ACW game pics

Last week we played an ACW game using Guns of Gettysburg. Unfortunately my hobby time is very limited these days (I haven't touched a brush since Salute) so I just post the pictures of the game this time to keep the blog more or less alive. One of our conclusions was we need a far bigger table though as not even half of our painted units made it to the table..
All the pictures of the game can be found here

Battle for Pohlman Hill

I've been a bit quit recently, lost the painting motivation but doing research for the next proper army I'm about to start. More detail on that later but I'm about to make an attempt to built a 1800-1806 French army after I finish some Mexican/American skirmish units.

Anyway, we had a good ACW game recently using Guns at Gettysburg. We decided a while ago that for every game someone of the group would create a scenario and be the game master for the day. I must say this is really paying off adding a lot of fun and making the games much more interesting (as the discussions before and after). And if you wonder, couple of years  ago we usually showed up, looked at the troops we brought, put everything on the table and played a couple of turns before we packed and went for refreshments.
We are getting better at this each game and my thinking is that preparation is key for an interesting game.

This time it's Jacco's (Jake) show. The following is the information I got after the game. Before I only received my OOB and some background for the day. He created the map in Powerpoint.

POHLMAN HILL

March 10 1863

Background

In a period of relative inactivity following the Battle of Stones River, a reinforced Union infantry division, under General James S. Wadsworth reconnoiter south toward Columbia. Four miles from Pohlman Hill, Coburn attacked with his right wing, a Confederate divison under General John Bell Hood; he was repelled. Then, General John Bell Hood seized the initiative.

Mission

The winner is the side that has possession of Pohlman Hill.

Deployment

Union: deploy 5 US Battery D and Vincent’s brigade anywhere within three inches of the western short edge of the table.

Reinforcements are diced for at the end of the to arrive in the move phase of the following at the western short edge of the table.

Brigade	2D6
Meredith (with Wadsworth)	2-5
Robinson	6-7
Ward	8-10
Stewart	11-12

Confederate: deploy the 15^th Arkansas Volunteers anywhere on Pohlman Hill. The rest of Wofford’s brigade anywhere within 3 inches of the eastern short edge of the table. Reinforcements are diced for at the end of the to arrive in in the move phase of the following at the eastern short edge of the table.

Brigade	2D6
Anderson (with Hood)	2-5
Benning & Henry	6-7
Hampton	8-10
Perry & Haskell	11-12

On the 6^th turn all reinforcements that are still of table will arrive in the move phase.

Terrain

The hill lightly wooded and the hill does not otherwise impede movement. The Creek can be forded at any point on a throw of 4+ (D6)

As said it was good fun and in the end the Rebels could secure the hill helped by the terrain and better artillery positioning (canister works:). I only took some pictures at the start and near the end of the game unfortunately. We never learn.

GameMaster Jake (who also played Union)is  looking to see if he can change the scenario to secure a blue win.

Battle for the light woods

Reb cav about to charge and get slaughtered

Rebs taking the south flank

Pohlman Hill secured

Jakes freshly painted Brigade

All the pictures of the day: link

2011, year of the rebs

It's that time of the year again so first of all: Fijne Kerstdagen en een gelukkig 2012!

On the wargaming front it was ACW only this year and since I quit the project for half a year or so I thought it was a good time to do a little overview. For the first time I only did one period with the benefit that I can clearly see what I produced in a year, which is about 250 figures. Not bad, not overly impressive but I'm very happy with it.

Strangely enough it was not difficult to stay with ACW for a full year. There were three main things that really helped keeping the focus on the project.
-Start with skirmish gaming to get the painted units on the table asap. In our case we started with the excellent Terrible Sharp Sword rules to get going. After each game we always wanted to paint more. When we had enough we start using Guns at Gettysburg for Brigade level games. Now, we have a choice..
-Blogging. I started blogging early 2011 which really helped as well. All the encouraging comments, new cyberfriends and reading a lot of your good blogs are a good boost to stay productive and stay engaged in the hobby.
-The koopclub. As everybody in the club got the ACW bug it soon became the norm to paint ACW Regiments and have some new stuff ready for each next game. In the OOB for our new year's game are 18 Regiments and 4 Batteries per side. Starting with zero I think that's quite an achievement for such a small club with so many interests..

Anyway,  Couple of overview pictures from the 2011 painting. Battle reports will follow in 2012, and some new additions of course...All details, close-ups etc are in this ACW Gallery

Next week the start of a SAGA Viking Warband here as they enter the 2nd Annual Winter Painting Challenge over @Curt's blog. Should be fun trying to avoid the bottom place.
Merry Christmas.

 

Conferderate skirmishers & casualties 2

That's it. Done. After a year of painting ACW I have enough troops ready for a decent game and it's time to move on to different projects. I will definitely return to the ACW in a couple of months or so.

The skirmisher are a mix of Foundry/Perry and the casualties are Sash and Saber. The casualty using the -count the tufts- system is Steve Barber I think.

All ACW stuff can be found in the gallery. Need to find a different place for this soon as apple decided to drop the mobile me galleries in iCloud. Idiots.

Recently I played a game with Marc and I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of some of the excellent things he works on. He painted an impressive battery to shoot my rebs off the table.

Confederate Regiment No 9

Steve Barber miniatures again this time. With these painted the second Brigade is now finished as well. Only a couple of skirmishers and some casualties to go before I stop painting ACW for a (little) while.
I've sorted out a Viking warband for SAGA yesterday and they are in front of the painting queue for now. But first vacation so no posts here for the next two weeks or so.

Added to the ACW Gallery

Rebels on the Attack

I've almost reach the point I throw away all the grey paints that dominate my painting desk for almost a year now. Only one Regiment and some skirmishers to go and I'm finished for our new years game and I will take a break from ACW for a while. That said, I ordered a lot of Foundry and Perry stuff for the next Brigade this week and I'm still on a mission to build a decent size army of at least three Brigades with all the bells and whistles.

Doing this one year project with our group made me again realize what games I like best: Fast paced (say platoon level) skirmish games for our evening games and larger sized games where you actually can take the role of a general ordering lots of units around. The more the better in this case. With our very limited attention span we never got to that point actually. Even with our biggest efforts we always got stuck at about eight units per side for this kind of games. Of course we have great fun playing this games but it also gives the feeling that we need far more to take it to the next level.
This ACW effort is different in that aspect and to me is a game changer. We can now do a decent size game and our new years game will feature about twenty Regiments a side. Finally some reasonable numbers.

But this also makes me reluctant to start yet another new period soon. I want to do some more ACW next year building on what we already have now. And really, I have so many armies that have seen action only once and even some that never reached the tabletop at all. Why start painting another if you have lots of others you can expand, or simply can start using. Well, I know the answer but to stop this rambling I'll conclude that I'm lost at the moment. Haven't touched a brush in two weeks and even considering a downsize to a 10mm project to reach my goal of mass sized games. It's only because I can not decide on the period that I did not order some samples to see if it's something for me. Over the next weeks I will introduce some new periods from the archives on the blog and let you know what the next move will be.

Miniatures from Renagade, flag from GMB. Complete gallery of all painted ACW here.
The Renegade miniatures Brigade is finished now consisting of a standing, marching, firing and charging regiment. I've made the stupid mistake of making the charging unit 18 figs only. As these mini's always lead the way on the gaming table it would have been smarter to make this regiment a bit larger instead of smaller than the rest. With regards to poses I would also do it different next time. More of the same pose in a Brigade, looks better as a Brigade on the table. The next ones will be all in attacking/charging poses...

Now, off to see the All Blacks crush the French. I may be Dutch but I'm a huge rugby fan and I'm still recovering from last weeks semi-finals tragedy. Hopefully the All Blacks set things straight today...

Battle for Miller's farm, Guns at Gettysburg report

Or better known to me now as The day I could not throw more than three.

 A week ago saturday the group came together for our second game of GaG. Rob created a the scenario and had built a great table for us to play on. Since it was our second game we decided to take it easy and focus on getting a bit of practice on maneuvering, charging and some melee.
 The maneuvering worked out pretty easy and it took me and Rob, who also played Rebs,  quite some turns to get the rebels in Brigade attack column to deliver some heroic charges. In the meantime our Union player Jake had a great time practicing dice rolling while shooting our approaching troops.

With some damage done on our side it was now time for some serious bashing. The first one in were my skirmishers. Looked pretty easy and in my mind the blue skirmishers were already stored back in Jake's boxes. But that's where my first great dice roll happened. The skirmishers decided to let me down and went to the ground instead. I was considering a repaint for them as traitors at that time. But OK, we could handle that as I had now two Attack columns in charge distance and Rob one. Next turn it would all be decided and I could drink a cold beer on a glorious victory.
Full of positive energy I started with the first Brigade, I moved them halfway and threw for morale... A three. Looking at all the modifiers the result was they halted and volleyed. No charge. Slightly dissapointed I moved to the second Brigade so they could secure the center...Another three. No charge again. I sat down in frustration to watch Rob charge his Brigade. Since Rob never misses a charge roll he went all in for his. Under heavy fire he hit the Blue wall. Minutes later he was pushed back  with his leading regiment reduced to only a couple of stands. At that stage we ran out of time so no time for a second chance. Bad luck, but that is part the fun I guess and in my case it better should be as I carry the curse of the dice with me on many occasions.

















 The next day made the matter even worse. As it is still fresh in the memory I always reread parts of the rules and FAQ's the day after to see what we did wrong. First thing I ran into was an errata from the author on the forum. Brigade attach columns neglect the Halt and Volley result to represents the fact they were an "all or nothing" formation. Thank you, they should have charged! and I should have known...
These rules have a lot to it and we just need to take a bit of extra attention to learn how to use them. So far, we are having good fun with them. Maybe I need to read the rules before the game as well?

A few pictures:
Lots more can be found on Photobucket