More Portable ACW

I tried another ACW Portable Wargame yesterday, with a little more terrain and a few more troops. Both sides had five infantry, two artillery and one cavalry unit. They were fighting over a line of hills, with control of the large centre hill counting as one objective and control of both hills on the flanks counting as the other.

In terms of rules I only allowed an activated unit to engage in combat if it remained motionless or moved no more than one space. In addition I allowed a unit that was forced to retreat the option of moving one space diagonally to its rear if the more than one space directly behind it was blocked.

Each force would enter along the road, Confederates from the north and Union from the south (yes, I know ... ), with a fixed march order and the activation dice increasing by three each turn (to a total of nine)

(Blogger did something weird with the order of photos when I uploaded them, so I have no idea now if they're necessarily in the correct order. And in trying to sort it out I may have lost some. Still; there's some photos)

The Union did badly getting troops on whilst the Confederates quickly deployed some infantry and cavalry. Both sides went for the small hill on the Union right.

More Union troops arrive.

The Confederates form a strong line and  occupy the central hill.

The fight for the small hill begins.

More Union troops form up and march into the attack.

Fighting all along the line sees the loss of some Confederate units.

The surviving Confederates reform, and the Union fall back.

I think I lost some of the photos here. Anyway, the Union went in again and slowly ground down the battered Confederates. The single-hit system I'm using makes for sudden, brutal, combats, and the Confederates got the worst of them.

A lone Confederate infantry unit found itself surrounded on the central hill.

And their attack on the small hill was quickly driven off too.

Reduced to one unit the Confederates, not unsurprisingly, broke.

More terrain and more units made this a much more satisfying game than the previous one. Combat is brutal, but I think in a way it works. It's a system I originally put together for Epic 40K Portable Wargames, and maybe works better in that environment. Still, I might try some more games before I shift back to a more attritional system.