Monday, July 4, 2011

1st Battle report - American Civil War

Mike and I started an American Civil War Campaign at the October Wargames Club in Birmingham recently. The battles are being fought using Fire and Fury (Brigade) and 1:72 plastics. I was able to pick up a fair number of 'okay' painted figures off Ebay to complement my own collection, and to make up all the stands that we need for the games. (Mine are the ones with the bases painted!)

We both started the campaign with 40 stands of infantry in 4 brigades, which were split into 2 divisions.

The first battle was a basic attack and defend game, diced for randomly from a list of options, with the objectives being on the hill line. The Confederates were the defenders, and set up as below:


The hill in the centre was classed as impassable terrain. The Brigade in the foreground was drawn up in Supported line, defending one objective point (another brigade is off shot) and the the other division defended the other objective, one brigade in front the other.

The union troops came on during the first turn. My first division deployed parallel to the sunken road in the centre, and my 2nd division deployed behind the hill and woods on the right.


The first couple of turns saw my Union troops moving up into position, with my artillery deploying on the 2 hills opposite the Confederate lines.




After a cuple of turns, and good rolls on the maneuver table, my troops on the left charged in to attempt to drive the Rebs off the hill:


Unfortunately, the attack stalled and I pulled by boys back from the action, amazingly with no casualties on either side!! For pretty much the rest of the battle, nothing happened on this flank other than a firefight. This worked out well for me, as I only lost one stand of troops to I think 4 or 5 Confederate ones! Which was nice as neither of my brigades became worn or spent! :-)


Meanwhile, on the right hand side of the battle, my troops were slowly moving towards the hills (due to some really poor maneuver rolls). However, this gave my artillery a chance to pour on some decent fire into the Confederate ranks, eventually driving them off the hill due to a very bad maneuver roll on the part of Mike!


Finally, the boys in blue were ready to charge into the attack, and so they did!!! :-D They drove off the remaining artillery and slammed into the defenders, forcing them back.

Unfortunately for Mike, his die rolls on the maneuver table almost sent one of his brigades back to the South, but they stopped just on the edge of the battlefield! (Dammit) lol

In the dying light of day (the last couple of turns) Mike bravely sent his boys in to contest the objective, but to no avail.


It was a great game. The Union won a fair victory, not having any spent or worn units on the field at the end of the game (IIRC), and although the left wing of the Confederates were demolished, Mike did still hold the other objective on his right



Roll on the 2nd battle!

3 comments:

  1. Looks you had a nice time!

    Why not posting some close ups of these figures?

    Greetings
    Peter

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks chaps.

    I'll hopefully have some close ups over the next few days... :-)

    ReplyDelete