The American Civil War in Brixham 2022
Union vs The Rebs
Having remembered the photos of the Cold War Commander game played last autumn in Brixham, I also realised we played a large ACW game, using the classic (and very simple) Fire & Fury rules
Big F&F games had been a bit of a thing for us a few years ago, so there was plenty of ambition to do another once we realised we had a suitable venue, as well as plenty of figures to go around too
With that in mind we eventually settled on a slightly abridged version of Chancellorsville - and when I say abridged, of course I mean all the troops squished onto a smaller than necessary table
The battle, as it was, involved the Confederates holding the high ground along the edge of the conurbation of Chancellorsville, with the Union forces coming out to meet them and give battle.
As such, there were a lot of troops, but in retrospect to a wargamers eye not a great deal of sense in either side actually attacking
We'd set up the battle along the length of a 9' table, which was about 4' wide. The road ran along the front of the Union positions by the river edge, with the town itself top right
The Union brigades outside the twon had earthworks - or in our case, fences - to sit behind
This sort of encouraged an artillery duel to take place as both sides would look for some reason to attack at some point along the line
Many of the Union troops were garrisoned in the town itself, and filtered out of it piecemeal. The scenario we used had units marching down actual on-table streets, but we abstracted that bit and just had them emerging from the conurbation unit by unit. In front of the town was a clearly almost utterly indefensible Rebel position behind yet more earthworks
The forward position was some way ahead of the Rebel line near the town, and the two armies got further apart as the terrain rolled away from the conurbation
The dark blue mass of Union troopers was a foreboding sight for the rebels, who were themselves hunkered down on the wooded hillsides
The Union commander in Chancellorsville itself had the bit between his teeth that morning, and his men boiled out of the town in incredible numbers, much to the dismay of the Confederate vanguard. The grey-clad troops on the hill overlooking the scene prayed for their brothers
The Union army was almost immediately into action, assaulting the dug-in Confederate forward position in some numbers.
The outnumbered screening troops had little chance against such odds, and suddenly their compatriots on the hill behind them started to wonder if the terrain setup had accidentally left them too close to the initial combat !
The Union threw all its forces into the attack, and, desparate to hold the forward position (as I think it was an objective in the scenario) the Rebels also came down from the hills, reinforcing what already looked like a dicey proposition in this first engagement of the battle
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Undaunted, the Union army carries the position and steams forward up the hill into the Rebel-held high ground
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But Rebel reinforcements are on their way
The woods are now thick with serried ranks of shoeless, butternut-clad Southerners
Away from the town the Confederate forces are now so numerous they decide to take the initiative and move out of cover towards the Union positions
The Union may be winning near Chancellorsville, but elsewhere the Rebel positions are too strong to attack
The entire woodland has been turned into a Rebel Fortress
With the Union assault through the Rebel vanguard position starting to run out of steam as the lead units become increasingly worn, the Rebels move forward to try and cut off and outflank the Union troopers by the ends of the town
But the Union advance is relentless, as more and more men flood forward out of their barracks
In an unequal fight, the Union carry not only the forward Rebel position, but blast on through to start to be in position to turn the whole Rebel line
At this point we decided to retire to the pub for the evening, having done that classic thing of spending ages setting up the game, and then playing enough of it to realise that we would need at least another whole day to get anywhere near a conclusion, and most likely the two sides would dig in and any further big picture manoeuver would be unfeasible anyway
That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?
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