It has been a while since I last played, but armed with the latest ‘Designers Cut’ version of the rules and the ACW army lists, I re-ran the Mill Creek scenario, which I played a couple of days ago under my own rules.

I have played the Mill Creek scenario many times and more often than not, the Confederates will claim the high ground (their first objective) in the closing moments of the game, but they generally fail to capture both ends of the bridge (their second objective).

So today I mixed things up a bit and assaulted the hill with a single Confederate brigade, while having the other two brigades assault the bridge. In effect this pitched 5 Confederate regiments against 2 Union regiments at the bridge, so visually there was an overwhelming tide of grey and so you would want the result to reflect that …. and it did!

Even before the end of play, the Union were in a state of full retreat. Thanks to poor die rolls, only one of the three reinforcing Union regiments had entered the table, so a counter-attack at the bridge was a non-starter. At the Hill two Union regiments were soundly routed off the high ground and the artillery forced to retreat (in my last game, all three of those unit were unsteady and compulsively retreating - so the outcome was much the same, just a different way of doing it).

Under the V&F rules, I found myself changing the description of the bridge to ‘defendable terrain’.

I played the rules with two tweaks. Firstly using my Epic scale figures, I dropped all measurements to ⅔ and that looked right and seemed to work rather well.

Secondly, I don’t like card play that builds up a ‘hand to be played’ with the inevitable ‘Gotcha’ type moments that fall out of that. I do however like the Random Event nature of the cards so I kept them in the game, but instead of allowing a hand to build up, in the Fate Phase, the next card is simply turned and played by the player that turn - or lost! It seemed to work fine.

I quite like the Double Move action as that does bring the sides into closer contact much faster and allows the game to get going properly. I also like the support rules that allow nearby unit to contribute to a units fighting strength, both for firing and melee. It feels a sensible half way house from allowing units to simply gang up.

There are some elements that sit comfortably with my own rules, for example, fire occurs early in the turn and those that fire, cannot then subsequently take an Action in the Action Phase. Also the  rate at which units deplete in the field is comparable to the rate of loss in my rules, with the final collapse similarly occurring, though V&F does allow for a possibility of rallying off loss, which my own rules don’t.

I found the Rally rules to be quite tame and more often than not will mainly be allowing units to recover enough strength back that they stop being shaken. It feels natural to do this when units consolidate a position that they have just taken, as they catch their breath and I suppose in part, it reflects re-organising the ranks and getting some cohesion back.

I do like that the system makes the action across the table feel like it is being conducted by separate brigades, so that even on a small table there is a sense of several different points of crisis emerging for one side or the other.

Overall, I find myself favouring the V&F rules and I just need to fully regain my familiarity with them, which has reduced this past year as I have been putting attention into my own rules. They feel like they are telling the story a bit more cohesively than my rules do.

Certainly, by now, the V&F rules have been heavily tweaked from their starting point and due I suppose to them being free rules, there has been a lot of play and feedback and the latest edition is all the better for that.

More of this I think!

The ACW project is all about getting enough figures painted, to play my Mill Creek scenario. Having just completed the Union forces, I thought it was time to give the scenario a run out. Tap on the graphic for a closer look.

Today I am playing with my own rules, but I will run it again soon and play with the Valour & Fortitude rules with their new ACW lists.

There is a bit more about this game over on the ‘Recent Games’ tab in the menu on the left.

Once I have played a V&F version of the scenario, it might be interesting to do a compare and contrast type post.

We had a face to face game last night, with Multi Man’s Publishing’s (MMP) strategic game on the medieval Wars of the Roses conflict.

The game comes in their ‘Special Ops’ house magazine and is a direct relative of their Warriors of God game, which covered The Hundred Years Wars.

The strategic map of England is divided into major districts such as all of Wales or all of the West Midlands or all the South West, while there are overseas zones to represent Ireland, Calais, France and Burgundy. Scotland, obviously bordered to England, is also represent by an external zone.

Overall the game plays smoothly and I was easily introduced to the game as a first time player. It played to a full and proper conclusion within a three hour session (good). To describe the whole thing in a single sentence, I would say there is a similar underlaying feel to the game as say the Braveheart style of game from Columbia Games.

It is something of an escalation game as the number of nobles and the troops available to the player starts relatively small and then generally increase through the game, so that towards the end of the game, measure and counter-measure between the two sides becomes a more considered thing as one has to pick the battles that they think will bring the best chance of victory and the subsequent control of a region that may fall from that.

At the final count of the Victory Points, it was a very close affair, with the situation playing out tightly until the last turn, keeping both players very much in the game.

At just £35 from Second Chance Games (UK) the four main groups of people interested in this particular issue of the magazine will be; those wanting a solid, enjoyable game that plays in a single session, those collecting Area Movement style games, those wanting the late medieval subject matter and those involved in the Advanced Squad Leader system as there is also a load of support material for that system in this issue.

Overall, a good game with plenty of re-playability.

The latest edition of the Wargames Illustrated magazine hits the UK high street today and as a freebie they have included a rather nicely set out 32 page set of rules called Never Mind the Matchlocks.

From the pen of Andy Callan and obviously inspired by his Never Mind the Billhooks rules, this Pike & Shot set serve us well for English Civil War and 30 Years War.

Rather than me drone on about the detail, here is a short YouTube from the man himself to explain all;

LINK

https://youtu.be/a3UejPa1ji4?si=GvimEvQuir5krlXFn

I have an uncut / unpainted army box of Epic Pike & Shotte figures from Warlord Games, which I am thinking will work perfectly for this, especially when applying the ethos of 'Pocket Armies'.

I have been contemplating this box for a while and have been thinking that I will probably cut some of the strips and base them up in a slightly different way than that 'officialy' suggested in the Epic rules.

It is probably too early for me to properly open up another project front, there is already too much in the painting queue, but these rules do tempt me to cut the strips from their sprues and place on temporary bases to have a little dabble in the raw plastic - some fun lays ahead with these rules.

I have the Warlord Games Pike & Shotte supplement 'To Kill a King' and there are some rather nice smaller scenarios in there ..... the planets are aligning! 

A good milestone was reached this month’s end with four more Union regiments painted, so all of the elements needed for the Union army’s part in the Mill Creek scenario are now fully painted.

I was also able to use these figures to get a game to the table replicating a slice of action from a Gettysburg boardgame that I have recently been playing. The situation saw Stones (Union) sitting on Pitzer’s Hill and two Confederate brigades (Scales and Thomas) trying to eject them to get a flanking advantage on the Union defences.

From what I had already painted, I was able to field three Union regiments, but with each at three bases strong to represent large regiments, plus artillery and commanders, all fully painted.

On the Confederate side, there were sixteen bases in play and six of those were painted, together with artillery and commanders, though I must say, from most playing distances, once the game got under way, the unpainted bases in their raw grey plastic just blended in with the game and was not unpleasant on the eye.

So for November, the plan is to return to painting the Confederate infantry. Six of the needed sixteen Confederate infantry bases are already painted, so returning to these should see them done before the year’s end and perhaps the Mill Creek scenario will see a Christmas presentation.

My copy of The Wargamers’ Annual 2025 fell through the door in the noon post.

I have been getting this the last few years, I suppose, as a sort of nostalgic connection to the Christmas Annual of my childhood!

However, this year is a little different as I have an article published in it, called ‘Pocket Armies on the Danube’. It covers a from scratch project to get French and Austrian small armies onto the table and has as its inspiration the fictional battle that Neil Thomas presents in his Napoleonic Wargaming book, which itself is centred on building armies with always just eight units per side.

The annual just gives me a joyful cover to cover read, so I shall be putting my copy away until Christmas Morning and allow myself some self indulgent time before the family mayhem begins!

Thank you Charles Grant (co-ordinator) and Caliver Books (Publisher).

Today I put an ACW figure game on the table, based around the slice of action created in the Gettysburg boardgame played last week.

I have put a write up about that process and the game, over on the RECENT GAMES page - see the menu on the left (3rd tab down).

The first day has been played through. There is a full account under the ‘Recent Games’ tab in the menu on the left.

Aside from the above, I have selected one aspect of the battle - the Confederate attack on the Union left flank against the Brigades of Rowley and Stone.

I am just doing a bit of research on this to break it down into a regimental order-of-battle to take the mini action to the tabletop as a figures game.

A write-up of that should appear here in the not too distant future.

Unusually two games are presently on the table today, both from Worthington Publishing’s American Civil War Brigade series.

The first went up yesterday, this being the latest module ‘Gettysburg’, a big two mapper using the new v1.4 rules. So far, I have just been playing through the first day. The time is currently 1100 hours and Buford’s cavalry (under white dismounted counters) have been pushed back off Herr Ridge and worse, have lost their artillery (Tidball).

Wadsworth’s Division is just arriving to support the cavalry and with Meredith’s Iron Brigade leading, we can expect the Confederates to get a bloody nose … Archer has already taken heavy casualties and been repulsed twice. 

I am taking my time with this as it is on the table that I stand at while gaming and my back has been playing up, so, little and often is the way to get through this. 

The second game went to the dining table this evening for our face-to-face game. This was Shiloh, which I have had for a few years, but not actually punched out the counters until today. Since I have been using v1.4 in the past 24 hours with the Gettysburg, I have stayed with those rules and retro fitted the rule changes backwards to Shiloh.

There are two scenarios, the first day scenario and the combined first and second day scenario. The first day scenario is supposed to play in 2 - 3 hours, so I took a punt on this for our evening game. As it happened, though we very much enjoyed the game play and the situation, after 2½ hours we were pretty much at the halfway point - so we didn’t get the proper end of game resolution that is my wont and I have no idea how that playing time estimate was ever arrived at! 

Shiloh games are interesting as designers have to approach the issue of a Confederate attacker coming upon Union troops that are still in their encampments. Here the chosen mechanics work well.

V1.4 of the rules essentially brings 3 new elements when retrospectively applied.

(1) Melee - the sequence of play offers an additional phase that gives another opportunity to fight, but there are nuances to this and generally I have found that unless a moment is critical, I have not really wanted to use melee much as it just allows the defenders to pour even more (enhanced) firepower into the attacker.

(2) Panic - When a unit routs, it leaves a panic marker behind and this makes adjacent friends slightly more likely to fail their own rout checks if they are called for.

(3) Column - This effectively has tied column movement to roads. Previously, as long as a unit was more than 4 hexes away from an enemy, it could claim a movement bonus for moving in column. Being tied to the road net is much more intuitive.

Overall, I like the changes. The game is meant to be at the lower end of complexity to be able to get through the bigger battles, so really rules bloat is something the designer needs to jealously guard against and here the rule advances have not really threatened that. 

I am giving some serious thought to doing a small ‘fast play’ alternative to the rules, so I would use all of the components, most of the engine, but just get it moving a bit faster for our face-to-face sessions.

I have been doing a ton of work on my ‘1 page’ ACW rule set. They are intended to have three or more divisions on a small table, so need to have something of the fast play touch and need a top down view of the battle (i.e the remoteness of the divisional and corps commander level).

They now sit at 5 pages. 1 page of basic explanation, 1 page of charts and processes, 2 pages of examples and a 1 page small intro scenario. They have a working title of ‘Have the Men Advance’.

The first draft got a heavy rewrite before play, even at the early stage of writing out the examples, when some things looked skewed. Now I am taking isolated processes to the table, well to a large piece of cardboard actually. This post looks at a run through of the combat segment.

In our little sideshow two Union brigades from 1st Division have made contact with a single Confederate brigade, which is located behind defences.

Only artillery used ranged fire so all of that approach to contact nuance that I get with my regimental rules of defensive fire etc doesn’t happen here. The idea is that in this instance we are divisional commanders looking across at one of several actions that currently concern us and we see some of our people fighting yonder.

The Confederate Brigade order is to HOLD, they don’t have a fall back plan! The two Union brigades have orders to ‘Attack the Confederate defences at ‘point x’ and take possession of the position and defend against counter-attack’.

Both Union brigades are Competent, the Confederate brigade is Superior. The time on the Game Clock is now at 10.45 AM.

It is the Union part of the turn. They have advanced to contact during their movement phase and anything in contact must fight a compulsory round of combat in the following Combat Phase.

The Union attack - Roll 2 x Average Dice (2,3,3,4,4,5) and sum them up. We have rolled 8 (good). Now the modifiers. There is a -1 for fighting against a superior enemy, a +1 for having more units than the enemy and a -2 for the enemy enjoying defensive terrain. Our 8 is modified down to 6.

Checking the results we get ‘ALL involved units (brigades) each suffer one HIT’. Both sides stay in contact. This has been rather indecisive.

It becomes the Confederate part of the turn. They could attempt to move away by test for Initiative to see whether they can override their orders, but choose not to try. So it goes to Confederate combat, which is mandatory as both forces remain in contact.

Roll 2 x Average dice and sum. We get 7. Modifiers are +1 for being superior and -1 for the enemy having more units, so the final modified score is remains 7.

Result - Each attacker (Confederate) takes 1 HIT, each defender takes 2 HITs. This has increased the Union brigade number of HITs to three on each unit.

At the end of a full turn, any brigades that have suffered new HITs during the current turn must take a Brigade Resilience test. The Confederates pass their test, but the frontline Union brigade fails and is removed from play.

This causes the Union division to test for effect. The more brigades that a division loses, the harder it is to pass the test. In this instance the division passes, so all is well (other than losing a brigade and the other now carrying 3 HITs!), but a fail, depending upon the severity of that fail, would possibly see all units belonging to the division either suffer an additional HIT (this does not generate a new test) each or see the division shattered and removed from play, so it is an anxious moment.

At the very end of the turn the Game Clock is advanced randomly by the roll of dice. We see that when the next turn starts it will be 11.12 AM.

Perhaps in the wider scenario, the Confederates have reinforcements due at 11.15 AM, so they will have not quite arrived yet …. drat those dice / hoorah those dice! (depending which side you are on).

Play now reverts to the Union, will they press the attack or retire? They have attack orders, but they could attempt to override these by taking an initiative test!

The Confederates are on 2 HITs, I think the Union brigade should retire, then they can get the divisional guns to do what perhaps they should have done in the first place! :-)

Well that all went pretty well. Afterwards I needed to change two rules. One was straight forward, but the Divisional Test highlighted a problem regarding the maths underpinning the check and that needed some more thought, with a different approach being my conclusion. Version 1.3 is now being sent to my printer. I will have to re-read through the examples of play to make sure nothing has fallen over there following the changes.

Do not adjust your set! …. this is just a posed picture combining a boardgame and my recently painted Epic figures, but the image encapsulates three things.

One - Gettysburg (the boardgame) from Worthington Publishing is going on the table for a run out of the day one scenario. This is a big two mapper game.

Two - The Warlord Games’ Epic ACW figure forces continue to grow. If the boardgame throws up an interesting situation with just a couple of brigades per side, I will take that situation to the tabletop using the Epic figures and play it out there as a regimental level game.

Three - I am working on a one page (lies, lies, lies, this will probably need 2 pages!) set of rules to play a higher level ACW figure game, with divisions and corps, but with very simple rules to allow it to just flow, with a very top down detached view.

Many years ago, I put together a 2mm Napoleonic game that sat on an 18” x 18” battlefield, with Austrians and French forces. The two essential game elements were that a game clock ran in the background which ticked away as the game progressed. Secondly, all units had specific orders of what to do.

The idea was that to change a brigade’s orders, the commander would have to send the order (distance) and then once it arrived the order would have to be translated into action (delay) and so it might for example take 2 hours of game time on that game clock, for a new order to be implemented by the brigade.

The interesting thing that fell out of this was that by time a new order arrived, the situation may have already changed again and the new order effectively loses its relevance and sometimes it would simply be better to leave a unit to carry on with the original order than to cause the disruption of change for no actual game benefit.

Anyway, my ‘1 page’ rules are really just for my own indulgence to see if I can capture the essence of those early napoleonic games that I was playing ….. plus they will bring Average Dice to the table (2,3,3,4,4,5) of which I also have fond memories.