Monday 27 July 2020

A Little Civil War Action

Sunday’s regular game was and American Civil War event with five players (two Confederate and three Union).
 
The basis of the game was that the two forces are facing each other across a river with heavily wooded banks. The river was crossed by two bridges and was fordable at all points, but wide so would take two fill turns to cross. It was also deep so that those crossing were unable to fire when crossing. Each side has objectives on the opposite side of the table. The Union troops had an option to deploy some forces on our side of the river, beyond our extreme left.

 
I  fought on the Confederate side and between the two of us we commanded four infantry brigades (a total of 23 regiments), a small cavalry brigade (2 regiments) and six batteries fought six Union infantry brigades (30 regiments), three independent cavalry regiments and six batteries.
 
We spread our brigades across the table as best we could. On the left one brigade was in a forward position on the Yankee side of the river, with the second brigade in reserve in the town. The cavalry took post on the extreme left to face any Yankees that deployed on our side of the table. My two brigades were spread along my section of the river with one brigade forward on the river edge and one in reserve. 


The Yankees deployed the bulk of their forces against our left (including one brigade across the river) and advanced rapidly on our forward brigade.
 


Our cavalry, supported by some infantry from the reserve face off against the Yankee 
 


On the opposite flank the Yankees began to cross the river. An initial attempt resulted in a bloody repulse


But an attempt further to our right succeeded 
 
 
In the centre the fight became a confused mess in the woods
 



 
Although an attempt to push some unsupported artillery across the bridge resulted in an expected disaster
 

While on my flank I held off a flanking move by some Yankee cavalry and my artillery repulsed another attack.
 



Soon, however, the Yankees on our extreme left were stirred into action.

 
Despite a valiant effort by our brave defenders on the left, this proved to be the end of us.
 
 
The Yankees won but a reasonable part of my command got away to fight another day.

20 comments:

  1. Too bad about the outcome but the table looks gorgeous! I would gladly lose on that fine table any day!

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    1. The only problem was that with all those woods down the centre of the table I have an aching back today from stretching to move the figures there!

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  2. Great to see the collection in action Mark. Looks like a fun game, and those waves of Union blue look very impressive.

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    1. Only the Union figures are mine, the Confederates being from the collection of several in the group.

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  3. Lovely looking game and loved the idea of heavily wooded banks, which I will try and remember for a future game. I feel for your aching back, which is one reason I game in 10mm and on a 4' x 4' table!

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    1. Thank Steve. It was actually quite a challenging terrain to play on.

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  4. A beautiful table. I sympathise with the stretching / bad back thing.

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    1. Thanks Norm. I can’t take credit for the table though, I just played In the game. The back will be Ozk by tomorrow I think...the effect of aging.

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  5. Congrats to the Yankees...and to the photograph, great pictures!

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  6. Nice looking game Mark - surprised to see you on the Confederate side, were you partnering Mr Leigh by any chance? Did you get a chance to use your recently based small medium and large units - or is that for another time?

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    1. The commands were selected randomly, and yes I drew Mr Leigh, who did very well, fighting twice his numbers. No all the units were “standard” sized.

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  7. Hi Mark- Great terrain and a ripper of an ACW Battle. Are your Armies by Old Glory 25s? Thanks for posting - very inspiring. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. Thanks Kev. The Confederates were all Dixon but the Union were a mix of Dixon, Foundry, Old Glory and some of my own designs.

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  8. Great looking table, not sure that counts as 'little' nice to see all the toys on the table.
    Cheers
    Stu

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    1. Seemed a smallish game at the time, but when you add up the the numbers it does make a tidy number...maybe as many as 2,200.

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  9. A great looking game Mark...
    I also like the idea of the heavily wood riverbank... I may steal it for a skirmish game...

    All the best. Aly

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    1. It was fun. The only problem with the woods down the middle of the table is moving the figures among the trees!

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