Henry Hill - turns 1–3

Before we could start playing we had first to dice for leader grades and unit experience levels for each of the infantry regiments present. The rules allow for 4 leader grades from ‘Poor’ through to ‘Bold’ and 4 experience levels from ‘Green’ to ‘Crack’. As this battle was supposed to be part of 1st Bull Run the die rolls were weighted towards the lower end of the experience levels and slightly favoured the Rebels (as a way of reflecting the ‘Jackson effect’). I was fortunate enough to end up with only 1 ‘Poor’ leader but 3 out of my 7 regiments were rated as ‘Green’.

"There stands Jackson - like a 15mm stone wall!" General Jackson with the 2nd Virginia at Henry House.

 Sherman's H.Q. behind Buck Hill.

We started the game with our front lines fully deployed and within artillery range of each other so there was little scope for any clever manoeuvring. I had no choice but to push Sherman’s brigade forward as quickly as possible to try and eject the Confederates from Henry Hill before their reinforcements could arrive. Franklin meanwhile was ordered forward in field column on my extreme right to come up behind the 79th New York.

The 1st US artillery move forward past the Stone House on the Sudley-Manassas Road. I first painted this Hovels model in a lovely grey and then discovered it should be a sandstone colour - grrrr!

 Franklin's brigade looks quite impressive but the 11th Mass (centre) have proved to be pretty unreliable.

All movement relies on Command Point usage and the number of CP’s allocated to each unit varies every turn on a die roll modified by the unit leader rating. This inevitably meant that some of my regiments moved faster than others and any attempt to keep the lines dressed soon had to be abandoned. This was especially true of Franklin’s command where the 11th Massachusetts lagged behind the rest of the brigade having failed to move at all on turn 1.

Sherman's brigade moves forward - more or less keeping in line.

Imboden's battery on Henry Hill engaging in some effective counter-battery fire against the 3rd US artillery. In the distance the skirmishers of both sides are hotly engaged.

 The 3rd US artillery on Buck Hill - the casualty figures denotes that the battery is disordered.

To add to my problems my flanking regiments soon had to cross Young’s Branch and both became disordered as they waded through the stream. This made movement even slower as disordered units must expend extra CP’s to manoeuvre. However, the Rebels were having a few problems too – not with movement but with some jittery trigger fingers in the ranks of the 4th Virginia who fired off 3 volleys whilst well out of range!

The 79th New York get their feet wet in Young's Branch.

Somehow, following a round of artillery fire, the 2nd Virginia managed to raise their morale level to 'Defiant' - perhaps it was the influence of the great man himself?

Early (living up to his name) emerges from the woods onto Bald Hill.

On turn 3 Dave was allowed to test to see if Early’s brigade had arrived. He needed a 5 or 6 to bring them on so I was hopeful he wouldn’t manage it - no such luck (he rolled a 5). With Early’s men now in position on Bald Hill I think we will be in for an interesting session next time that we play!

The situation at the end of turn 3 (1.30 pm) - click the image to zoom in.

The fight for Henry Hill

We’ve decided to abandon our 15mm ACW play-test and move straight on to a proper game. This is partly because I had to clear the table for a Napoleonic game a few weeks ago but also because we felt that the rules are good enough to use in a full blown scenario. Hopefully any bugs in our rule set Muskets & Men can be ironed out in play.

The scenario is loosely based on the action centred around Henry Hill at the battle of Bull Run during the afternoon of July 21, 1861. The game starts at 1.00pm and continues for 12 turns until 3.00pm. If the Union have not won by the end of turn 12 the game ends in a Confederate victory. The Confederate brigades of Evans, Bartow and Bee have been forced to quit Matthews hill and have fallen back in disarray to the woods behind Henry Hill (these troops are represented in the game by the 1st Louisiana only, the other regiments are assumed to be out of action and reorganising). Meanwhile Jackson’s fresh brigade has arrived on the scene and his men have just deployed along the crest of Henry Hill. Believing that the battle is as good as won, the Union troops have paused momentarily in front of the Warrenton Turnpike to reorganise their line. Sherman’s brigade has just taken up position in the front line supported by Franklin’s fresh brigade behind him near the Stone House.

 Initial deployment of the forces - click the image to zoom in.

At the start of turn 3 (and each turn thereafter) the Confederate player rolls 1 D6 to see if Early’s brigade has arrived. His brigade arrives at the table edge behind Bald Hill in battle column.

Turn 3 – arrive on a 5 or 6
Turn 4 – arrive on a 4,5 or 6
Turn 5 – arrives on a 2,3,4,5 or 6
Turn 6 – automatic arrival

In addition to the standard VP’s used in the rules there are the following VP’s for terrain objectives held:

Bald Hill – 5 VP’s to Union
Henry House – 2 VP’s to Union
Henry Hill – 2 VP’s to Union
Robinson House – 2 VP’s to Confederates
Buck Hill – 3 VP’s to Confederates
Stone House – 4 VP’s to Confederates

The initial deployments of the forces engaged are as per the map. I will be playing Sherman and Dave will be Jackson, we hope to start the game next week!

Tigers

Our new rules require a minimum of eight troop stands per unit so I have just painted up an extra stand of Louisiana Tigers to bring them up to strength. Trying to blend in new figures with others painted over 15 years ago (and with completely different paints) was a bit problematic so no prizes for guessing where the new boys are. The figures are a mixture of Frei Korps, Essex and AB.

Major Rob Wheat’s Louisiana Tigers were a hard fighting unit originally drawn from “the sweepings of the New Orleans waterfront”. The Tigers are one of those must have units for an ACW wargame army and introduce a bit of colour into the sea of rebel grey and butternut. Painting the stripes on the trousers was a bit of a fiddle but I stopped short of adding the ‘Tigers win or die!’ motto around their stocking caps!

On the skirmish line

Just to prove that Dave's not the only one busy sprucing up the armies at the moment here's a shot of the lastest additions to our 15mm ACW forces.

Rebs and Yanks on the skirmish line - 15mm Old Glory figures. The fence was made by Dave from matchsticks over 30 years ago and amazingly is still in one piece!

The 15mm armies were originally created for use with the Fire & Fury rule system which doesn't allow for skirmishers (one of the reasons we're not keen on them) so during the lull in combat I have added these individually based figures. The boys are busy popping away at each other softening things up ready for the full battle to resume.

Base Instincts

If anyone has been missing the epic 6mm ACW games that have featured regularly on this blog, allow me to deliver a quick apology. Flocking all the bases of both armies (400 bases ? 500 ? God knows ...), plus basing a couple of new divisions from scratch doesn't seem like quite such a brilliant idea in hindsight. I have to admit that Ian did raise an eyebrow when I said, " Yeah, no trouble ... I'll do that ..."  My own eyebrows will never raise again, being thickly matted with glue and flock and permanently arranged to give me a hunted, despairing expression.

In my defence I can only say that these figures turned out to be a bit er, .... small and fiddly to work with.  Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, but that could be a while yet.

ACW 15mm Play-test

Back in the 80s Dave and I built up two sizeable 15mm ACW armies that saw action in many enjoyable battles and campaigns. Eventually we sold these off and replaced them with the 1/300th figures that feature on this blog because we felt this was the only scale suitable for creating the army level games we wanted to play.

Some very pretty Union Zouaves advancing towards the Rebs - actually they haven't advanced very far yet due to a poor supply of Command Points.

 The 24th New York seem to have found their way into a hornets nest of Confederate rifled-muskets.

However, the appeal of 15mm figures has never really gone away and over the last 10 years or so I have been gradually collecting some new 15mm forces with the idea of playing Fire & Fury games. I now have a reasonable number of infantry stands but I must admit that despite owning the rule book for over 20 years I have only ever played one game of F&F (and Dave has never played one at all). The thought of trying to absorb a set of commercial rules at our time of life has put us both off F&F so instead we did the only sensible thing and wrote our own!

Dave has moved his artillery to a postion where it can enfilade the Union line - sneaky!

The Union artillery has been forced to split its fire in order to respond to the Rebel threat.

I say ‘we’ but actually the new rules have been written by Dave and he has drawn on our AWI rules as well as our existing 1/300 ACW rules for inspiration. So this week we had our first rule play-test of Muskets & Men using three units of infantry a side together with a battery of guns.

 Another of my NY regiments is slowly working its way around the Confederate left flank.

It’s so far so good and the rule mechanics seemed pitched just right for a tactical game of up to a brigade per side which is what we wanted. The rules use our AWI system of breaking down each turn into phases and using command points to allow unit actions e.g. fire, load, fix bayonets, deploy etc. Moves are simultaneous (Dave and I have never favoured I-go-you-go rule mechanics) so written orders are required but the paperwork is simple and the result is worth the effort.

 The situation in the centre of the battlefield at the end of turn 3.

We intend to have a further play-test session and then move on to a proper scenario which will appear here in due course.

For those of you waiting to see another 1/300th scale ACW game – please be patient as Dave is currently flocking approximately 400 troop stands during a major refit of the armies!

Operation Newmarket - Conclusion

We had our final playing session of Operation Newmarket last week and wound up the game after another couple of turns. In the end we decided it was a marginal victory for the Germans although I still felt there was a chance that Dave could have won if we had played on. This is how it went:

 German tanks blocking the British line of advance through St Arnault.

Dave continued to throw his tanks forward into the heart of St Arnault but he had only Cromwells and lightly armoured Stuarts to pit against my King Tiger and its supporting Panzer IV’s. The British Churchill tanks were lumbering along in the rear, too far behind to make any impact on the action. Eventually, although they took out a Stug III and my anti-tank gun, Dave’s tanks failed to make any headway

British tanks fire their 'pea-shooters' against the side of my King Tiger - to no avail.

 A German Stug burns - knocked out by a Stuart tank!

Meanwhile at Orion Bridge the British paratroopers were having more success. A PIAT team crept up on the pillbox and a lucky shot flew through one of the gun slits eliminating the occupants. A further shot knocked out the German armoured car on the bridge itself leaving the east end of the structure in Allied hands.

 The para's take out my pillbox at the bridge.

Dave’s main column was making good progress along the rue St Arnault and the Commandos had by now taken the pillbox on Hill 136. It’s possible that this force still had enough clout to force its way through to one of the town centre VP locations. However at the end of play the Germans were still firmly in control of the town.

 Dave's coulmn nearing the out-skirts of the town - too late!

This game had always been intended as an exercise to try out the rules and the forces proved to be unbalanced which meant that Dave had a difficult task on his hands. The rules were originally devised by me for skirmish level games and although the armour rules work well, those for the infantry are just a bit too fiddly for a game of this size. We also felt that if the armies are to get an outing again the figures will have to be rebased in multiples – our eyes just aren’t up to the job of working out what weapons each carries!

The 1/300th armies are still under-going their refit so next we may try a stab at a 15mm ACW game.