the two pages of rules, set up the table and invited my friend Steve over for a game.

For the rules and scenario see the battle of Gettysburg  page on the Junior General scenarios page. As there were just two of us playing I scaled down the forces to 2/3 of those listed in the scenario.  I lead the  Confederates and Steve commanded the Union forces.

The whole battle took two players, two hours and involved 1464 figures (in 18 Units) and 4 guns.

Ward’s Brigade set themselves up between the two branches of the Plum Run river, choosing to defend the Devils Den and the adjoining high ground.

The confederates powered onto the field advancing swiftly (from right to left) on the union positions.

The confederate pushed hard at the Union lines.

The shooting accuracy of the  union defenders of the Devil’s Den proved pitiful as the oversized 15^th Alabama Regt assaulted and took the position.  

The confederates advanced with further reserves moving up in support.

The Plum Run river slowed the Confederate advance allowing the Union reserves to push up to the banks of the river and on to the Little Round Top hill.  The Union reserved had arrived and the Confederates had not made the progress they had planned on the left flank.

I’d explained to Steve that firepower could be devastating in this period and then I promptly ignored my own advice and instructed the 17^th Georger Regt to charge across the Plum Run into the 44^th New York Regt. The carnage was devastating and the 17^th Georger melted under the accurate Union volleys.  The loss of the Regt sealed the fate of the Confederates.  The battle was lost. The Union forces swept up the Confederates and recaptured the Devil’s Den.

I knew the secret of this battle would be for the Confederates to use their initial superiority in numbers to sweep away the defencing Union forces before their reserves arrived.  My left flank was held up for two turns by a very stubborn Union Regiment which slowed my down just enough for the Union reserves to arrive and save the day.

 Good Game!

What's next?  I think I'm going to convince a few more friends to fight in some similar quick and brutal games. 😀

Shilo-ish 6mm ACW

 

Background to the Game

I've always enjoyed re-fighting real battles.  There as always been an attraction is trying to understand the  challenges faced the real life troops and generals.  I have found Alter of Freedom and Bloody Big Battles to be vey good rules for recreating historic ACW battles.  For this game, I knew I was going to have between one and four friends playing with me, some experienced wargamers and some less so.  None of them were familiar with AoF or BBB but all had played the SKT rules and most had played the STK’s Flames in the South, ACW rules for the ACW.  One of the strengths of the SKT rules are that once you have played one period you will find you know 90% of the rules for any other period. I therefore decided to set up this game for the STK’s Flames in the South, ACW rules.

Scenario

As this wasn't going to be a full historical recreation I decided to form the game around the battle of Shilo but taking various liberties with the ground scale and forces.  I wrote the scenario and then asked my friend John to set up the terrain.  Splitting tasks between players helps prevent one player (me) having too much control over the battle.  

One mistake I made when setting up the scenario was not limiting the power of gunboat USS Tyler.   In the actual battle of Shilo the Union gunboats were of limited value and I should have toned it down for our battle.

The battle was fought in 6mm with ~1,800 Baccus figures.  The figures were mainly on the standard 60x30mm bases but with a few, skirmishers etc based on 30mmx30mm, as I can place two together to create a 60mmx30mm base.

The Scenario can be downloaded here...Shlio-ish

Hidden Forces

The other thing I did to prevent myself and the other players from knowing all the details of the forces opposing us was to create a number of "forces" for the players to pick between.  Some troops would be on the table at the start of the battle and others would join as the battle proceeded.  This approach meant that the players didn't know if they would be facing green troops or veterans, all infantry or also some cavalry. 

In the game the Confederate commanders left their inexperience troops in the rear as reserves, thinking that by the time the reserves came into play the union forces would be worn-down and easier to beat.  The Union general took the extra artillery and cavalry thinking that they could punish or pin the advancing confederate forces.

Dawn

The Union side of the battle field was very sparse with just a few pickets spread around the various camps.  The Confederate forces concentrated their attacks onto the ridgeline past the Shilo church and up the bank of the river towards Pittsburg Landing..

Heavy Fighting

The union forces reacted quickly and rushed to occupy defensive positions on the ridgeline .The Union forces around Pittsburg Landing held back.  Their plan was to deploy skirmishers in the woods near the advancing Confederates and bombard them from both the front and enfilade from the river. 

Confederate assaulting the ridgeline

Confederate Forces Assaulting towards Pittsburg Landing

Beginning of the End

The Confederate assault on the ridgeline failed.   It was well defended by Steve and John. It was my fight to loose and I lost.  In retrospect I should have pushed on harder but with bigger gaps between my ranks.  I allowed them to bunch up too close to one another and cascading moral failures stopped my attack.

The Confederate assault on Pittsburge Landing received huge casualties from the Union artillery, especial the Gunboat USS Tyler.  I can only apologise to my friend Paul for giving him the short end of  the stick, by giving him the task of having to lead his men into that bombardment.  In retrospect I should have greatly reduced the firepower of  the USS Tyler.  The Union skirmishers deployed in the wood  caused disproportionate chaos to the attacking Confederate and we should have deployed a couple of regiments into skirmish formation and swept them out of the woods before pressing on to Pittsburge landing but the need to advance out of the effective fire from the USS Tyler force the Confederates to by-pass the woods.

Reserves Arrive To Late

From a Confederate point of view the reserves arrived too late.  The Union troops were in good defensive positions and a fresh Confederate assault would have had a harder task that their morning assault.    It was time to use the reserves to cover the retreat while the cowardly yankees, did the sensible thing and sat in their defensive positions and watched...

Points to note

The left flank saw a full on cavalry change between Union and Confederate cavalry.  Rare in the ACW but impressive.  Odds were on the side of the Confederates ...but it keeping with the day the Union swept the Rebel cavalry from the field.

Depending on the rules you use, you should be carful not to allow the fire from the USS Tylor dominate the eastern edge of the battlefield.

|Conclusion

Despite it being a crushing victory by the Army of the USA over the CSA, it was a fun game.  Thanks to my three friends who were able to join me in the game, John, Steve & Paul. 

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.