ACW game, using Black Powder and the Warlord boxed set

      Having set out all those miniatures we felt we just HAD to give it a go. I set up the forces as four brigades each of Union and Confederate troops. As we were just learning the rules we avoided any tricky scenario situations and simply set the armies out facing one another. I did include some of the special rules that differentiated veterans from green troops and other rules that reflected the CSA tendency to want to come to hand to hand combat.

 

please excuse the clutter, 

most of the players were first-timers and needed their data in front of them

 

the Union lead-off with the Regulars brigade in the center of their line

(the four battalions in the upper center of the picture)

correctly reasoning that these superb troops would be able to face the fire of the Confederates

 

 

to the left of the Regulars the State Volunteers advanced boldly into the fray

firing broke out all along the lines

 

the Confederate musketry didn't stop the Union Regulars , but the cannon behind them did,

forcing the first battalion to retire behind friends to rally,

meanwhile the State Volunteers drove headlong into the Confederates on the large hill in the center

on both flanks the State Militia tried turning maneuvers

 

 

as the battle wore on the Confederates doggedly hung onto their hill line despite mounting casualties

on the Confederate right they succeeded in forcing the Union boys back

units all along both lines were getting dangerously close to exhaustion

 

 

 

the Confederate right (bottom of the photo) pressed hard against the Union militia but casualties and disorder halted their progress while in the center the Union Regulars formed up for another push

 

with both flanks stabilized the Union was able to press hard enough against the Confederate center that the Rebels called it a day and left the field to the victorious Union troops

       

       The players picked up the rules quickly enough to have a fun time running their troops. My concerns about running the game "straight out of the book" with these tiny figures has been cast aside. The game played just as well as it would have with larger figures and required no changes to accommodate the epic scale troops. The game looked like the classic illustrations from the American Heritage Civil War book that was one of the seminal works that got me into wargaming in the first place. This boxed set from Warlord really is a breakthrough sort of thing; you get everything you need for most battles in one concise set complete with the rules you need to play the game.

 

a battle-map from the American Heritage "The US Civil War"