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.