Fire & Fury: Cedar Mountain 1862

The main event for our group on this year's Kinkkucon was the Battle of Cedar Mountain played with my 6mm ACW collection. We used the brigade Fire & Fury rules which are well suited for a game of this size. It seems our previous experience (we've gamed 1st Bull Run, a part of Chickamauga, Port Republic, Gettysburg day 1 and Antietam afternoon as bigger games using these rules) has paid off as the game progressed quickly without much need to consult the rules or anything.

I'll leave it to you to read up on the battle in Wikipedia should you be interested in the historical events. The scenario starts on the moment Crawford's union brigade gets the drop on Garnett and the surprise attack threatens to cave in the Confederate line.

Initial dispositions. Winder is about to receive a Union assault, A.P.Hill will arrive to assist and Ewell waits for a practicable moment to attack.

Union side, looking south.

Winder and Jackson are discussing the merits of lemon eating towards eliminating harmful humors when the Union forces commence the proceedings.

Garnett is taken by surprise.

Taliaferro is killed leading his brigade in a futile defence. So is Winder.. and Jackson.

A single brigade is isolated on the Confederate left.

Hill's troops start arriving on the scene, but the Confederate center is in chaos and they have to deploy into line far away from the fighting.

Brigades belonging to A.P.Hill's and Ewell's divisions attack the Union center in hopes of capturing the valuable guns on the other side.

A.P.Hill's advance through the woods is painfully slow. The Union forces give ground in the woods and flank the Confederate brigades in the field.

Despite the enfilade, the Louisiana brigade sends the Union defenders running. A shortage of ammunition plagues the boys in blue!

The entire Union artillery train fixes their guns on the Louisianans. A whopping total of 44 fire points is poured onto the Confederate ranks. a Roll of two results in only one stand being removed. Later, the artillery get another shot during the Louisianans' charge. 50 fire points and a roll of one. Two batteries are added to the tally of Forno's brigade. They truly earned their hardtack that day.

A.P.Hill bolsters the Confederate center. Things seem to settle down.

As darkness sets in, both sides attempt final charges without much effect. Brigades are pushed to and fro a couple of inches.

Final positions looking south. The line has stabilized. Ewell didn't make it into the fight with a majority of his division, as they were held in reserve for most of the game.

The game ended as an overwhelming victory for the Union with a VP difference of 30 points or something thereabouts. The initial Union success with their charge and breakthrough charge really made a difference, especially when they killed all the opposing generals involved! It meant that the historical Confederate counter was stalled because A.P.Hill had to deploy way back in the rear, and the Union forces could hold onto victory locations for quite a while. Still, it was a very entertaining game.

Kinkkucon 2012

I kick off this year's gaming with Kinkkucon 2012. It's a small boardgames convention in my hometown Kuopio, and I've been hosting miniatures games there for several years. Btw, "kinkku" is ham in finnish and the con is so named because finns eat ham on Christmas and Kinkkucon is only two weeks after Christmas. Makes perfect sense.

The small space we have available for the convention got a bit cramped on saturday

A Normandy 44 game in progress.

Anyway, I hosted two games this year. The first was a small 1/72 scale WW2 demo set in Normandy using the Rate of Fire rules:

US Paras try to disable the German 88.

The kids visiting the con gave me a lot of positive feedback on the layout. They also said they had previously played a game called "Warhammer".

The second was a 6mm ACW game of the battle of Cedar Mountain using brigade level Fire and Fury:

I ran out of stands and had to replace some with wooden bases. The good thing was that the brigades on the bottom were not allowed to move for several turns, and the Union forces were happy to make Confederate stands available again.

I'll post a more detailed report on each one soon.

Aside from that, I showed one player how to play Space Hulk and Hammer of the Scots to another. That pretty much took all my time this weekend with some time left over to clean the hobby room and do some recurve bow shooting before my wife and son return home tomorrow.

The war is cut short as Wallace catches up with Edward Longshanks in the third year.

Looks like someone has been making a demo table..