Portable ACW

One of the primary audiences for the blog is an individual we will call Future Me. That is, some of the posts are written not just because I think you might like them, but also to remind a future version of me about how I was playing certain games a few years ago before I lost interest and moved onto another project.

Unfortunately I sometimes leave Future Me incomplete information, which means I'm left racking my brains trying to work out what Past Me was talking about sometimes.

One example is some experimentation I was doing with using the Portable Wargame to play ACW games back at the tail-end of 2018. I came up with the idea of using the Shooting Only combat resolution from OHW, but applying it to the Portable Wargame instead, and came up with these ideas. But I didn't really develop them further and, looking back, neither did I make a note of my assumptions for any other part of the game. "But it's the Portable Wargame; that's pretty standard isn't it?" I hear you cry. Well, no. If you've looked at my ECW rules you'll see that my view of the the Portable Wargame works is sometimes a little different to how most people seem to play it. And, to be fair, it's designed as a toolkit anyway - we're supposed to tinker with it.

Anyway, all this rambling bollocks is just to say that I decided to have another go with the ACW setup, and couldn't remember how I played most of it. So I used the movement and activation system I'm currently using for ECW games, and the firing system in the post above. I hope this doesn't confuse Future Me too much.

I ran the venerable Take The High Ground scenario from One Hour Wargames, and used six units per side. The Union were attacking with three infantry, two artillery and a cavalry, whilst the defending Confederates had four infantry, one artillery and a cavalry.

I ran it to a 15 turn time-limit, but also tracked break-points too, so a side could break and lose before the time ran out. Holding the hill gave a bonus on the break-test.

Here's the initial Confederate defenders - one infantry and some artillery.

The initiative dice system means that not all of a side's units necessarily enter on their turn of arrival. The first Union troops to arrive were their artillery and their cavalry. The cavalry headed along the road to delay the Confederate reinforcements, whilst the artillery prepared to bombard the hill.

In fact the Confederate guns scored a hit on the Union ones as they unlimbered. In order to remove the hit the unit simply has to be activated, though.

More Union troops arrive. The Confederates rolled badly for activations and didn't get ay of their reinforcements on when they first became available.

With no Confederate reinforcements in the offing, the Union advance forces switched their attention to the hill, but failed to drive off the artillery there. Bombardment from the Union guns did force the Confederate infantry to fall back, though.

And now the Confederate reinforcements arrived.

A Union assault saw the Confederate infantry on the hill routed.

And the Union flanked the advancing Confederate cavalry too, but to little effect.

The Union prepared another assault on the hill.

 A frontal assault failed to shift the guns ...

... but with support they were finally eliminated. The Union now held the hill.

With greater numbers the Confederate reinforcements were putting the Union troops along the road under a fair bit of pressure. The Union cavalry was routed.

Union infantry consolidated their position on the hill.

On the Union right more of their infantry attempted to delay the Confederate troops there, whilst to the north of the hill other Confederates prepared their attack.

At some stage both Union artillery units had been lost; I can't remember how that happened.

The Union infantry on the right finally broke, leaving the flank of the hill exposed. The Union were now also at their break-point.

A Confederate attack went in but was repulsed.

The Confederates massed again. They were also close to their breakpoint.

But with only two turns left, the Union army broke, despite holding the objective.

I did make the mistake of allowing units to fire regardless of how far they'd moved, and need to restrict it to a one square move only. This would apply even for the firing that is nominally close assault, which means that if you move up too quickly then you probably have to survive a round of fire from the enemy; this doesn't seem unreasonable.

Anyway, it was an interesting exercise, and the activation system worked OK. I notice, in fact, that I tried it for ACW games about eighteen months ago, so it's good to see that I agree with Past Me.

52 Games - Game 54