Port Republic

We played the final game in our ACW Black Powder campaign on Thursday, with a refight of Port Republic.

In this action, two Union brigades are on the offensive against three Confederate ones, although two of the Confederate brigades come on as reinforcements. The Union are holding four objectives along a road. Since the Confederates were three points ahead in the campaign, they only had to capture one to draw the campaign and two to win it.

Here's the Confederate commanders having a think, with their first brigade marching towards the Union lines.

The Union opted for an active defence, looking to hit each incoming Confederate brigade hard as they came up.

More Confederates arrived on the Union left. There was a time/turn limit on their attack, so they had to advance quickly, which meant column. The forward Union defence moved up to exploit this.

A shot along the lines. The fields provided some cover from firing, so, in fact, the Union move forward made a lot of sense. At this stage all three Confederate brigades were on the table.

Close action in the centre.

The Confederates looking concerned. Time was running out and they'd yet to break through the thin blue line.

More action in the centre.

The objectives remained firmly in Union hands.

And the end came quickly. The Confederates finally managed a push on their right, breaking through the Union infantry there. But they were stopped short of the objective by Union guns, and failed to take it by the end.

So despite losing, or at best scraping a draw in, the other battles, the Union clinched a one point victory in the whole campaign by holding all four objectives.

Thanks to Ralph for putting together an interesting set of encounters, and to all those who provided the lovely figures.

The Battle Of Cross Keys

There's a lot of Real Life going on at The Stronghold at the moment, so planning and playing games is taking something of a back-seat, but I did manage to get down to the club this Thursday for a game of Black Powder, part of a continuing ACW mini-campaign covering Jackson In The Valley.

This time the battle was Cross Keys, and here's the setup, with the Union on the left and Confederates on the right. The troops were simply on the table and not in their initial deployments. Objectives were the crossroads at the top and three along the ridge-line to the right of the picture.

Once again we were using the lovely ACW Epic figures from Warlord.

Here's the Union deployment (since I was on the Union side). Most of our troops were massed on our left, ready to take the crossroads and also prevent the Confederates from leaving the board in that corner, something which earned them victory points.

A view from behind the Confederate lines.

We sent forward a brigade in the entry to take the objective here. I had a brigade on our right which was tasked with attacking the ridge near Cross Keys itself but really just ended up tying down Confederates in that area whilst everyone else did the work.

Here's my brigade, stuck in some woods. I never managed to extricate theme during the game.

Most of the fighting was around the crossroads and saw the Union steadily push back the Confederates

They captured the crossroads.

But that was it. The Confederates retained the other three objectives and exited some units, so have a commanding lead going into the final scenario (Port Republic) in a few weeks.

Thanks to Ralph for putting on an entertaining scenario. The Union have plenty of troops but lack the command ability to use them to completely overwhelm the more motivated Confederates. We almost captured the objective in the centre, but just failed on the last turn. As ever, we just needed one more turn ...

The Battle Of McDowell

As promised we played a McDowell scenario on Thursday night, using Black Powder and Ralph's Epic ACW figures (or whatever Warlord call their little plastic figures).

Here's the main focus of the action - Sitlington's Hill. I was a little late turning up, owing to a cat emergency, and missed the first turn, so I'm not sure what the initial starting positions were, but you can see roughly a brigade each fighting it out over the crest of the hill here. In the centre was an objective marker.

The scenario was designed so that the first half of the action would be fought over the hill and then, as the numbers of arriving Confederates steadily increased, the Union would fall back and contest some roads in their rear. The Union had two smallish brigades (which counted as one for break purposes, but not command), whilst the Confederates had (I think) three - one attacking the hill and two arriving by road from the first turn. Here's the bigger picture, with the Confederates arriving in the distance, and a couple of Union regiments on the road opposing them.

A close-up of the two Union regiments on the road.

The Confederates were marching in nice vulnerable columns, and as they came up took a few hits from the Union artillery that I realise that I didn't get a single picture of.

Confederate numbers build up. 

The Union actually did a great job of holding them off. Deciding that the objectives to the rear were too far back to reach within the time-limit, they simply sat tight. They lost the objective on the hill, but did then break the Confederate brigade contesting it (despite the Confederates getting all kinds of rerolls for 'Stonewall' Jackson being there, as well as for simply being Confederate).

The units on the road came close to breaking the first wave of Confederates attacking them. But not quite.

And, as we reached the time-limit, the Union brigade reached its break-point. In terms of VPs for the game, this gave the Confederates two (breaking a Union brigade, and winning one objective) and the Union one (breaking a single Confederate brigade). But it was a close game.

The scores are important because this was a the first in a series of three Jackson In The Valley games, and the VPs for each scenario will be accumulated to give an overall winner. The plan is for one game at the end of a month, but then next two months are basically holidays at that point, so the next one won't be until February.

And this is my first game of Black Powder this year, so ... 52 Games!

52 Games - Game 65

Another One Hour Encounter

I replayed the encounter game from yesterday. 

I didn't change any of the setup; I decided that I'd adopt the more cautious approach of allowing reinforcements to stack up before deciding when to advance. Here's the game a few moves in. The Swedes (left) had got three infantry units on, and advanced to the hill. The Russians had started with cavalry in play, and had sent them around the flank to threaten the Swedes but not, at this stage, engage. The Russians already had most of their infantry on as well - they got lucky with reinforcement rolls - and their commander was ready to bring them forward.

A few turns later. The Swedes had a third infantry unit in play. The Russians had simply advanced and assaulted the Swedish line. The plan had been for their cavalry to support the attack, but having moved into position it was now reluctant to charge.

In fact the Russian attack failed, but the Swedes were so beaten up that a second attack routed them. Meanwhile the cavalry finally attacked, but became stuck in a stationary melee with Swedish infantry that just wouldn't quit.

Final positions. The Swedes had finally got one unit of their horse on, too late to be of any use. Their foot was shaken and had been driven off the hill, which was now completely under Russian control. The Russians had won again.

I'm not aware of any errors I made this time. And it played out in well under an hour, although not having to teach the game to a twelve week old child helped.

One Hour Black Powder

Continuing my exploration of Black Powder I set up one of the OHW scenarios, planing on running it with one commander on each side controlling the six units. The problem is that the OHW scenarios assume that you don't have commanders and limited activations - all units move all of the time - so they do tend to stretch the capabilities of a single commander somewhat. 

To make matters worse, I rolled the Encounter scenario, in which units appear randomly over multiple turns on their own side's baseline, whilst fighting for control of a hill in the centre. This was going to leave my poor commanders having to run back and forth collecting newly arrived units, whilst also trying to run the fight in the centre.

Anyway, here's the Russian commander exhorting his initial unit - some infantry, to advance.

The Swedes had a cavalry unit at the start. Their commander waved his hat and told them to get a move on.

The terrain. The Swedes were entering from the left and the Russians from the right. Both sides had three units of infantry, two of cavalry and one of artillery. The winner would be the side that held the hill at the end of 15 turns.

The Russians got the first move and no new unit, so their commander simply used a 'Follow Me' order to advance the infantry straight onto the objective. The Swedes responded by moving their cavalry to threaten the infantry's flank; I felt a frontal charge was possibly unsafe at this stage..

The Russians brought on some cavalry themselves, and a Follow Me order saw them able to charge straight into the flank of the Swedes.

Naturally the Swedes lost, and were driven back. The Russians pursued and the Swedes lost again, but surprisingly they didn't break.

At this point I was joined by a first-time player - my grandson Eli. We worked out the next few turns together, and he even had a go at rolling some dice, failing in this task because he wouldn't actually let go of them. Still, we had a pleasant time checking rules and moving figures together.

Eli was very excited when the Swedes were able to bring some cavalry on, and suggested that they swung round and charged the Russian horse in the flank. I was in full agreement with him.

In fact the Swedes were having a good time of it with their reinforcements, and had also got a couple of infantry units into play that had been steadily advancing towards the hill. Things weren't looking good for the Russians at this stage.

The Russians turned and reorganised. Their initial cavalry unit routed, but another appeared and took its place, driving back the Swedes. Meanwhile a firefight broke out for control of the hill.

With the odds in their favour, though, the Swedes charged. There's doesn't seem to be an uphill bonus for melee in Black Powder (that I could see), so the Russians didn't really have any advantage. However they fought the Swedes to a draw.

In the following round of combat they routed the Swedes.. And they had another unit coming up to bolster their defences.

The Swedes brought up another unit of infantry as well.

A command blunder saw the Russian reinforcements veer off to their left instead of advancing with best speed towards the hill. Their commander pointed out where they should be going.

The original defender of the hill was taking heavy casualties but was holding firm.

And the blunder worked to the Russians' advantage, as it left their infantry unit with a rapid advance onto the Swedish flank. Meanwhile more Russians were appearing in the distance. To the bottom left the Swedes were reorganising and rallying their cavalry.

The Swedish foot on their left was charged in the flank, whilst the Russians launched a bold charge against the opposing cavalry.

The Swedish foot were driven back, disrupting their line, and another unit was hit in the flank. This one held firm and was able to turn to face.

But the Russians had their blood up and kept charging. One Swedish infantry unit broke ...

... and seeing their friends rout the other broke as well.

The Russians had two infantry units on the hill, and other advancing to the fight. The Swedes were reduced to two battered cavalry units, and some artillery that hadn't even appeared yet.

On that basis I called the action a Russian victory.

"Retreat!"

"Advance!"

I made a few mistakes, but probably not as many as the first game. I'm sure a couple of times I forgot the -1 command roll for being within 12" of the enemy. And early on I misunderstood the rules for Follow Me, assuming that a commander could order it so long as the unit was within his movement distance. This made it easy to bring up units from the baseline. In fact he has to be within 12" (4" on my board), which makes it a lot harder to do.

In fact that was a big issue in this scenario, as mentioned above. The poor commanders simply couldn't bring up their randomly arriving troops whilst trying to run a battle in the centre. I suspect that the answer is to allow the arriving reinforcements some kind of free move, so they at least get close to the action on their own initiative. Alternatively the tactics for the battle would be to hang around on your baseline until you feel you have enough troops in play to make a move on the hill, then hope you can bring up the remaining troops as they arrive. In some ways this might be more interesting, since the battle is on the clock and you can't necessarily afford to hang around too long.