Scenario for First Manassas

I'll be playing this scenario again tonight with three friends. It will be the first attempt at multiple players per side using Civil War Commander. Here is the Order of Battle.

Confederate Army
Infantry: 13 units of 4 men each.
Evans (1)
Bee (2)
Bartow (1)
Jackson (3)
Cocke (3)
Early (3)
Artillery: 5 units each with 2 crewmen.
Bee (1 Smoothbore)
Bartow (1 Smoothbore)
Jackson (1 Rifle)
Cocke (1 Smoothbore)
Early (1 Rifle)
Cavalry: 2 units of 3 men each.
Stuart (2)
Generals: 5 individuals:
Bee, Jackson, Cocke, Early, Stuart.

Union Army
Infantry: 14 units of 4 men each.
Burnside (2)
Porter (2)
Franklin (2)
Wilcox (2)
Sherman (2)
Keyes (2)
Schenck (2)
Artillery: 6 units each with 2 crewmen.
Burnside (1 Rifle)
Porter (1 Rifle)
Franklin (1 Rifle)
Wilcox (1 Smoothbore)
Sherman (1 Rifle)
Schenck (1 Rifle)
Cavalry: 2 units of 3 men each.
Porter (2)
Generals: 4 individuals:
Burnside, Porter, Wilcox, Sherman

And here is the map of the battlefield:

There are three victory points located on the map, all belong to the confederates at the start of the battle. Each destroyed unit (not general) counts as a victory point. Twelve points wins the battle.

The sectors of the battle (dotted red lines) are worthy of a special rule. At the start of the battle, the northernmost sector is the center for both sides. The other two sectors are the right and left sectors. Once during the battle, each side may re-assign their sectors. The reason for this is because the battle starts with a big flank attack on the Matthew's Hill position, and then proceeds towards the Henry Hill position. So when the focus of the battle shifts from north to center, the sector designations should also shift.

44th New York

Here is the 44th New York on the painting bench. This will be a unit of 20 figures.



It's still pretty early on in the painting process.



Here is a photo of a new model building, the Stone House at Manassas. Still needs painting.



And here is the Robinson house in the foreground and the Henry house in the background. Can you believe that I put something unpainted on my game table? Oh the humanity!

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First Bull Run

This past weekend, my son and I played through a First Bull Run scenario using the Civil War Commander rule set.  This rule set has continued to morph and has adopted some of the improvements contained in the Battle Cry 150th Anniversary edition.

Here is a view from the north.  In the foreground, the Union brigades of Porter, Burnside, Franklin and Wilcox prepare to storm Matthews Hill.  On the hill are the brigades of Bartow, Bee and Evans.  Behind the hill, on the left, Sherman and Keyes have forded the Bull Run creek and are prepared to flank the confederate position.  In the background is the Henry House hill.

Coming up from the south is Jackson's brigade followed by Early's brigade.  Back to the left is Stuart's cavalry.  In the foreground is a temporary model of the Henry house.  I have a 10mm model of the house on order.  Yes, it is a little odd to combine 10mm buildings with 28mm figures, but for a game like Battle Cry it kind of works out.  After all, each individual figure is representing half of a regiment at this scale, and a single gun is actually a battery of 4 to 6 guns.

This is a picture of the Stone bridge.  Unfortunately my stone bridge is a 28mm scale bridge and so it looks (to me) way out of proportion.  I'll have to do something about that.  On the left of the photo is Schenck's brigade.  Guarding the bridge is a part of Cocke's confederate brigade.  In the background is the rest of Cocke's brigade.

This picture shows the north end of the battlefield again.  The union forces that just crossed Sudley ford on the right, and the confederates on Matthew's hill to the left.

This is a view of the whole table from the south end.  The focus is not very sharp, I should have used a tripod. 

Both players enjoyed the game, and the union squeaked out a very narrow victory.  Afterward, I tweaked the order of battle just a bit, and played around a bit with the left, center, right section boundaries.  Due to the nature of the battle, I am going to add a special rule.  Once during the battle, each player will be allowed to re-designate his sections.  At the start, the vast bulk of the Union forces are on his right flank.  While the confederates start with nothing in their center section.  So it makes a bit of sense to consider the northernmost section of the field the center for both sides at the start of the battle.  As the action moves, at some point each side will have the bulk of their forces in the middle section, and will want to call that the center.

3-Wide 2011

Every year about this time I get interested in the new NASCAR season, and I also start fiddling around with my 3-Wide board game.  This game started life many years ago as a simple card game.  It then grew into a more simulation-heavy game, and has since shed a lot of detail and become a press-your-luck style racing game.

Cars have four tires, 2 brake rotors, and a hand of 3 or 5 tactics cards.  Each car also has a handling marker, a lap marker and a fuel window marker.  These resources are combined with four types of turns; short run, long run, tactics and double tactics.  It is up to each player to determine the level of risk they are willing to accept in order to go a little bit faster.

Tactics can include drafting on the faster tracks, pushing the car in front of you, nudging the car in front of you up the track, and simply putting the pedal to the metal and moving ahead.  Tactics also include saving fuel and causing a caution for debris.

So that's what is on the game table right now.  On the painting bench is a unit of Union infantry for the Civil War.  Maybe next time I will have a peek at them.

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26th North Carolina - Finished

Here are some photos of my latest Civil War regiment.  In this case it is a loose depiction of the 26th NC.  They have an unadorned battle flag and an 1861 NC state flag.  These figures are from the Old Glory 2nd edition boxed set "Confederate Marching Shoulder Arms".  The box comes with 38 figures, this is half of that box.  It took me about 2 months elapsed time to complete this unit.  See, I told you I was a slow painter...

 

 

Confederate Recruits

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

Here is a photo of some rebs on my painting bench.  I am going to give them flags to represent the 26th North Carolina.  Back in September I got two boxes of Old Glory 2nd Edition figures; Confederate Marching and Union Marching.  For Christmas I got two more; Confederate Firing and Union Firing.  All together that is 152 infantry figures to add to my collection.  Old Glory 2nd Editions are pretty nice figures, from what I hear they are nearly identical to Sash & Saber because the same sculptor does both.

So here is half of the box of Confederate Marching Shoulder Arms.  I'll probably tackle a half a box of Union next.  I am a slow painter so I'll be painting these for a long while.

A Gorgeous September day at Antietam

The weather was so nice yesterday that after church we decided to visit Antietam battlefield on the spur of the moment.  It was one of those beautiful September days when the weather can't possibly be any better.

We visited an encampment of reenactors from the US Sanitary Commission.  Among other displays of wartime goods and equipment, they were deep-frying donuts in a dutch oven behind the dunker church.  They called them "Dunker Donuts"...Haw haw.

We hiked the short loop trail that goes from the North Woods, along the East Woods, through the Corn Field and then back by the Miller Farm.  Then we drove over to the Bloody Lane, and climbed the observation tower.  The southern part of the park is being repaved and is only accessible by foot.  So we missed Burnside's Bridge this time.

Since it was getting late in the day we finished off the trip by getting dinner at the Bavarian Inn at Sheperdstown.  Yum, sausages!