Chickamauga September 1863

 Time to try out my minor revisions to my version of Neil Thomas's ACW rules with the Zoom gang. This time we are off to Tennessee in 1863. After being forced out of Chattanooga, Braggs Army of Tennessee retreated across the mountains towards Atlanta.  Rosencrans pursued with the Army of the Cumberland, but became dispersed crossing the mountain passes. Bragg laid a trap and concentrated his forces to defeat Rosencrans in detail. The Union rushed to concentrate their forces along the Chickamauga Creek as Bragg struck.

This scenario is based on the one in the excellent Volley and Bayonet ACW scenario book. I've played it solo before but never with actual players.

Battlefield from the south, you can see the Chickamauga meandering through the woods. The woods are dense but the creek is fordable. There is a mill (Gordons Mill) in the southwest, which is presumably why the woodland peters out down there.

The CSA are coming on from the east and need to capture all the roads leading west and north as well as exhaust the Union army. The game lasts two days, six turns per day with an overnight segment.

Here is the table with the troops deployed. This is a BIG battle, and is using almost my entire collection of ACW infantry. The Union only start with four infantry divisions deployed and a couple of cavalry brigades, while most of Braggs army is already approaching the creek like a coiled spring.

Here is Braggs centre and right. I've colour coded the bases with dots for each corps and also marked the veteran and green units. Bragg didn't seem to believe in Corps integrity as the individual divisions are scattered all over the place. These are Hoods division (Longstreets Corps), Cheatham (Polks Corps), Forest and Walker. Bragg himself is just visible in the middle of his units.

John B is Bragg and also commands Hills and Walkers Corps. Tim has Polk and Buckners Corps while Jim has Longstreet and Forests Corps. Simon is joining on Wednesday and will take over Walker and Forest.

Cleburnes division (Hill) will enter during the day, while the other two arrive on the night of the 19th. Breckenridge (Hill) and Johnson (Longstreet).

Braggs left, heading towards the mill and the road exit at I1. This is Buckners Corps (Stewart and Preston) plus Hindman from Polks Corps. There are bridges and fords all over place. There are also quite a few hills, which can see over the woods, to a certain extent anyway.

Rosencrans left. You can just see Mintys cavalry brigade in the far distance, and on the nearby wooded ridge are 1 and 3 Division from XXIV Corps (Thomas). John A is Bragg and commands the overall Army and the cavalry. Micheal commands XIV Corps and XX Corps with Ian taking XX Corps on Wednesday.

Down at the mill we have Wilders mounted infantry brigade armed with Spencer repeaters! There are also 2 and 3 Div from XXI Corps (Crittenden). These are commanded by John for now with Mark taking over on Wednesday.

Marching to the rescue is this lot. No less than five more divisions. 2 and 4 Div from XIV Corps, 2 and 3 Div from XX Corps (McCook) and finally 1 Div from the Reserve Corps (Granger). Most of this lot march on along the southern road, but Granger will enter on the 20th in the north. Rosencrans is just visible on the end of the ridge at the top of the screen. From here he can see most of his army which will help with C3. 

Union traffic management could be interesting, but the horrible terrain in the north will delay the CSA.

The Union breakpoint is a mere 11 bases, rising to 21 as the various reinforcements turn up. The much bigger CSA Army starts with a BP of 19, rising to 25 as their reinforcements arrive. Bragg needs to strike hard and fast while he has the advantage. 

Right, to battle....

The action opened with Buckner and Polk (Tim) trying to sort themselves out a bit. The CSA pushed forward in the south, covered by their artillery on the hill as Polks stray division marched southeast to join them.  Stewart got as far as the hill behind the stream while Hindman took position in the treeline further south.

Hoods Texans moved aggressively west down the main road to keep Thomas's Corps busy, while Forest very appropriately moved into the middle of the woods. Braggs plan was to hit hard in the south, pin the centre and largely ignore the north until reinforcements arrived.  

Sadly this came unstuck when Stewart came under a storm of very accurate (lucky) fire which managed to knock a base off in one salvo, and they retired back behind the hill to recover. Rosencrans took the opportunity to push Wilders cavalry up onto the hill,  while Palmer marched up the road to hold the cavalry's vacated position.

Thomas' Corps in the north just took Hood under fire, but at long range and against cover, it was largely ineffective. The CSA responded with fire and managed to knock a few hits off various exposed Union units and Stewart rallied. Sadly Forest managed to dither, presumably lost in the forest.

In the northeast, Walkers reserve division marched north, presumably to clear away the Union cavalry. You can see the green dither marker on Forest. The players all seemed to find this very funny. Bragg had moved south to better control the southern attack, so Forest was no longer in immediate command distance and hidden in the trees.

The Union hung on tenaciously at Gordons Mill as reinforcements moved up the road from the southeast. Thomas was trying to unite the four divisions of his Corps, but unfortunately the road was blocked by Palmer, who chose this moment to dither. The firepower of the Wilders Spencer rifles came as a horrible surprise to the Confederates. Polk and Buckner seemed content to stand and shoot at long range in the south, whereas ideally they would have been closing in while the Union army was still deploying. 

Thomas (XIV Corps) by now had all four of his divisions in roughly the right place, but Jim was doing a great job of keeping them pinned with Hood and Forest. The latter had finally made his way to the treeline. Polk made a devastating attack on Wilder, inflicting no less than seven hits on the cavalry. Van Cleve had also had enough at Gibsons Mill and fell back, so Preston pushed west once again.

Both Gibson and Wilder fell as far back as they were able, and by now XX Corps (McCook) was able to support the defence of the mill, although there was a great traffic jam on the road behind. 2 Div (Johnson) involuntarily took up position behind the hill north of the mill as it dithered, although in fact the reverse slope was quite a good spot. Van Cleve failed to rally however.

Up in the north, Forest and Hood kept skirmishing with Thomas, neither side inflicting decisive losses, but the Confederates were tying up four divisions with two of their own!

Walker closed with Mintys cavalry who loosed off an ineffective volley into the forest.

With that we had to close for the night going into turn five. Unfortunately it was all taking longer than I'd hoped. A combination of the number of moving parts and player unfamiliarity with the rules which led to discussions on the various options. Maybe it will speed up tomorrow but I suspect not as we are into the 'dogfighting' stage of attrition, as Montgomery put it. 

Afternoon of the 19th saw more heavy fighting around the mill as Polk and Buckner threw their divisions forwards. The fresh XX Corps was in a decent position but still took heavy losses. Cheathams veterans hung on in the ccentre and combined with Hoods Texans, drove back Palmers inexperienced division in the centre.

In the north as night fell, the Confederates began to gain the upper hand. Although Thomas secured his right flank on the ridge, the left flank began to collapse as Palmer fell back and then Baird as the fire became too much. A dangerous hole opened up in the Union centre just as Walker finally finished off Mintys cavalry brigade after a successful bayonet charge which overran them.

Overnight, two more CSA divisions arrived and Polk assumed command of the southern wing of the Confederate Army and either dug rifle pits in place or extended the line. The Union just dug in, but Wilders cavalry finally rallied and moved back into line behind the stream. Palmer could have moved back into his old position but chose to dig in instead.

In the north Longstreet took over but both sides largely consolidated in place. Thomas rallied his Corps and dug in along and behind the ridge. You can just see the two CSA reserve divisions on the right, Breckenridge and Johnsons divisions.  Cleburne had already been allocated to Polk.

Hindman charged in the south and finally took Gibsons Mill, driving back the Union and capturing their artillery. In turn his division was destroyed by concentric fire by the Union troops entrenched in depth behind the bridge, but Breckenridge was now in place to exploit the bridghead. The entrenched CSA troops on the hill north of the mill held their positions and along with Cheatham, poured fire into the Union positions.

In the north Cleburne advanced due west and occupied the wood south of the ridge but was driven out again by fire. Walker cleared the road in the north and joined the extreme flank of the Confederate army. Thomas' Corps just hung on as best it could.

Breckenridge occupied the bridgehead again in the south while Longstreet pushed divisions forwards aggressively in the centre to exploit the gap in the Union lines.

Walker crossed the stream in the extreme north to flank Thomas, while Cleburne and Johnson held on to their foothold on an south of the ridge despite heavy fire.

In the south XX Corps was forced back from the river line, but Cleburne was also repulsed. This looked pretty much like the Confederate high water mark as losses were disproportionately mounting on the CSA side.

We were running short of of time and called it at that point. Although the Confederates had dented the Union line and inflicted heavy losses, I couldn't see them achieving their objectives in the time remaining but both sides declared honours even.

After a slow start, that actually went pretty well. I was very pleased with the rules tweaks as they all worked fine although there are still a lot of moving parts to manage. Actually running a game with people clarified some bits where I'd been unclear or made mistakes - in particular I got the sequence of morale tests in the charge sequence wrong, for which I apologise to the Union. Im minded to tone down the cover effect of dense woods, making them soft cover if you will, compared to Rifle pits etc. A break from Neil Thomas cover/not cover, but necessary I think. 

There was a certain desire expressed to try some more ACW battles, so I'll add the clarifications and tweaks to the rules and put on another game in due course.

A few more ACW bits

 With my recent re-visit to the ACW I reviewed some possible scenarios and the stuff I've currently got. I've basically got enough for most of the things I'm likely to want to do, but looking at the Volley and Bayonet 'Brandywine Creek' scenario it requires rather more cavalry than I currently have. Generally you don't need masses of cavalry for ACW battles, but this one is primarily a cavalry engagement, with a few infantry tagging along.

A couple of quick painting sessions produced these. This is still stuff left over from the Baccus ACW army set I picked up second hand some years ago. There are a few bits left in the bags now, but not much, so if I want to add anything else, I may have to actually buy something new!

First up we have some dismounted Confederate cavalry. I find these stands useful for both dismounted cavalry and also to add to infantry units to make up the numbers for larger sized units. I do have some more horse holder figures and horses too, but I didn't paint those up as I have enough.

These guys are in a mixture of kepis and broad hats, predominantly grey although I mixed in some browns too as I'm envisaging this unit being a bit raggedy.

And then another Confederate cavalry unit with four bases. Like the dismounted troops, also a mix of kepis and bigger hats, and I also did these in grey with some brown variations. I also added some yellow tops to some of the caps, which adds a spot of colour.

When I was putting them away, I  noticed that the grey on all these unis was a darker shade than on the existing ones, so I must have used a different shade before, but I'm not sure what. Sadly I'm not disciplined enough to write down the colours I use for everything. For Confederate ACW troops I don't think it matters too much.  

A couple of stands of Union dismounted cavalry. These are all in kepis and are more uniform than the CSA, with the usual dark blue jackets and sky blue trousers.

And another unit of Union cavalry, again all in kepis.

I've got enough stuff left for a few more bases of dismounts and another regiment of mounted, but tbh I think that is plenty of cavalry to be going on with. While I was in the box of ACW stuff, I also brightened up the Zouave stands as some of the them don't stand out that well on the tabletop. The miracle of Posca Paint Pens let me easily add some extra waist sashes, highlights on their caps and even some stripey trousers! If only I could make the Iron Brigade stand out more. The best I could manage was big brass badges on their hats, but they are largely invisible at normal gaming ranges. 

Invasion of the Balkans, April/May 1941

 After doing the 1940 French campaign, the next Unconditional Surrender scenario was the invasion of the Balkans and Greece in 1941. Not something I've gamed before at an operational level. This is another short campaign, rather like the the invasion of Denmark and Norway, with just two turns, but an awful lot of real estate to cover!

The starting setup. To win the Axis have to conquer both Yugoslavia and Greece by May 1941. The Yugoslav army is quite large and deployed to defend their key cities with three field armies and three garrison armies. Zagreb in particular is strongly defended and the critical rail route south via Belgrade and Nis is also directly defended.

The Greeks have a field army in Salonika and a garrison army facing the Italians on the Albanian border, while the 'BEF' start in central Greece barring the route to Athens. As usual, the very sticky ZOC do a lot of heavy lifting, the alternative would be three times as many counters.

The Axis are a mixed bunch, there are weak contingents of Hungarians and Bulgarians, while the best Italian units are in Albania, seriously handicapped by the awful terrain. The Italian unit in Trieste is just a garrison unit.

The Germans have four ground armies, two infantry and two panzer, plus a single Luftwaffe air fleet. One each of the panzer and infantry armies are in Bulgaria down on the Greek border, while the others are up in Hungary and Austria.

The Axis get lucky and roll fair weather (poor weather being rather more likely), so focus on trying to knock Yugoslavia out in April. The German infantry near the Brenner Pass attack Zagreb with air support and with multiple mobile attacks manage to push out and then destroy the Yugoslav defenders. 2WP to the Axis (they need six to conquer Yugoslavia). The Germans use the last of their movement to move down the valley but run out of steam.

The focus then shifts to Belgrade where 1st Panzer Group makes a frontal attack across the river with air support.

Both sides throw in a ground support unit, but it isn't enough and the Yugoslavs are forced out. Losing Belgrade is another 4WP so Yugoslavia surrenders and all the remaining combat units are removed. Despite surrendering the cities still count as Allied controlled and need to be occupied however, so 1st Panzer motors down the rail route and takes Nis although it doesn't have enough movement to reach Greece. Sarajevo and Split are still allied controlled at this point. 

The focus then shifts rapidly south to take advantage of the good weather. The Luftwaffe stages south to Bulgaria (leaving three sorties for operations). I don't even bother trying to attack the Greeks in the mountains along the Albanian border, as I think there is an opportunity to encircle them instead.

The German infantry attack Salonika with air support and force the Greeks there back into the peninsular as ZOCs preclude an escape westwards. A subsequent mobile attack forces them into the sea and they surrender. 3WP to the Axis, it takes 4WP for Greece to surrender - the only option is to take Athens.

Hard to spot, but the Hungarian and Italian units in the north have mopped up the Yugoslav cities, you can just see Sarajevo is in Axis control now. 2nd Panzer Group attacks the British near Thermopylae, but in the rugged terrain the attack is repulsed! The Germans attack again with the last of their air support and only succeed in forcing the British back. The Greeks on the the Albanian border can still (just) trace a supply line back to the road to Athens as ZOCS don't extend into friendly units for supply purposes. 

Apart from shuffling the Bulgarians around, the Axis have finished now. That would have been a very different proposition in bad weather, with more negative dice modifiers and no mobile attacks. I cant see Yugoslavia surviving, even in bad weather though, barring some good dice throws.

Due to the failure of 2nd Panzer Group in the mountains, the Allies have freedom of movement and set up a defence in depth of Athens with the Greeks holding the mountain passes and the BEF in Athens itself. I thought quite long and hard about that, the other obvious action would be to swap places, and looking at it now, possibly just put one unit in Athens and another on the single hex causeway to restrict the attack channel. Choices, choices.

The weather in May is clear too, this is the best possible set of weather results for the Axis. Given the very restricted front and distances involved, the attack on Athens will be undertaken by the Germans. 1st Panzer Group moves down from Yugoslavia to take on the Greeks - I want to save 2nd Panzer Group for Athens. The rough terrain imposes a heavy movement point cost on all these attacks.

1st Panzer manages to push back and destroy the Greeks (garrison units only have one step and out flanked and  unable to retreat, it is overrun). 1st Panzer could move next to Athens but doesn't have the MP left to attack it, so instead it leaves the approach hex open for 2nd Panzer. 

2nd Panzer goes in with the last German aircraft, plus ground support plus a paradrop (which gives another -2 on the defenders).

The British are driven out of Athens, pursued through Corinth and driven into the sea. Greece surrenders and the Axis win.

I wanted to try some different configurations of the defence of Athens. In this one the BEF defend in front of Athens, which gives them an extra retreat route. This leaves the city open to a paradrop, which has a 50% chance of taking the city. On my first try, the Axis paras took Athens.

On the second they didn't, and the Germans managed to push the BEF back into the city instead.

Their subsequent attacks were too weak however, and despite pulling out the panzers and throwing in the infantry, it was not enough to push the British out, so on this occasion the Allies won. So there is definitely something in that narrow approach to Athens from a defensive pov.

I enjoyed that, it was another thought provoking scenario although obviously much of the running was made by the Axis. It is a similar puzzle to invading Norway in that the Axis have a great deal to do with limited forces and a great deal of space. I can't imagine it being much fun as a two player game and I didn't feel any great desire to play it again, but it is quite quick to play and  I'd like to try it with the historical weather at some point.

Air War revisited

 There was a certain degree of chatter on the WhatsApp group about SPIs 'Air War'. I did play it a few times at the University wargames club in the early 1980s, but have little memory of it now. We agreed to set up a remote session to play through a few moves and remind ourselves of the joys (?!) of the game. At the time it was reputedly one of the most complex wargames ever designed, and long pre-dated decent computer flight simulators. 

As usual you can find the entire thing on https://www.spigames.net/ if you want to recreate that mid 1970s experience! You just need a few plain hex maps, a few aircraft counters and a printout of the aircraft control sheet and data sheets.

Half a dozen of us turned up (me, Nigel, Ian, Tim, Russell, John B) and we were also very fortunate to have the games original designer, David Isby, on the call. Along with working for SPI, David has written many books on military history and worked as a national security adviser on Afghanistan among other things. Amusingly he said he designed Air War when he was at Law School and before he actually learned to fly a plane.  

The others all set up their copies of the game, I just got out the aircraft data sheets and control sheets with the rules up on another monitor. The control sheets looked quite, familiar, this was coming back to me now. The idea was that we'd play through the introductory scenario side-by side as a play along (2 x Mig 15 vs 2 x F-86 in Korea). John B was lead pilot for the US and Ian D lead pilot for the North Koreans.

The fundamental premise of the game is that it tries to model the physics of flight through the application of forces in various dimensions, coupled with the flight characteristics of individual aircraft. The turns are short (2.5 seconds) so you can actually model the process of each manouvre eg you cant go into a steep climb without going into a shallow climb first, you bank before a turn, the degree of bank may result in loss of airspeed etc.

Along with the obvious things to track (altitude, speed, ammo etc) the critical track is the 'aircraft attitude' track, which is essentially a 2D representation of the different positions of the plane in three dimensions (climb,dive and bank) as well as some specific things to track the energy gained during a dive and degrees of turn accumulated. To turn one hex vertex requires you to accumulate 30 degrees of turn, and as these are jets doing 500mph through 500 foot hexes, it takes several hexes of movement to accumulate enough 'turn' to physically re-point the counter without tearing the wings off the plane.

So to pull any sort of manouvre, even just a 90 degree turn let alone an Immelman, requires a degree of forethought as it will take several (very short) moves.

The scenario starts with both flights of planes parallel (US blue, NK red), the MiGs are 1000 feet higher) and a few thousand feet apart. The MiGs have cannon, the F86s .50 cals, so the  MiGs have to get in close but hit hard, while the F86 have a much longer range, tons more ammo but dont land such heavy blows. The MiGs are more manouverable at lower altitude and the F86 superior higher up, but both planes turn much better than 1970s era jets. Neither of them is powerful enough to pull off a vertical climb though.

The aircraft data sheets list the energy costs and altitude and direction etc changes for various types of manouvre, and where appropriate, the differences any different altitiudes.  

Apologies for the blurry picture. Each plane resolves its move individually and fire is resolved at the end of all movement. There is an initiative system and a system for determining 'advantage' which allows a plane to go later in the turn. So ideally you want to have the advantage, wait for the enemy to move, and then skilfully fly your plane to within one hex of their tail and blow them out of the sky.

If only it was so easy! The US banked right and climbed gently (type I climb) to gain altitude, which cost them some speed. The NK banked left and dived to come down towards the US planes. The first turn took us about 30 minutes while we figured out how the various control settings actually moved the plane. After the first turn, things speeded up a lot as we just flicked through the rules or delved our memories as to how things worked.

We ended up with both sides at the same altitude and facing each other! Ian had obviously played this more recently than the others and showed a certain degree of competence in manouvering the MiGs, however as so often happens in this game, he slightly misjudged where the planes would end up and it was the US who got off the first shot! At medium range and maximum deflection (he'd at least planned that) they missed hopelessly though. Ideally you need to be within 2 hexes and on the targets tail and that clearly wasn't going to happen in any sensible length of time so we called it a day having exercised the major mechanisms over 90 minutes or so.

That was a lot of fun and nice to trawl through the depths of my brain for this stuff. It did remind me of the main issue I had with the game at the time, while it models the mechanics of flying very well within the limitations of carboard counters, is very hard indeed to actually fly the planes to get them where you want them to go without lots of practice in energy management and how the various numbers interact. Flying the same thing in a computer flight sim is a lot more intuitive once you understand the basic principles of powered flight. You can still mess up manouvres, overshoot, stall etc but it all happens much faster. Anyway there was a certain amount of enthusiasm to repeat the experience, but this time using planes armed with missiles, and it was great having David participate, even if he said he felt like a dinosaur talking to a load of paleontologists at times.

More Leaders pt 4 - German

 Last of the leadership review was the Germans. As older figures originally based for tactical games they were short of higher HQs, but I had plenty of decent individual junior leader and officer figures already.

This was a much more minimal effort than the British, Russians and French. I just re-based some existing figures.

This early war battalion HQ is just a pair of individual figures re-purposed. A kneeling PSC NCO (I think he is probably a gunner) and a QRF officer in a cap from the German WW2 personality set. I've no idea who he is supposed to represent as it is an awful figure, but he is fine as a generic officer (despite his Generals red stripes on his breeches!).

These are my late war Germans, of a similar vintage to my British, all Peter Pig. They had too many (two figure) battalion HQs and no (three figure) Regimental HQ, so I just prised off the figure with the pistol and based him individually, then added an officer in a helmet with binoculars. The third figure on the RHQ base is one of those wierd dismounted tank crewmen figures Battlefront liked to supply in days past (presumably to indicate bailed status).

Most of these figures were painted when my eyesight was much better, I've apparently managed to do Peadot camo by hand. Well, well.

The back of the RHQ stand so you can see the crewman a bit better. I didn't bother repainting him despite his black panzer trousers. He isn't waving a gun around so better suited to a higher HQ stand, perhaps he is kneeling down looking for the COs cigars or something.

More useful additions, and no painting required. When I was putting these in their respective boxes I realised I'd got mixed up with these too, the early war Germans had the correct number of HQs already, it was the Russians still missing one. Put it down to a senior moment.