Playing Iuka Scenario or how to bungle a perfectly good game

First 'home turf' game of the year took place previous Saturday. And indeed 'home turf' it was in double meaning of the word, since we run yet antoher ACW scenario from Partizan Press 'Hearthland' scenario book and with 'They couldn't hit an elephant' ruleset. The well-trodden path one could easily believe... which makes the events that took place so much more peculiar. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The scenario I picked for our game is one of the most interesting in the 'Heartland' scenario book. It's based on first battle of Iuka and it’s actually something so rare as a true meeting engagement. A smaller, but qualitatively much better Southern force of eight regiments and assorted artillery tries to escape the clutches of a numerically superior, but rather green Northern force divided in two columns. Also, the terrain is something of a challenge in this one with all woods being difficult terrain, thus limiting possible advance avenues, but at the same time creating some opportunities for more 'adventurous' players.

The game objective of Rebels is to secure at least two thirds of the road stretch starting with their entry point and ending with the entry point the Union force meeting them head on. I marked the spot which I decided would be the ‘watershed mark’ with the red X on the topmost picture.

I run the game with my usual modifications to the rules – poker chits activated the leaders instead of cards and there was equal number of chits for both sides in the bag, with dummy chits balancing the number for the side with fewer number of leaders (in this case a single dummy chit was added for the Confederate side). As usual, I started the game with three coffee chits. That number was reduced to two coffee chits once first casualty was suffered by muskeet fire and finally to one coffee chit after first rout. This modification increases the friction slowly as the action heats up. Also, for some unexplainable reason I decided this time around to run the game without any blinds – all units would deploy in march columns from the start. Finally I decided we would run the game for 15 rounds with a possibility of extending the game based on a D6 dice throw before each round above 15. A 6 would end the game on round 15, 6 and 5 on round 16, and so on…

The game

Well, let’s move on to the pictures and see what we can make of them.

The initial eight or nine rounds were spent on sluggish march to contact – a consequence of me deciding not to use blinds and made worse by further mixups regarding the rules. More about that in final analysis of the game. Here we see the situation around round 5. The Northern force that is deployed on the board actually did start the game deployed in column of march on the road, with foremost unit standing close to the red ‘x’. Hå., acting cautiously and waiting for appearance of his second brigade, started deploying his regiments almost immediately into line. L., commanding the Confederates acted a bit more agressively, moving his foremost brigade quickly toward the enemy present on the battlefield. It became obvious rather quickly that he intended to use his second brigade to hold flanking Union column at bay. As things turned out, that brigade was severly delayed by bad chip draws.

More of the same. Hå. throws his skirmishers forward as L. deploys his front brigade into line. On the side road we can see avangarde troops of Union flanking force, a small cavalry regiment. Main force of that column is still to appear on the field.

L. is almost ready to strike, Federal brigade sets up to receive the expected assault.

Meanwhile, Hå’s reinforcements make their way forward, although they’re in no rush.

L.s frontal assault goes in and manages to push back entire Union brigade. Actually it was a pretty even fight, with superior numbers of Union regiments and well-ordered formation almost halting the Rebel advance. But in the end experience carried the day. L. had to repeat his agressive charges three times, final assault being carried out by a single regiment before…

…this happened. The final chage of a single Confederate regiment routed its Union opponents, and quite badly so. This sudden collapse of morale spread like a virus throughout the entire brigade, which promply skedaddled in total panic to the rear. I’ve never seen something like that in a TCHAE game and to be honest, it was quite fascinating to see how rout rules triggered one regimental collapse after another. For precious moment the road to escape was free for the Rebels.

In the meantime, to the rear of this intense action, the terrain made things very difficult for both sides. He.’s regiments moved very slowly toward the Confederate blocking force. When contact was finally made, everyone was hindered by miserable terrain, making effective troop deployment very difficult. The result was a typical, inconclusive engagement where both sides suffered casualties, but noone could achieve the upper hand.

For a short while, things hang in the balance at the focal point of the battle. Funnily, it was the rules that decided that no breakthrough would be achieved by the Rebels – at a critical moment in the game a situation occured where if the first leader to be activated was the commander of the Union brigade that routed, it would trigger mandatory rout move for all broken regiments.  That would remove entire brigade from the battlefield. On the other hand, if Union Commander in Chief were to be activated, the rout movement would not be triggered and he’d have time to restore order among his routed troops. Luckily for Hå., his commander in chief’s chit was the first to be drawn, followed promptly by chit activating commander of his second brigade. This gave him chance to not only recover his routed brigade but also to set up a stabilizing line of blue-clad troops between his broken brigade and the Rebels.

At that time we reached the end of round 15. With everyone somewhat exhausted and realizing that we would not be able to achieve conclusive result in remaining time (up to six extra rounds), we halted the game and called it a draw.

Musings after the battle

The fact is that the outcome of our game was pretty close to the historical events – Confederates pushed back Union line (which in the real battle took up position on the heights where Confederate artillery is set up in the final picture), but then run out of steam. However, the battle was then aborted by approach of the evening and in the darkness, the Union troops apparently panicked and abandoned their position, leaving the field and open escape route to the rebels.

This however is a very small and unimportant side note. The really important thing consists of a disclosure of a very significant aspect of this game - for some unexplainable reason, I managed to completely scramble ‘They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant’ in this game into something that can only be described as Frankensteinian hodgepodge of at least two, possibly three different rulesets. To begin with, I completely re-arranged the turn sequence, allowing troops to shoot when they shouldn’t have, move when they shoudn’t be allowed to and executed assaults at incorrect time. I also incorrectly limited allowed movement of troops by at least two thirds, slowing the events of the game to snail pace. Finally, I’ve gotten into my head that all troops that participate in an assault are automatically disrupted. This, I’m pretty sure was a ‘crossover’ from rules of a board game (‘This Accursed Civil War’ by GMT) which I haven’t played in ages!!! The result of this particular shortwiring of my brain resulted in L.’s charge never gaining the momentum it could have gained. Go figure…

Here’s the funny thing though! Despite me totally bungling my role as game master, we still managed to have a pretty good fun. Once I discovered my multiple fumbles somewhere in the middle of the game, the lads were totally understanding and we simply agreed to continue the game to its conclusion with all my unintentional ammendments ‘in play’. And this brings me to perhaps the only really important conclusion one can draw from this particular game – it’s not the rules applied with military precision, masterly painted miniatures or diorama quality terrain that make for a good game, but the friends you play it with.

That being said, the Iuka scenario has so much potential for an interesting and challenging game that L. and I decided to run it again this Saturday, this time around with correct rules. So stay tuned for Iuka Redux.

Wild, wild West

I once read that the best way to avoid the ‘oh look, shiny”-syndrome is to concentrate at least for a couple of years on a single game system and period. If one is to draw any conclusions from my personal ‘rat race’ with multitude of projects that seemingly never come to a fruition, it does sound like very good advice.

And proof is in the pudding! Couple of weeks ago I had a chance to participate in a Western skirmish game arranged by T., one of my closest wargaming buddies. He has has been working on and off on his Western town for a couple of decades and over last few years it has been his main project. It certainly shows, his setup is exceptionally nice. All buildings and terrain features are built from scratch and more and more of his buildings have ‘playable’ interior.

The game itself? This time around we used a ruleset from Knuckleduster Miniatures (I think) called ‘Desperado’. T. run the game with basic rules and some home rules bolted on. A lot of shooting, a lot of wounds, few fatalities and a lot of banter and laughter – what else would one want from a wargame? In the end all the bad guys were on the ground, filled with copious ammounts of led, but they did manage to give as well as they took before going down in a blaze of glory.

 

Early Saxons, 2nd batch

Well, spring is aproaching and appropriately enough, last weekend I finally finished the second batch of my early Saxon migrants intended for ‘Dux Britaniarum’.

This time around, it’s a mix of miniatures from West Wind Productions and Footsore Miniatures. As can be seen in the pictures, it is quite impossible to distinguish which figure comes from what company, the two ranges mesh together perfectly both bulk- and height-wise. At the same time I have to admit that I do prefered to work with miniatures from Footsore, simply because the sculpts from that company are absolute blast to paint. Sculptor’s attention to small details and choice of poses make painting them a lot of fun. Having said that, I must add that the grand total of sixteen exchangable heads available for West Wind’s Early Saxon range was very appreciated. I strongly recommend getting the extra sets of heads if you’re buying Early Saxons from West Wind Producers.

Next up, the final batch of Saxons; another group of heavies (this time around from Gripping Beast), leaders and archers. With the pace I’ve been holdning over last couple of months I should be done with them some time around Christmas!

Charlie Don’t Surf Auto-Generated Scenario

Yesterday, H. dropped by and that gave me opportunity to have another go at ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’. This time around I’ve decided to give scenario generator a limited try, so a couple of words about how it works is probably suitable. In CDS, each side is provided with a selection of four different types of generic scenarios. When scenario generator is used in full, players are supposed to roll for the scenario type first, next for variables in scenario type assigned for their side and finally for the forces that will participate in the game (usually a company with some support). I’ve decided to simplify things a bit and, lazy as I am, I’ve reused the OOB-s from the previous game. Next I’ve assigned a ‘Sweep’ scenario for U.S. side and ‘Evade’ for VC.

Scenario

‘Sweep’ scenario type requires for the Allied side to make… well… a sweep, from point A to point B. While doing that, the troops are assigned up to three objectives. In this case, U.S. side had a search of the village as its primary goal, recon of the heights as secondary and interogation of locals as triary.

In ‘Evasion’ scenario, Viet Cong had to get out of Dodge. An exit edge is randomly decided before start of the game and the troops were then placed on the opposite side. The main goal is to get out with as many troops as possible. Picture below shows the scenario overview before start of the game.

Random card draw assigned VC side to yours truely. H. was kind enough to take upon himself the task of U.S. commander.

My plan was rather simple. Since I had a bunch of local guys under my command, I didn’t want any extended shootous with the enemy. Thanks to the same fact (control of local force units), I also had a whole bunch of dummy blinds at my disposal. They would come in handy as a massive decoy on one flank, while I sneaked of the board on the other.

H. decided to take care of buisness as quickly as possible and selected the edge closest to the village as his entry point. Two platoons immediately headed of toward the village, obviously with the goal of ransacking the huts and intimidating the villagers into giving up any info on Charlie they may have. One of the hills would be the initial destination of the remaining platoon and MG platoon.

The game

Why abandon the winning concept? Let’s have a look at the pictures?

First phase of the game was a true sleeping pill. H. moved over open terrain and rapidly occupied the village and high ground on the opposite side of the road. I on the other hand had a much worse time getting my troops going. Not only did I manage to roll an amazing amount of ones and twos, but the jungle terrain sapped about half of whatever movement allotment I managed to scrap together.

A somewhat bizzare situation occured during that phase of the game. Since none of my units/blinds could spot H.s blinds and they in turn had no targets to shoot at, H. could not deploy his troops. On the fly, we decided that his blind in the village could search two hootches per round, while the officer was allowed to interrogate one villager per round withouth having to deploy. My slow approach gave H. plenty of time to find the two rice stores hidden in the huts, thereby achieving his main objective. The force sent up the hill climbed it, found nothing and decided to take a rest.

When my dummy blinds finally reached the position occupied by H., another odd situation occured. H. was apparently unwilling to abandon the high ground, while I wasn’t very interested in pushing on and disclosing my bluff. And so, for most of the game, we just sat there, starring at… nothing. In the end, H. broke the impass by pushing his dummy blind into my ‘troop concentration’, revealing a lot of empty space.

On the other side, things finally heated up as my least letargic platoon scrambled up the high ground. U.S. platoon in the village was still in the hoots, but the one supporting it was in the rice paddies, giving me a perfect opportunity to blast them. One of the americans fell, critically wounded, the rest took cover wherever they could. However, a medevac helicopter arrived swiftly, fetching the wounded soldier to field hospital (no, no helicopters are painted yet, thus improvised marker).

A nasty little firefight followed. I brought up my second platoon to the edge of the jungle, hoping on suppressing yanks in the village with their firepower. At the same time I intended on leap-frogging the platoon on the hill toward my exit edge. Ideally, my heavy weapons elements (recoiless gun and an MG) would be able to reach the low hill facing the flank of the village and keep the yanks pinned, allowing the rest to exit.

Plans are one thing, reality (or dice) allow for something very different. Fire from my platoon in the jungle was completely innefectual, while the heavy weapons group continued to take its sweet time getting into position. This forced the platoon on the hill into an exchange of fire with H.s units around the village. My fire had some effect – one american soldier fell dead, while yet another was critically wounded. Another medivac was called and responded as quickly as its predecessor. The rest of americans blasted into the jungle line, killing one of my soldiers and severly surpressing one of my squads.

H.’s MG platoon on the far hill also opened up, taking my rear platoon under fire. This caused me some concern. MG-s are effective at much longer range than normal infantry small arms, so the two ‘Pigs’ on that hill reached comfortably edge of the jungle on the opposite side of the road. Given time they would hurt me. It was time to get back into the jungle, after all my goal was to get out, not to engage the enemy.

It was at that time that H. announced that he would now be pulling back from the village area. After all, his primary action was accomplished and his casualties were a bit alarming. Also, by now we’ve been at it for four hours and were a bit tired. And so, we called it quits. Picture below shows an overview of the situation at the end of the game, as seen from the hill occupied by the Americans.

Musings after the battle

Yesterday’s game was one of those slightly odd occasions where the scenario ‘starved’ the enthusiasm out of the players by couple of mistakes in its design. To begin with, my movement into contact took far too long. As it turns out, this was mainly caused by me forgetting the fact that units on blinds can ignore first –1 in movement penalties in difficult terrain – a valuable lesson for the future. This –1 may not sound as much, but it is applied on every dice, meaning a reduction of movement by 4’’ per turn if a blind uses all its dice for that purpose.

Another thing that I think would make improve this setup immensly would be by moving the village into the center of the table. This would force U.S. side into more agressive movement, speeding up moment of contact. Funnily enough, a very similar scenario can be found in the Too Fat Lardies scenario book for ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ – there, the village is placed smack in the middle of the table. I think I now know why that is.

And what about ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ itself? Well, I still haven’t used rules for artillery, helicopters, air support and a whole bunch of other stuff, but in general terms it is what it is – ‘I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum’ with Vietnam flavour. If you like IABSM, you’ll like CDS. With two ‘Tea Break’ cards, chaos of the card driven game engine is managable and I really do like the fact that Big Men have action points that can be used to activate either platoons or squads.

However, the Blinds mechanism in ‘out of the box’ format still seems to suffer from same issue that I’ve first observed in ‘They Couldn’t Hit an Elephant’. If deployment of troops is restricted to the two situations specified in the rules, which is either when unit wishes to fire or is spotted by enemy, then situations such as this which occured at the start of our game are bound to happen! Naturally, most of them can be resolved by application of common sense and couple of ad hoc rules. At the same time, when they occur, they will at the very least put extra strain on game master or players. Furthermore, as we all know, supply of common sense can sometimes run out in heat of battle. Therefore I think that in the future games I will re-instate the rule I’ve already used in TCHAE games and allow players to voluntarily deploy their own troops from blinds at the end of each turn.

Review of “Hitler’s great panzer Heist” by Anthony Tucker-Jones

“Hitler’s great panzer heist” attempts to provide an insight in Nazi Germany’s use of foreign armored vehicles which were acquired either through occupation of countries which were their original owners or captured in combat. Fate of armored vehicles of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, France and the vast loot of British equipment abandoned during evacuation at Dunkirk is described in first couple of chapters. Next, the author moves on to Africa, Eastern Front and use of Western Allied equipment, mainly during the Ardennes offensive.

Somewhat surprisingly, intermingled with narrative of Germany’s direct use of its opponents’ equipment are chapters dedicated to armor of its allies and satellites – Italy, Romania, Finland, Hungary and Vichy France. Whether or not this equipment should be counted as ‘Hitler’s heist’ is questionable, but they provide filler material and several of those amusing anecdotes that students of military history are so delighted over.

Last couple of chapters provides an overall perspective on industrial aspects of war and the impact of Nazi Germany’s ability to acquire vast amounts of foreign war materials and perhaps even more importantly foreign manufacturing complexes, on its ability to conduct war.

Personally I am far from being impressed by this book. Author diverts consistently from the supposed topic of the book into side-stories and generic retelling of Germany’s fortunes during the war which in all probability are already memorized by most readers of this rather specialized book. In fact, I would go as far as saying that perhaps half of this book’s 153 pages (remainder being appendixes, comments and references) is something of a filler only mariginally having anything to do with supposed subject matter.

Perhaps even worse, the writing style of the author leaves in my opinion a lot to be wished for. Narrative of individual chapters and quite often even in single paragraph can switch not only between different nations and theatres of war, but also chronological order of events, causing temporary confusion and providing an overall choppy reading experience.

Finally, I can’t help but question the value of this book as historical work of reference. An analysis of reference section discloses that material used for this book consists of same old ‘usual suspects’ used in English books about World War II 'since times immemorial'. Memoirs of Guderian, Speer, Mellenthin, von Mainstein and couple of other German officers, written in fifties and sixties and which since then have managed to be translated into English seem to provide backbone of author's German perspective. They’re supported by a selection of English reference works written on the subject between sixties and nineties. Thus, the reader should not expect to find in this book much new material or insights. He may however count on finding couple of old tired myths which orginated from above-mentioned 'primary' sources and apparently were still not debunked in Great Britain in 2007. Ghasp...

Overall, I feel mostly disappointed and a little bit cheated by this book, content of which falls far short from expectations raised by its impressive title. The topic is quite fascinating and deserves a much better effort than what’s provided in this volume.

But what about wargamer’s perspective, is this book of any use in our hobby? I’d say mariginally. On one hand it will certainly provide a lot of ideas for ‘odd’ bits and pieces of material for Axis side. T34 vs. T34, anyone? But if you want detailed information for scenario design, you’ll have to look for other sources because of the ‘general overview’ character of this book.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program…

Real life hadn’t given me much allowance for wargaming activities over last month or so, but somehow I did manage to crank out another model kit. And so, as it is tradition at this blog, I’m taking the opportunity to side-step into the realm of our sister hobby and bore you with pictures om my latest build.

This time around it’s another one of those delightful little kits from Airfix – a Messerschmitt Bf 109E-7/Trop, in its ‘proper’ African livery. I’m quite spiffed with this kit, especially since it’s the first time I worked on a freehand mottled camo with an airbrush and things worked out rather well. Sure, the spots should have been smaller, but I invoke artistic freedom to excuse this slight oversight!

Once more into the breach… this time with Black Powder

Yesterday L. struggled his way to my place through the first snow storm of the winter. As a reward, he was given opportunity to repeat his achievement of taking Battery Robinett, this time around with ‘Black Powder’ rules. As it turned out, this game was quite different from the previous one and the outcome gave both of us something to think about.

The scenario and setup

For details about the scenarion, have a look at my after action report of our first attempt at ‘Battery Robinett’ scenario, played with ‘They Couldn’t Hit an Elephant’. In brief, it’s an assault/defence scenario, with Union side hunkering down in rather well fortified position, while Confederates try to charge the short distance from a wood’s edge toward a big siege gun that they attempt to capture.

Worried about the fact that Black Powder allows for quite rapid movement, I modified the terrain setup slightly and added another 15 centimeters between Confederate jumpoff point and Union line. Otherwise there were no changes whatsoever – two confederate, rather experienced, brigades were to charge pretty green Federal force of similar strength, but enjoying powerful artillery support and an entrenched position.

The game

The game was yet another short and sweet affair, with the whole thing being decided in three turns and requiring less than two hours to complete! And that time includes at least half an hour of rules discussions and clarifications!

Yet again, let’s have a look at pictures and supporting narrative.

As the purpose of the game was to compare and contrast Black Powder with TCHAE, L. declared that he would use same plan as in previous game – concentrated assault at the center of Union line with both brigades formed in two regiment wide formations. One slight deviation consisted of his placing the skirmishers on his extreme left flank; in first game, T. used them to screen the front of his brigade.

Following L.s suit, I distributed my forces in similar fashion as in previous engagement.

 

In first round the exact thing that I feared did take place – L. rolled extremly well on initiative for his left brigade, allowing him to move two of its regiments and skirmishers all the way toward abattis in front of Federal entrenchments. This in itself was also the biggest ‘rule failure’ of the game, as he shouldn’t have been allowed to that, since all units moving on brigade order need to end within 6’’ (or cm in our game) from each other and the rearmost brigade couldn’t advance as far as the units in front of it.

At that time however we were blissfully unaware of our blunder and I immediately had reason to fear that the game would end in rapid collapse of Union line similar to that which I experienced in TCHAE game.

L.s right brigade managed to pull off a ‘two orders’ roll for the other brigade commander, allowing it to briskly cover one third of the distance to Union entrenchments.

Confederate fire that followed was pretty ineffective, which was hardly surprising considering strength of the Union position.

Then it was my turn. In pure desperation, I sent my CinC to the right, hoping to quickly activate my two regiments that guarded that flank. The fact that both of them were low on ammo (“minus one dice to shoot with” house rule) wasn’t very encouraging, but desperate times and all that…

The effects of my fire during first phase were much more telling than L.’s, with both artillery and infantry scoring several hits on L.s lead regiments. Two of them were also disrupted, which stopped them from moving in next round and buying me some additional time before inevitable close combat.

 

Second round started with a ‘lucky’ two order activation roll for L.s brigade on the left. This allowed him to charge my lone regiment on that flank and just barely managing in throwing it back. Yet again, a flashback of previous game appeared in front of my eyes. This time around though, the regiment that was forced to retreat was still very much in the game.

On the right, L.s luck run out and his roll for brigade order failed. This effectively meant that his advance on that side stalled in the middle of nowhere, with dire consequences.

My second round was a mixed affair. My CinC failed with his first activation roll, leaving the regiments on my right flank in limbo. However, the results of my shooting phase were fearsome – the regiment that managed to charge beyond Union entrenchments suffered enough hits to force it to take a morale check. It stood its ground, but was now shaken. The front regiments of L.s right brigade took a fearful pounding, mainly from the entrenched siege guns, with yet another regiment becoming shaken.

 

In final round of the game, L. found himself under a lot of pressure. His right side brigade was in a lot of trouble. One regiment was shaken, the other was one hit from reaching that state. This was very significant for reasons described below and forced L.’s hand. He really only had one option here - try for brigade order and hope for two orders. This would allow him to bring forward the two rear regiments and mask their stricken comrades from even more fire. He managed to roll an activation with single order, which wasn’t enough to pull of that manouver and left his damaged regiments exposed to further punishment.

On the left, things went even worse for him – he failed on his first activation roll, leaving his regiments in a very exposed position…

…a fact of which I took full advantage of. My CinC finally managed to finally get his ‘s**t’ together and led the entire force on my right flank into firing position. Two artillery batteries I pulled from my left flank toward the center of my line also reached their newpositions, but were yet not able to deploy. The rest of my units just waited for orders to fire.

Once the order came, the Union fire was as effective as in round two. Multiple hits were scored on front regiments of L.’s right brigade. One of those units didn’t make its subsequent morale check and was destroyed. The other pulled through, but was shaken.

L’s other brigade suffered similar fate, only difference being that both of the regiments that suffered casualties managed to survive their subsequent morale checks. Both of them were however ‘shaken’ as we started fourth round of the game.

The game ends

‘Black Powder’ has this neat rule about brigade morale which says that once half or more of brigade’s units are either destroyed, retreated from the table or are in ‘shaken’ state at the start of controling player’s turn, that brigade has to break off the engagement. Furthermore, if half or more brigades reach that state, the entire army has to retire, in effect giving up the fight. Because of this rule, L. had to accept complete defeat at the start of round four - both of his brigades were at that time broken and needed to pull back.

Musings after the battle

Our little game clearly illustrated couple of things. First of all, ‘Black Powder’ and ‘They Couldn’t Hit an Elephant’ are two very different animals! Perhaps the most important difference between those two rulesets consists of fragility of individual units in ‘Black Powder’. Two hits in ‘TCHAE’ are, at least initially, nothing to think twice about. In ‘BP’ such event is a reason for very serious concern and could require immediate damage control. I’d go as af as saying that the thought process in a player used to ‘TCHEA’ robustness of even inexperienced units requires a major adjustment if he’s to have any success in a ‘BP’ game!

This game also confirmed another of the conclusions I presented here after the first ‘BP’ game L. and I played about a year ago – ‘BP’ is a very fast ruleset when compared to ‘TCHAE’. Not only are the units much more fragile, but movement distances are (potentially) much longer. This makes for very eventful games and quick decisions achieved in reasonable playing time. This is of course a good thing, but it also has a flip side – small games, with two or three brigades will with all probability end rather quickly, unless players really take time to nurse damaged units back to reasonable health state.

Finally, I can’t help but notice that nothing in our little engagement made me really feel we played an ACW battle. Don’t take me wrong, it was a fun and entertaining game, but it did feel like a generic game. Say what you want about TCHAE, but when you play a game with that ruleset, there are certain aspects in it that make you understand the difficulties and intricacies of the real conflict a tiny bit better. So far I have been unable to find that aspect in ‘BP’ and I can’t help but miss it a little allready.

Of course, there is a flipside also to this ‘coin’ – ‘period chrome’ has a natural appeal for a historical wargamer, but it comes at a cost of time. Many of my TCHAE after action reports include the phrase ‘…and then so and so left for home’, more often than not long before the game was decided. I suspect that ‘Black Powder’ games won’t suffer this problem and that has its own appeal.

To each his own, horses for courses, your mileage may vary…. One thing is for sure, this certainly wasn’t my last Black Powder game!