Black Powder ACW in 6mm: Gettysburg Herbst Woods

I started working in the city of Jyväskylä which means some time apart from my family every week, but also increased time for hobby stuff. It didn't take me long to find the first brave general to face me in the field of battle at the local FLGS.

The PM attacks at Gettysburg (wikipedia)

I looked for a small introductory-sized scenario for Black Powder and found one in Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy issue 66. In Gettysburg again, the scenario plays the afternoon attack of Pettigrew and Brockenborough across Willoughby run into Herbst woods and beyond. Against them, the Iron Brigade led by Meredith and Biddle's brigade. I didn't bring my camera so I just have a couple of photos taken with my cell phone.

It's a 4 foot by 3 foot table. We halved the default distances from Black Powder and it worked fine. It was a bit of a tight fit for the four brigades on the table, but worked ok for a tutorial.

Long story short: The Confederates crossed the stream and Biddle's brigade took position behind a long fence. A long firefight began, during which the Confederates unsuccessfully attempted to turn the Union left. Their musketry fared much better and shook the boys in blue pretty bad. Even though the Union troops returned in kind, they could not hold their line. Meredith's iron brigade was forced to vacate Herbst Woods and nearly half of the Union regiments had routed (versus just one of the Confederate regiments) by the time we called the game.

It was a good thing my opponent won, too so that I might have a shot at a rematch ;)

Ropecon 2014: Black Powder ACW & Bolt Action Winter War double feature

I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Ropecon this year. Ropecon is definitely the largest gaming convention in Finland, bringing together wargamers, boardgamers, roleplayers, larpers, cosplayers and what have you. It's quite a spectacle and I've missed it for about six years in a row now so I was happy to attend this time.

I played three games during the weekend. The beating I took in Epic Armageddon does not have any surviving images (luckily), but the ACW and Winter War games I participated in do.

I collaborated with the Nopat & Taktiikka association in arranging a Black Powder ACW game to demo during the weekend. My associated designed the scenario and provided some of the miniatures while I provided the terrain and most of the mini's. The scenario put us back in Gettysburg again and was a regimental level scenario going from the cavalry defence of McPherson's ridge on to the defence of Seminary Ridge. Here's the photos:

The scenario fit nicely on a 6x4 foot table. The elevations were made pretty ad-hoc with box lids and whatnot under the grass mat so it looks a bit bulky.

Buford's cavalry defends McPherson's ridge.

Some of my freshly painted dismounted cavalry. I have to take some more photos of these for you soon.

Union reinforcements arrive.

Union forces set up on Seminary ridge. The nice seminary building is from Total Battle Miniatures in case you wonder.

Confederates are preparing to assault seminary ridge.

Union artillery will make it tough to get up that ridge.

Reynolds is slowly retreating under pressure along the railway cut. (It's supposed to be an unfinished railroad, I know. I just wanted to use that railroad I finished last week)

Finally, the Conferedates mount their assault and cave in the Union left flank.

The scenario saw several new players come in and assume the command of a brigade or two during the day and I hope fun was had by all. The multitude of models definitely drew some attention from onlookers as they're more used to seeing WH40k armies.

Next up, I got a chance to take my Winter War Finns to the table as the same Nopat & Taktiikka crew arranged a Winter War demo table. I substituted most of their Finns with mine and played my first game of Bolt Action. The scenario is set during the battle of Raate road. The Soviets are sandwiched on a road between two Finnish forces and must organize a defense as Finns attack. The Finns cannot just sit back and shoot though, as they must capture two trucks on the road and time is against them.

The superb table and opening setup.

The Russians can get a bit of cover in ditches on both sides of the road.

My Finns on offence

The Russians organize...

But get an artillery barrage on top of them which leaves most of them pinned. The Finns fail to exploit this properly though.

On the other flank, the Soviets outnumber the Finns in the woods and attack successfully.

The road under attack.

Finns take cover in the woods and fire.

The situation at the start of the fourth turn. On one side of the road, the Finns are routed but fare better on the other side. The referee calls the final turn and the Finns are in a hurry to make the capture.

A desperate charge is successful, but the scenario ends as a draw nonetheless.

There you have it! I had a blast, thanks to all the players and the crew of Nopat & Taktiikka in particular!

6mm Black Powder ACW

Hi all,

Here's a report of the regimental level ACW game I hosted at Warcon using my 6mm collection. I'll also give you info on the scaling and the setup of things as I gather from the Google search traffic I'm getting on Hail Caesar that a lot of people are wondering on how to apply the Warlord Games rulesets to 6mm.

Scaling

Black Powder is a 28mm game and meant to be played on a huge table. The recommended depth of the table is something like five or six feet. The amount of figures needed in 28mm is something from 16-20 models per unit upwards and an army required by most of the sample scenarios would take hundreds of 28mm models. For someone with limited space and painting time this can be a dealbreaker.

As it happens, the game scales quite nicely to 6mm models when you simply halve all ranges. All the ranges used in the game are even numbers so there are no awkward half-inches to deal with. The effect on table space is not quite as drastic as with substituting inches with centimeters (as I've done with Hail Caesar). This makes the standard 6x4 foot wargames table the equivalent of a 12x8 foot table. Lots of elbow room.

The standard frontage of an infantry unit in unmodified scale is about 240mm to 300mm. In half scale the same range is 120mm to 150mm. My ACW infantry is based on 25mm wide (Fire and Fury) stands, and five of them gives me a nice looking unit 125mm wide and 50 models. For small units I use three stands just to keep the unit symmetric with the command stand in the middle. My artillery is based on 25mm stands too and I used two of them side by side for a battery of guns. Open order formations are simply represented by placing the stands one inch apart.

A Union brigade of  one standard unit, two small units and a leader.

The Scenario

I was determined not to return to Gettysburg for a while, but I spotted a nice and easy scenario in Wargames Illustrated 245. I needed a simple and straightforward scenario with simple terrain I could easily build in a convention 300 kilometers from my home. In WI245 there is a regimental Wheatfield scenario written by a David Brown for the Guns at Gettysburg rules (an ACW variant of General De Brigade). I adjusted the OOB to Black Powder and used the scenario map and the map from Maps of Gettysburg to do my version. The reinforcement schedule worked quite well as it was without tinkering with which turn the units would arrive.

In the scenario, three Union brigades defend the wheatfield and the adjacent hill against an attack by three larger, veteran Confederate brigades. The Union forces will receive plenty of reinforcements but will they arrive too late to keep the Wheatfield in Union hands?


The Game

We had four players participating in the game. Two had read the rules but no-one had played the game before. I had played Hail Caesar, which is quite similar, but this experience worked to my detriment a couple of times as a rule or a modifier would be subtly different and I would try and play the rule the wrong way. All the players had some experience from miniature wargames (and one was a fresh convert from the grim, dark future with no prior experience with historicals). I think we were pretty much at home with the ruleset by turn three so points to Black Powder for clarity and ease of learning!

One Union brigade was deployed on the Wheatfield in the center, one was protecting it's right flank on the hill and one was on Wheatfield lane ready to support the ones in the front. Two Union artillery batteries were also on the road.

The Confederates kicked off the game by marching on the table from the woods south of the Wheatfield. They had the veteran status but the Union forces facing them had a stone wall to take cover behind.

The reserve Union brigade saw an opportunity to threaten the Confederate left flank and marched on with great speed.

This forced the Confederates to deploy their reserve brigade to counter, and with a similarly good activation roll they now deployed into line withing musketry range of the Union brigade still in field column. Uh oh..

The volley of musketry caused some casualties in the Union column, and they hastily started to form line. One regiment was too disordered to comply, and had to remain in column. (Red markers are casualties, yellow markers are disorder)

At the Wheatfield the Confederates took their sweet time to reach the Union defenders (two consecutive failures in command checks, I think). When they charged, the Union forces protected by the stone wall had no trouble repulsing the attacker. On the Confederate right the skirmishers were pushed back but this was not enough to remedy the obvious blunder of charging headlong into a stone wall.

The hill objective received a charge as well. Freshly Raised troops versus Reliable veterans, so the result was clear? Nope, the Confederates were repulsed again.

To make things worse the Union forces took their opportunity to cut the Confederate line in two and capture their artillery while they were at it! The desperate Confederates on the right flank assumed a defensive posture.

On the Confederate left both parties were pretty beat up but the Confederates had failed to gain a breakthrough.

 Even on the far Confederate right the regiment had trouble brushing aside the skirmishers in front. The noose was tightening on the right flank as three isolated Confederate regiments were slowly being encircled.

As all of the Confederate attacks had failed and Union reinforcements were flooding to the field we decided to call the game. The utter failure of the attacks owed a bit to hasty scenario conversion and to my own tactical blunders. Design-wise, I think there wasn't an appreciable difference between veteran troops and the green troops they were facing. The "drama" of the scenario would have had the initial Union defenders running and the real fight would have been fought between the reinforcements and the worn out Confederates. To make this the probable outcome I'll need to tinker with the stats a bit. I think as far as tactics go, I shouldn't have attacked that wall head on but rather flank the position as I had room and time to do so.

The Black Powder rules felt nice and light. The troops were easy to maneuver and there were just a few modifiers to learn. I think the ruleset works best for a carefree saturday evening game where you don't want to stress out on the minutiae and just want to have a lot happen on the table with not much effort. I think I have to look at the skirmisher rules again though as one small skirmisher unit held a full close order regiment in melee for three turns I think. Was that just good luck for the boys in blue?

Anyway, it was a great evening and I had the pleasure to play with three gentlemen I haven't played with before, one of whom will hopefully be a new convert to historical wargames!

Gettysburg 150th anniversary game using Volley & Bayonet and Baccus 6mm

I cannot give you a thorough writeup now as I'm away on a working trip in Sardinia, but I wanted to do a post on the anniversary anyway.

We played the game on Saturday and it was a great evening of gaming, drinking and sauna. Volley and Bayonet proved to be a competent ruleset for this scale of gaming. It feels lightweight and is easy to teach, but still offers players plenty of tactical options and problems. Still, playing the game took longer than I anticipated and after 12 hours we had to stop. We played until turn five on the second day and even though neither army had not yet been beaten, it felt clear that the Confederates would run out of steam even though they dominated the field on the first day. The Union players just keep getting those fresh corps all the time on day 2. I'm not sure if we messed up the scenario by shifting the Union reinforcement road from Baltimore Pike to Taneytown Road after the Confederates took Culps hill. We reasoned the Union forces would not enter the field so close to the front line and would reroute their forces for Day 2.

The table was the biggest I've built at about 280 cm * 180 cm. Even with simple modular terrain and painters tape for roads and streams it took about 5 hours just to assemble on the night before the game. Still, I'm happy I have the space to accommodate a game like this in my house now (as long as my wife and child evacuate before the fighting starts ;)

A.P.Hill's Corps has taken McPherson's ridge and prepares to assault the seminary ridge. To the left, Ewell's Corps is pushing towards Gettysburg.

The situation at the start of the second day. Ewell managed to push the Union off Culps hill and Cemetery hill and has built works during the night along the line. Longstreet has arrived on the field and has marched on the Confederate right flank. Gettysburg lies in ruins after catching fire on Day 1.

As more and more Union forces stream to the battlefield the Confederates realize it's now or never. The Union line is strongest on the flanks but weaker in the center so the assault is targeted there. The fighting starts at 6 AM and the Confederate forces enjoy initial success. However, the Union center has defensive depth and the attack loses momentum. At 10 AM on day 2 we decide to stop playing.

Almost done!

The OOB's for our Volley & Bayonet Gettysburg refight are as complete as I can make them. Here you can see all the sabot stands for the scenario and as many figures as I've have placed on them combined with the union figures from my gaming buddy. With the two Union collections combined, we're still missing some artillery and the VI Corps in it's entirety but as VI Corps comes into play on the night of the 2nd day of fighting I suppose there'll be plenty of dead figures to recycle. For the Confederates another opponet of mine assures me he'll be able to bring all the missing figures on the morning of the game, so we're good.

I did some moderate painting to prepare for this, mostly officers. The games so far have been on the scale of a couple of Corps per side with the associated divisions but for this game I needed a lot of division leaders in particular. I ended up painting regular cavalry soldiers and basing them singly on 20mm bases for the division commanders (makes no difference visually in 6mm) and 25mm bases of three or so officers with a flag for Corps/Army commanders. Apart from that I did some sharpshooters and some minor terrain work. I think doing the 3" bases took more time than I anticipated as well as cutting and taping the unit labels on them.

Now all that is left is to assemble the table which I can't do very much in advance in fear of my wife, and printing out some player aids. Let them come.

The road to Gettysburg

Like everybody else, I will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg with a game. Initially I thought I'd host a Fire & Fury game focusing on the Longstreet vs. Sickles fight in the Peach orchard / Wheatfield / Devil's Den / Round tops area but I got a bit greedy. I want to play the whole three days of the entire battle!

With the Fire and Fury rules, this would be simply impossible given the number of models needed as well as take too long to play. Fire & Fury shines when you have a Corps at most per side but starts to slow down after that. I need a faster, lighter set of rules and I think I've found what I'm looking for in Volley & Bayonet.

A quick comparison of brigade level Fire and Fury versus Volley and Bayonet:

Base unit:
    F&F: 1 infantry stand = 150/200 men. About 10 stands to a brigade.
    VnB: 1 infantry stand = 1000 - 2000 men. One stand to a brigade.
Groundscale:
    F&F: 1" = 45/60 yds
    VnB: 1" = 100 yds
Timescale:
    F&F: One turn = 30 minutes.
    VnB: One turn = 60 minutes.


So, Volley and Bayonet is more geared towards bigger battles and drops a lot of micromanagement in favor of faster flow. The rationale is that when you play the role of army commander, you focus on massing your forces in the right location and send them in at the right time instead of worrying whether a singular brigade is in single or double line. That's why the only brigade formations available are close order battle lines, march column and open order skirmishing. It makes sense for the scale.


The ACW supplement for VnB is getting difficult to find without paying an exorbitant amount, but I got mine from Old Glory 25's for the original price. Their shipping calculations are crazy for overseas orders but I managed to haggle it down to standard USPS fees by just asking them about it in e-mail. The booklet might run out any time as it's a 1995 print so be quick if you want yours! The supplement is for the first edition of the game whilst I have the second edition rulebook, but there isn't a lot you need to change.

I played a test game with my friend yesterday with a Corps of troops per side and played to a satisfactory ending (all enemy divisions exhausted) in three hours on a 6x4 foot table so its not bad at all considering it was our first game. My camera ran out of battery so no pictures for you unfortunately.


Modeling-wise, I changed the sabot basing scheme I introduced in an earlier post a bit. I opted not to have a white line at the bottom and instead of blu-tack I use painters tape to fix the models and the labels in place. Painters tape doesn't leave the stands ugly and is easy to remove.

The visual impact I'm going for is fairly obvious. There is one F&F sized stand of infantry per one strength point (500 men) of infantry and it should look a bit like a brigade in double line. The unit labels are from the Volley and Bayonet yahoo groups user gbitters, who has shared these fantastic labels in the files section. I think this is his blog. Give him a visit, he has some great 3mm VnB games there using half the recommended sizes.

As for figures, I don't have the complete OOB's worth of figures. I'll combine my models with a couple of friends' and for infantry we'll be 19 F&F stands of Union infantry short. These will all be with a Corps arriving on the field on the night of the second day so I'm sure there'll be enough volunteers in the dead pile. For artillery the situation is a bit more worrisome as we're 9 union artillery stands short. I'll have to make blue chits with an artillery symbol on them to compensate if it goes to that. Good players don't lose their artillery :)

I still need to make sabot bases for cavalry, artillery and leaders and paint a whole lot of mounted officers to get all the Union division commanders represented on the field but I think I'll manage. For terrain I'm pretty much set and all I'll have to do is make some optional eye candy to sweeten up the landscape. I already have all the hills, woods and such.

So, who else is doing an anniversary game?