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.