American Civil War Battle

Hello There! I recently played an ACW game using some of the new recruits that I have just painted.

Here is an overall view of the table. A river meandered lengthways along the table. There are two crossing points and these are the only means of crossing the river. The Union are advancing from the left with infantry in the vanguard and further reinforcements crossing to the bridge head. The centre of the table if crossed lengthways by a fenced road and on the right the Confederates occupy the high ground.

The objectives are the Union need to gain the high ground while the Confederates are tasked with winning the crossing points.

The rules used are a modified version of 'Rally Around the Flag' and the figures used are 28mm high.

As the opposing forces started so close together the Union forces needed to advance to allow their reinforcements space for them to advance into. The Confederates were able to deploy their artillery on high ground to fire on the advancing enemy while advancing their troops to within striking distance of the enemy.

Confederate force added their cavalry to the weight of forces that tried to stop the Union advancing. To help they also advanced their infantry, deployed on the far left flank, to assist their mounted troops.

The cavalry slowly took losses but continued to feed in their forces.

The Union continually had the problem of finding the space to move their troops into. However as the bridge head slowly expanded, although they took casualties, they kept their enemy back just enough to blunt any Confederate attacks.

Eventually the Confederate batteries had to advance to get a clear field of fire as their troops were to close to the enemy to fire over them. While the artillery did great damage, it was spread between many units so did not oblige any particular unit to give ground. Eventually the Confederate attacks on both flanks and the centre petered out as they were unable to break the Union line.

This was an exciting game as it was unclear as to the final outcome until the very end. While the Union player had the constant problem of finding the space to deploy his troops the Confederate player had to co ordinate his attacks.

We hope to reverse the sides and play this game again in the near future.

Many of my photographs were over exposed due to the bright sun shine on this day and trying to get a larger depth of field by opening the apeture.