The Corlears Hook Fencibles tried out DBACW, a DBA based set of ACW rules. It is intended for 12 stands per side, a la DBA. But the rules included an order of battle for First Bull Run / Manassas that was too much for me to resist. The Confederates had 41 stands of infantry, 3 artillery and 1 cavalry, plus officers. The Union had 49 infantry, 4 artillery and 1 cavalry.
We didn't get started playing until 4:30. Bill had the Confederates while Rick was McDowell and Tom was Division CO Tyler. The game started slowly as the Union columns marched onto the field. Porter's brigade formed up and attacked Matthew House Hill after a while. A short sharp fight saw Evans' small brigade routed while Porter's needed some time to reorganize. Meanwhile Cocke's small brigade formed up around the Stone Bridge over Bull Run while Schenck's Union brigade marched further west to a ford over Bull Run. Bee and Bartow's Confederate brigades marched to assist.
Both Tom and Rick had traffic problems, with large forces coming down single roads (and over bridges in Tom's case) and poor officers (few pips) to command them with. Bill started putting up a defense line on Henry House Hill, as Jackson's large and efficient brigade marched onto the field.
Tom's artillery shot up Cocke's brigade and the small Confederate force routed, Cocke being lightly wounded. The Yankees poured over the Stone Bridge (another choke point). The first attempt to cross Young's branch was driven back in disorder by Wade Hampton's small, well-trained legion.
Bill was having a problem. Whenever he rolled for artillery, he was mostly rolling dreadfully low dice. On those occasions when infantry fought each other he was rolling well. The Union was having trouble getting their masses of infantry forward. Meawhile the four Union batteries worked over Henry House Hill. Jackson's brigade came up and formed on the front slope of the hill – a mistake. The raw infantry of the other brigades was having trouble standing under the artillery fire of the trained Union gunners. Jackson's trained troops did better but Bill's lousy dice left his line disordered. If they had formed on the reverse slope, the Yankees would have had to come up the hill first.
Hampton's legion dissolved under fire, Hampton also receiving a light wound. Bartow's small Confederate brigade slowly beat up Schenck's Yankees and pushed across Young's branch after them. Meanwhile JEB Stuart's Virginia cavalry danced around Rick's right flank, requiring the attention of Burnside's brigade. But slowly Rick massed Keyes' and Porter's brigades to attack Henry House Hill. Bee's Confederates were pretty shaken up by the preliminary bombardment. Jackson's brigade was in better shape but still having trouble. At this point all threw in the towel because it was 10 PM. The game had another 4 turns to go but all were tired. Two Confederate brigades (Kirby-Smith and Early) had still not arrived
I had bitten off more than we could chew. DBACW needs to be for smaller battles (or the scale needs to be modified). We took a long dinner break, so we played about 4 hours and 30 minutes – 27 turns, about 10 minutes a turn. That represented 6 hours and 45 minutes of battle time, so we played slightly faster than game time. Nothing ticks me off like playing way slower than game time. We haven't played one of those in years.
On the plus side, the game helped explain what was going on at First Bull Run. It looked good. We had a lot of artillery fire, moderate amounts of rifle fire and absolutely no bayonet/saber fighting, which seems right. It was easy to calculate combat and there was almost no hunting through the rules. All we looked up was brigade morale, risk to officers and once, overhead artillery fire. If I get that printed on the reverse side of the quick reference sheet we won't need to consult the rules at all.
On the down side, the game wasn't over in 4 hours 30 minutes. Perhaps a scenario that started out with both sides deployed and some competent officers might speed the thing along. This scenario was much marching (at the slow DBA pace) and little fighting.
Umpire errors (me): in DBA, combat is not simultaneous. The phasing player (Union during their part of the turn, Confederate during theirs) decides what order the combat takes place in. We would need to use cotton to mark who fired. If someone is knocked back before they get to fire, tough. One Union battery was smoothbore guns, although they were in range of Henry House Hill during the final bombardment. The combat is decisive enough that I'm toying with the idea of doubling movement rates, calling it 30 minutes turns and proceeding from there. Finally, two Union brigades appeared in the wrong place. One of Tyler's brigades appeared with Heintzleman while the other appeared with Tyler. Not a game changer, but more confusion in a game that was already confusing enough.
There are some things in DBACW I wonder about. The rules allow smoothbore muskets, with 2 inch range instead of 3 inches. Smoothbore muskets get a +1 in close combat, supposedly because they load faster. The whole idea of Minie balls was they loaded as quickly as smoothbores. You might be able to argue that the smoothbores could use buck and ball at close range. It also seemed that counter-battery fire was pretty effective. The one time Rick tried it a Confederate battery was sent back badly shaken. In the 12 stand game, all you get are brigade commanders and the CO. the command radius for the brigadiers is 3" while the CO is 16". It doesn't say what happens when you have division commanders in between the brigadiers and the CO. I treated them as 3" radius. Perhaps they need an interim number, like 10" radius.
I did find an online scenario for Fort Donelson, where the Confederates attempted to break out while Grant was off meeting with Commodore Foote. It's a moderate sized battle, slightly smaller than First Bull Run, with both sides already deployed. But who knows…
