"johnny reb II - larger battles" Topic

hi, we have been playing this for some time, so long infact everyone has atleast one painted brigade and a battery of guns. So on saturday we played a largish game but it struck some of us that the two sides were exactly the same, so the question is, how do we represent acuratly (or not so, but give the feel) the different organisations of the ANV and the army of the potomac.

thanks as normal, if any further clarification as to my meaning i will endeavour to try.

jon

Speaking only for myself, it seems that the American Civil War armies should feel very similar. They were composed of men who shared a similar language, training, weapons, history and outlook on life. If it is earlier in the war, you might create a scenario that rewards the Confederates for being more aggressive. Similarly, for later in the war you could severely cut down the size of the ANV to give a more desperate feel to the battle and tailor the victory conditions to make "holding on" the chief goal for the ANV. Not sure if that helps, but I hope so.

Billy Yank

Billy Yank has it right. The only real differences were uniform color and a bit more élan on the Rebel side. Otherwise, they should be very much the same

I have better than a corps on each side, a mixture of 2, 3, 4 and 5 figure stands. I made up about 100 index cards. Each card was one brigade with one battery of artillery. I used a die roll to decide the strength of the each regiment in the brigade. If I rolled a one, the regiment was a 2-figure regiment, a 2 or 3 was a 3 figure regiment, a 4-5 was a 4 figure, and a 6 had 5 figures. I had some really weak brigades and some strong. If a brigade had a 5 already, I tended not to give them a second. Did the same for morale and weapon. Tended to give the Union better chance on weapons and Confederate better chance on morale. When the players showed up, they drew a card and that was the brigade they commanded. The house rule was you get the brigade you draw without complaint. Between your players you should have enough variety to do this. Works well and makes for some tricky play.

hi, what i am getting at is that the armies are oganised differently and am unsure how to represent this to try and give an example

ANV 1st corp has 21 thousand men under command, with 3 divisions and an artillery reserve brigade. each division has an artillery brigade.

so do i, if running one divison take the 3 infantry brigades as is and add the artillery with its own brigadier and then add approximatly 1/3 of the reserve?

army of the potomac 1st corp 12 thousand men under command again with 3 divisions and a corp level artillery brigade but more artillery is held at army level.

this is what I mean how do we replicate the difference in command and control and the allocation of artillery as they are held at different levels in each army.

thanks again
jon

Okay ,the main differences in the organizations are from what I know is like this:
Infantry Union has multiple Corps of around 3-4 smaller(2-3 brigade)Divisions. So you have more sub units to move. The Confederate Corps where larger in Divisions with the Divisions also being larger than the Union.
Cavalry-I will not even get into this. Just remember Confed has one corp/division with multiple brigades. Union org almost like the Infantry
Artillery here is the biggest difference. Union attach at Corps level with large Army level assets. Confed attached at Division and Corp with very small Army level. Union is usually all same gun type while confeds mix and match per battery. Also the Confeds try to group units of the same state in the same brigade and division. The union tend to mix then up except for regulars,they are never put in a brigade with state troops except for artillery.
Johnny Reb does not really have command and contrl rules. I found some on the net that we are using that mke it feel better. Confeds have better leaders up till last year,year and a haldf of the war. Able to put out more orders.

There were quite a lot of differences at the army level, at least between the AoP and ANV. The ANV only had three corps in it, so that makes a big difference when compared to the AoP which had a dozen Corps at times, plus an overlay of Grand Divisions at one point (didn't work so well).

You could model the differences but it'd take some time and thought. I don't think there'd be to much difference at the regimental and brigade level though.

Actual Obs would help.
We focused on The Peninsular campaign, Although Antietam would also be good. Early in the war you also get equipment differences, with confederates more likely to be musket armed. Union artillery also tended to be more modern

How many players do you have? I would have the corps commanders decide where corps artillery is allocated. The confederate divisional commander should make the decision where to place divisional artillery assets, unless overridden by their corps commander. A union divisional commander is going to have to request artillery support so have them write orders to their superiors requesting it or send a runner unless the canny union corps commander has already allocated the artillery to his command. This should reflect the organizational differences between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac.

"Unit Organizations of the American Civil War" by Richard Zimmerman is a good place to start.

link

Why not take advantage of the many scenario books for Johnny Reb II & III. We just use them as our guide to what we need.

For larger battles there is no reason why you can not do your own research. We did Antietam with Johnny Reb II over two weekends. I researched the OB and put the game together myself. Everything you need is easily available.

we had six players on saturday, each running two brigades, and some artillery, this was the first time we had all gotten together, so it was the first time we noticed that the two sides were organised exactly the same which is obviously not the historical case.

jon

I have seen it done with OOB's and then task organize as needed for a battle. I have also played against CWBuff (a gentlemen) using his 3x5 card brigade and it does give each Bde a slightly different feel. I am not sure how that would have worked at a higher level, probably pretty well. (I keep missing link up with hhim for the bigger games, my fault not his)

Then of course there are prewritten scenarios that tell you specficis about how they must be organized and initial use.

I think there is some differences. For instance, the Confederates fielded:

642 infantry regiments
137 cavalry regiments
227 artillery companies

The Union, in contrast fielded

2,144 infantry regiments
272 cavalry regiments
432 'light' artillery batteries [61 Hv Art regiments]

On any battlefield, the Union army will have more of everything, but because of that, it was be organized differently.

CSA armies had no army artillery reserve.
CSA armies had larger brigades and divisions.
USA armies had smaller divisions, which meant more divisional and corps commanders. [See Gettysburg for instance. The Union had as many corps as the Confederates had divisions.]
USA armies had a greater mix of large and small regiments, green and veteran troops because, unlike the Rebels, the Union tended to let regiments die out rather than continually reinforce them and instead build new ones… which provided the state governments with more political appointments.

This made for some different command problems, tactics and availability of artillery and its use.

we had six players on saturday, each running two brigades, and some artillery, this was the first time we had all gotten together, so it was the first time we noticed that the two sides were organised exactly the same which is obviously not the historical case.

Do you have to have 3 players per side? or could it be 4 vs. 2? Say have 2 CSA players commanding divisions of 3 brigades each, and the USA having 1 corps commander and 3 division commanders controlling 2 brigades each.

it was 3 vrs 3 on saturday but could easily be switched to be more representative.

If you want a balanced game, just give the rebs 3 brigades of 4 regiments each, with 2, 4 gun batteries per brigade, and the Feds. 4 brigades of 3 regiments each, and 1, 6 gun battery each. A cavalry regiment broken up into 2 battalions is enough.

You could vary the troop quality too. Give say the Union side a large force of green troops and the Confederates a smaller force of higher trained troops.

You could do take an historical action, or portion of an action and disquise the scenario by say setting an eastern theater battle in the west or vice versa.

Reviewing historical OBs is a good way to know if there will be any organizational difference. In all honesty, at the brigade level there isn't much. Both sides had some small brigades and others that were made up of slews of regiments.

The Confederates (speaking of the eastern theater here) had larger divisions, so a Union corps would likely be fighting a Confederate division or so. With JR2 and other regimental games this begins to get into how large a command each player will run.

Cheers,

The Bandit