"Civil War Rules for Companies and Battalions " Topic

I've been reading about the battle of Valverde, in New Mexico. Individual companies and battalions seem to do the maneuvering in this account. Does anyone know of a set of rules that would model this? Tentatively, I'm thinking a basic maneuver element of a company of 10-12 figures, battalions with 4-10 companies, and each player controlling two such battalions and maybe an independent company or two. This falls in between Brother Against Brother, where squads maneuver and a company is the command on the one hand and Johnny Reb, where you have regiments with the player commanding a brigade, on the other hand.
Grelber

I'd heartily recommend "The Sword and The Flame" rules. they're a colonial set, but work VERY well for small-unit tactics in the ACW.

Hi

I'm also interested in this level of ACW wargaming. The battle I'm interested in doing is Gloretta Pass. The New mexico campaign has always been my main ACW interest.

What scale are you thing of doing it in? I'm really don't think that SatF would work for this period. I'm thinking of using the Alamo rules from GWS.

If you refight Glorieta Pass, remember to protect your baggage train!

You could, I guess, use Brother Against Brother

IMHO TSATF Rules can adapt to virtully any horse and musket(rifle) period, and Mexican War/ACW/Mex Adventure are some examples, But individual tastes may cause some to not prefer them for valid reasons! One may not like them for good reasons, but they certainly can be used if the mechanics and organizations do not clash too much with your personal notions of the period!

There is an ACW variant for TSATF by Lee Barnes somewhere out there on the Ether-net. I've tried it; it works. We've had some great games.

As others have said, my first guess would be TSATF.

I was thinking about doing Valverde, and possibly Glorieta Pass as well, in 28mm , using the Perry plastic ACW figures. The book hasn't gone into details, but it has mentioned that the US Regulars, New Mexico regiments, and the Colorado company were all uniformed differently, so being able to customize the figures sounded really good.

I hadn't thought about TSATF. Looking through my files, I do have a copy of a Civil War version by parties unknown. I have also read about, but don't own, Mark Fastoso's (hope I spelled that right! My sincere apologies to Mark, if I didn't) versions with 8-10 figure units. So, this sounds workable, or at least worth a try.

In the book, they seem to form ad hoc battalions of 3-4 companies, and send them off to perform some task or the other. This should work well enough with TSATF.

Many thanks to all who responded!

Grelber

Grebler,

You can cut down the size of TSATF units by 1/2 (i.e. 10 man infantry unit; 6 man cavalry unit) with no effect whatsoever on the way the rules play out -just remember to half the dice rolled for artillery fire.

Interestingly enough, there was a time when we played TSATF using 4 15mm figures to a base to replace each 25mm figures. It worked quite well, and made each unit look more like a company than a group of 20 men. Each time a casualty was removed, an entire stand was taken out instead.

At that time the club was using 1" square ceramic floor tiles for bases. These provided a nice weight to keep the figures upright, and also had enough thickness to pick up a unit by the sides of the base rather than the minis themselves. I still like using floor tiles for bases, as they are reasonably inexpensive and very solid.

Respects,

Grebler

You better run it on a Thursday night!

Fred

Also, I have a couple of books on Glorieta Pass if you want to borrow them.

Fred

I have ran a Glorieta Pass scenario a couple of times using a modified version of Regimental Fire and Fury. The ground scale is changed to allow units to be companies instead of regiments. This made some of the fields of fire pretty long, but the field is pretty broken up by hills and trees.

I have some photos of one game on Flickr for those interested in viewing:

link

Mark

Hi

Nice photos BF Mark. Where does one find the variant of F&F
for doing companies lvl battles? I just bought my first box of Perry plastics and I'm busy trying to get Uniform guides.

Bill

Bill,
See here:

crchilds.com/index.htm

Charlie has some of the best work in the business, and is a contractor for the federal Government. His images are an excellent guide to how the stuff looked new, and to how it was worn.

ALL of his patterns are taken from original garments, and he does a bang up job of emulating the original material and colors.

As a guide to painting minis, he can't be beat.

Respects,

Bill,

There is an older, but quite playable, version of Regimental Fire and Fury available online at fireandfury.com

The rules will be published later this year, sometime after Historicon. Basically, the Glorieta Pass scenario was an adjustment of the ground scales and ranges. Movement distances remained the same while the time scale was considered less. Historically, companies maneuvered independently much like regiments did in larger battles, so we thought it felt enough like the original battle.

I will post the tables and charts for this scale on our website after the rules are published. However, you can do essentially the same thing with the version that is on the website with a little work.

Mark

I thought that the "Glint of Bayonets" rules was the adaption of TSATF for the Civil War? I can't tell you for sure as I ordered mine from sergeants3 and it hasn't arrived yet.

Larry