Longstreet In 6mm

Caesar and I played Longstreet this week, using my 6mm ACW figures. These are conveniently mounted on 20mm square bases, so fit in with the rules perfectly. despite the effective halving of the necessary game area, we used a decent-sized table and, whilst the terrain density could have been a little higher, got a game with a bit more available space.

We played the Crossroads scenario, and Caesar defended with the Union. He tried to be clever and use Memoir '44 card holders. After they fell over, revealing his cards, he abandoned that idea.

My brave boys in butternut marched up to the attack. With Caesar digging in I decided not to muck about and get stuck in as quickly as possible.

He dug in before I could attack. I attacked anyway, bcause that's what you do in ACW games. I threw my eager recruits into the centre, where the church was an objective.

On the flank our cavalry units fought each other in a melee, but we realised that as veterans they were better in defence, so that bold cavalry charges weren't worth the effort. Both dismounted and shot at each other for the rest of the game.

I kept up the attack in the centre ...

... but Caesar counter-attacked.

Essentially the battle went like this - I attacked boldly at the start, stalled and then got shot to pieces. I made a few minor assaults after that, but was rapidly approaching the point where all of my units were too weak to make any more attacks. I was getting closer and closer to my breakpoint. Caesar wasn't, despite some good shooting on my part. However I did get his army to the point where it was worth rolling dice to see if he was defeated - and did it. So despite the Confederates being in a very poor position, with fewer troops, it was the Union who conceded. We can only assume that their commander thought that there were a few more Confederate brigades hidden in reserve (this was 1862) and lost his nerve at the last moment.

This was the battlefield at the end. The Confederates had taken lots of casualties, but hadn't lost any units. The Union had lost a veteran infantry unit (pretty much taken out by long range artillery fire over several turns) and an artillery battery (also taken out by artillery fire).

We found that we had the rules pretty well sorted this time, with few things we had to look up. We were also less prone to playing fun cards like Confusion just because we had them, often using them to activate movement or firing phases instead and that benefited the whole army. As the attacker I found that the choice between having a movement phase or charging into melee was a tricky one; you really need to get your troops into position in a fairly coordinated way, then launch your assault in one go.

A great game, and I was quite pleased with how the 6mm figures looked too. They go back a long way ...