Time for another update.. and time for the little metal men to march again...
- Interestingly this is the first period where Thomas doesn't allow Hand to Hand combat. His view - probably rightly - was that it was so rare as to not need representing, since in most cases the two lines of infantry just closed to musket range and blasted away at each other until the other side ran away. I modified this in my rules to allow it (how can we not have the "Rebel Yell"?? 😁), but only when one side has a significant advantage over the other.
- Thomas also penalises units shooting at units in a town - half casualties. I adopted this as well - but for a scenario where the objective is to capture the town, you know the attackers are going to have a hard time!
...and so we start with the two artillery pieces exchanging counter battery fire - but with the Confederate artillery doing considerably less damage because of the cover. The Confederate infantry advances on the town with the left flank regiment (the 33rd Virginian) moving to cover the advancing Union infantry (14th Indiana) from the hill.
The 33rd continues to pour fire in on the 14th Indiana, but clearly with three more units ready to take their place there is a sense that these are just pinpricks - and, regrettably, they are blocking line of sight for their own artillery.
As the Confederate infantry nears the town, the Union artillery switches targets to the now much closer Louisiana Tigers - the Confederate artillery continues to fire, but is doing little damage because of the cover bonuses. They are within musket range and the two sides start to exchange fire..
On the flank the 'Mexican stand off' continues..
In the town the artillery is loading grape and tearing great swathes out of the Tigers - they're almost done - high water mark of the Confederacy? Worse still, in order to close the gap, they have now blocked line of sight for their artillery who now have no targets..
With the Union infantry and artillery in the town continuing to tear chunks out of the Confederate attackers, and a battle of attrition on the left flank they couldn't hope to win, the Confederate commanders orders the withdrawal..
End of game.. Union victory
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First the butchers bill...
...clearly a bloodbath for the Confederates though the 33rd were holding their end - well until the next regiment turned up! - Well - not sure what else I could have done differently to be honest - you can manoeuvre so as to attack a different edge of the town - or even split your forces so as to attack two sides and split the Union, but they'll still be effectively dealing double casualties and units in towns have a 360' arc of fire anyway - there are no flanks
- In the Thomas rules, you either move or fire, so to advance on the town requires you to give up the right to fire in order to advance - an additional penalty when one side already holds the objective of the game
- I am not sure that the artillery should have been allowed in the town but I played it that it could - specifically the rules say that in this period only infantry and skirmishers can end their turn in a town - but the scenario states that units can set up anywhere within 12" of the baseline so the artillery actually start the game there - they never moved...
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Laters, as the young people are want to say...
I find that under the rules, his scenarios like this one suffer from the move / fire thing, so the attacker loses out by default on some fire. The Town dampens down the casualty rate, stick an elite in the town and all these things combine to make things very difficult for an attacker, who must attack such objectives with a 2:1 or 3:1 unit ratio to have a chance of success and accepting that they will take heavy losses in the process.
ReplyDeleteA morale rule that forces a retreat if failed (taken when receiving a casualty) would at least give a chance of an elite defender being forced out of such places without waiting for the ‘last man standing’ moment to occur. I never really understood why he didn’t bolt a very simple morale check rule onto this engine, he does use the device in his other books.
Norm - I was thinking afterwards that a morale check was a bit of a glaring omission, so your thoughts chime with mine...
DeleteI do like the OHW scenarios, but this one seems pretty hard for the attackers to be honest - the move OR fire is certainly a significant problem if you are the attacker - but in the scale of things represented by his rules, probably fair enough (using the same logic applied to "no melee" in this era?) as weapons were still single shot and took some time and effort to reload.
ReplyDeleteRross - I like them too, but this is the first one where I've thought "other than by a big chunk of luck how can the attacking player win?"
DeleteA interesting read and great to see your ACW troops in action once more
ReplyDeleteTa Matt - good for me to see them too.. I do need to try and play more games, but I think my focus is beginning to shift in terms of favourite scale of game..
DeleteIn the vanilla rules, attacking towns is hard and while you can add in various bits of chrome to make it easier, it is still hard. I usually rule that a town sector can only hold one unit (as in his other rules) or you can get some very silly situations indeed like four units in line stacked up one behind another all 'defending' a town. Since I moved to a grid for OHW, these things are are more straightforward.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure you can't put artillery in a town although you can move through it. With two defenders, one in and one outside the town, the attackers have more chance. Attack with three, gang up on the one outside the town and then the survivors gang up on the last one. If feeling brave, attack with all four and ignore the puny flank attacks from 'McLellan' on the hill.
Cheers Martin - I went with base size, but the vanilla rules do indeed allow all occupants to have a 360' arc of fire, so some tweaking would indeed be needed to stop the situation you describe.. the rule states artillery "cannot end their turn in a town" so I guess an initial deployment in a town is moot.. what it does mean is that they can't move within the town but with that 360' arc they wouldn't need to... kind of interesting that the scenario doesn't specifically say how many units can be in the town - just that they need to be within 12" of that edge... hmmm.. food for thought there, so thanks matey..
DeleteYeah, I don’t think the confederates could have won this one as the scenario stands. They should probably pull back and nuke the site from orbit. Didn’t see that one coming did you Mr Thomas. lol. Lovely board and units again plus a great batrep as usual. Top stuff mate.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks JBM... do love those Tigers.. :o))
DeleteAlways good to see your figures and a nice table once again. Pity about the scenario but it was still quite a good game I think. Plenty of slight tweaks which could be made to make it more even - not sure about the nuke though. Thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteTa Jim - appreciated... tweaks are the essence of wargaming life! :o))
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