I see this mini campaign as being something like a three day running battle. There are three turns per day, just using day light hours and infantry units can move 1 hex per turn.

I am borrowing heavily from Charles Grant's Programmed Wargame Scenarios book, but using my own map and order-of-battle.

As a fictional battle, the map has some made up names, plus a few borrowed from various ACW boardgame maps that I own, so it is a typical rather than actual representation.

The programmed part of the scenario means that some deployments, orders  and responses to enemy moves are randomly selected from tables in the book.

As an example, Grant's map has two main roads, an east and a west road. At the start of play a dice is rolled to determine whether the attacker will drive down the east and screen the west or drive down the west and screen the east or do 40 / 40 down each road with 20% of the force given other tasks, including a reserve etc.

By also randomising to a degree the defenders 'deployments' and 'responses',  the campaign should start to get a character of its own and feel fresh to my eyes despite all of the planning. 

I have started working on two Orders-of-Battle. I see the campaign being based around a division per side, with the attacker having a 3:2 benefit in numbers. The defender will be dispersed around the map, so the immediate effect will be greater than 3:2 as the attackers meet various outposts and blocking forces etc.

I have raided the Shenandoah Valley 1862 campaign text for an Order-of-Battle, though I am setting the Graysville campaign in 1863, not that it matters much except, using my own rules, units roll pre-battle (or pre-campaign in this case) on the Arming Table to see whether they get smoothbore or rifled muskets, so they will be using the 1863 column as rifling becomes much more common.

Against the odds! Only one unit gets armed with smoothbore musket, Elzey's 25th Virginia (Confederate).

Next, I rolled for brigade commander attributes. The Confederate commanders didn't get any, so they remain standard commanders, but for the Union, the dice went a little crazy.

Kimball has the Lucky attribute (so some re-rolls for him) as does 3rd Brigade's Tyrer. Colonel Sullivan was less fortunate and he rolled 'Exhausted'. This will bring him some command and control problems, so perhaps Shields might prefer not to give his brigade a leading role.

Some units have had to be described as 'small'. This is because Grant's book, which I am using to run the campaign, makes use of smaller detatchments and refers to 5% of the force being given such and such task / deployment and small units seems to be the best way to handle this - we shall see!

In the background, I am furiously painting Warlord Games' Epic mounted cavalry. I need two regiments worth. The dismounted elements are already done. For the Confederates I need one regiment of cavalry painting, both mounted and deployed versions - so still a bit of work to do.

The second gun battery needed by the Union have just come off their painting sticks and will get based today. The batteries may never end up in the same battle - but you never know, no doubt they would both like to be there for the final assault to capture Graysville :-)