"Sell me on gaming the ACW?" Topic

I have recently taken an interest in the idea of gaming the ACW in 10mm. However, my period knowledge is fairly limited, so I wanted to start this discussion. Basically, what is an ACW battle like as a game? My main concern is that most games will devolve into little more than an infantry and artillery slugfest, with little maneuver and excitement once forces are committed. Both sides are very similar in terms of troops (yes there are a few more colourful units, and quality certainly varied a fair bit), and cavalry seems to have played a pretty limited role. So it seems to lack the uniform and troop variety of say, the Napoleonic wars.

But to be clear, please don't take this as an attack on the period! As I said, my knowledge is limited on the subject, so please correct me if my above generalizations are wrong. And more than that, I'd love to here what makes ACW such an attractive period for gaming to you? What are the draws and drawbacks of this period?

I am interested as well!

I like the ACW because the forces are similar in morale, tactics and technology in a way that much late 19th centaury (colonial campaigns, Franco-Prussian War) wargaming are not. That helps with play balance. The tactics changed (all too slowly)to keep up with the technology so it's different depending on which year of the war you play. Also, I don't like cavalry lording over everyone! you can play anything from skirmish to huge battles (depending on figure and rule scale) and there the possibility of incorporating river fleets and railroads. The ACW is also quite colourful and there is no end of ready reference material and figures available!

With too much on the table any period becomes a slug fest.

The main reason I game in 10mm ACW is that it allows for some good solid fire and maneuver, as the figure density is usually quite low. If it's not, then your battlefield needs some stretching. Granted Cavalries roll is a bit limited, as one of its main historical roles is diminished, (scouting). Obviously scouting is usually unnecessary in a miniatures game. However, screening and rapid exploitation of a weak point are still viable tactics for the horsemen. They are also great at plugging holes in your line quickly.

You will have no shortage of information as there is a lot to be found on the Internet or YouTube.

Look up the battles and check the sources listed; many of these are to found as e-books. Battlefield Parks, regimental histories and official records can be easily found online.

YouTube has a number of seminars by well known historians and interesting historical series; plenty to give you a good starting point.

I began three months ago and focused on the Western theatre and am enjoying it a lot.

The only(??) period for Horse and musket where small battles are very numerous, well documented and …
more interesting then the big ones.

Where playing small battles you don't lose on troops varieties and types (such as: will I ever get out the Guard or the vistula lancers/).

You can find scores of small / medium battles historical scenarios in mags, booklets, HPS computer games…
If you are not a painter,95% of the troops are not really that eye catching. So it can easily be done in 6-10mm but also 28 as they are fights between 5000-20000 men.

In the small battles cav. can have more role; they fight dismounted too which ads to the possibilities.

If you want research…well there are a million tittles at the NY library.+ internet++

Use Fire & fury rgtal or 2fat ladies rules; easy to grasp; historical results.

Don't know that I can "sell" the period a lot depends on how deep you like to go into a certain period for your gaming but I play both, so here goes.

To start with there's the language. Unless you don't have English as your first language getting into battles,tactics and uniform details is far easier than Napoleonics particularly as both sides used virtually identical fighting methods.

I've been into Napoleonics for 40 years and what I don't know about is still pretty large, due to the specialization of indvidual nations and the ultimate need to have some proper French, German, Spanish and Russian if you really want to unlock the secrets.

There's a lot of translations to be sure but a lot of people have gotten things wrong who didn't understand the terms they were dealing with – 19th Cent military French is a minefield.

The lack of cavalry in ACW is a good thing. You don't end up collecting a bunch of troop types you seldom use and also you can fight historical small actions or parts of larger battles without them.

Most Napoleonic gamers are oblivious of the fact they use cavalry of all types in table top actions where Curassiers etc would have never been available to the size of force they are commanding.

Then there's the rules. The complexity of combined arms and differing national drill makes most rules a monster simplification. Sure, some ACW rules have more detail than others too but at least the plainer ones are stripping out complexity at a much lower level.

You could look at ACW and say its just infantry and artillery and of course in major battles of the period its true.

You don't get cavalry charging infantry, or each other, in the same way as Napoleonics but on the other hand I've found the rules I've used deal so poorly with all the detail of Napoleonic battles that really the most Napoleonic thing about it is the uniforms on my miniatures!

Dont't take TOO long looking at this period…….I had a customer in earlier today thinking about buying it.

Also, the boss is pretty mad about the deal I offered you.

I guess affinity to the period should be the main reason why you would do ACW. Sure there is plenty of first hand literature, but the excitement in the accounts does not always translate to the tabletop depending on your rules.

My favourite set of ACW rules is actually the card game Dixe:

link

All the random events and fog of war, none of the measuring.

A similar concept is used in Real Time Wargames' ACW rule set:

link

Battles can be dense, or they can be quite spread out with plenty of trees to get in the way of everything. I started gaming ACW because as a kid I was interested in the history of the ACW (and Heritage had some great 15mm figs that were carried by the local game store). As EC said, too many figs makes any game a line-up-and-charge game.

There are many great things about the ACW

You can can have battles as big or as small as you want

While there is the idea that ACW was all infantry and artillery, there were lots of cavalry actions plus cavalry were involved in many raids as well as in the big battles – don't forget at Gettysburg the Importance of Being Buford

As noted above, any battle with more troops than terrain will be a slugfest – but there are lots of ACW battles with open terrain and the chance for considerable maneuver

There are as noted lots and lots of books available – plus there are huge ranges of figures in every scale from 2mm to 54mm

To get started, all you really need is a few generic units and you can build from there

Despite the thought that the troops were all blue versus grey and butternut, there are plenty of colourful units – Berdan's Rifles, the 14th Brooklyn, Collis' Zouaves, the Washington Artillery, the Black Horse Cavalry – the list goes on and on

Anyway, I think its clear that I really like ACW gaming!

If you have to be sold on it, then this is probably not your period. Having said that, before buying figures buy some books and rules and start reading.

I am not sure how limited your knowledge is, but assuming you know nothing, I would recommend these books:

link

link

link

The difference between this war and the ones before it, was, advanced weapons with longer ranges. Tactics were still essentially linear, and still firing at close range resulting in higher casualties.

I'm another one who is of the opinion that if you have to be sold on a period, then it's not for you.

10mm is unboubtedly the way to go, there are a now lots of choice for figures out there

The other advantage is since the war was fought in an English speaking country there is a lot of material available without the problems associated with translation.

Whilst I have played ACW and owned figures in the past, I got rid of my collection to fund a European war project from the same basic period.

The ACW has great personalities, colourful units but practical unfiroms for the gamer to paint (mostly) and beautiful tabletop terrain. Battles that were fought on mountains, in forests, swamps and farms. There are epic stands and heroic charges.

The right troops will work for the entire war without any but the most knowledgable ACW buff rising an eyebrow, and then only maybe – no wrong turnbacks or shako plumes here.

You can just as easily fight hypothetical battles and campaigns and resuse that terrain for the American Revolution.

Novels, films, and a wealth of history books abound. Plus there are many good rules on the market.

Cheers
Mark

Thanks for all the replies! The viability of smaller battles is definitely appealing to me, since I don't have a huge table (or huge budget), so that is a definite bonus for this period it seems. I think I am going to rake out the few books I have on the period and get reading!

I would also suggest attending any conventions you can and try out the period and various rules.

Maybe read a few copies of ACW Gamer: The Ezine.

: D

I love the personalities of the ACW. Everything from Pillow to Cleburne on the CS side and Butler to Hancock on the US. Read a few of the great books on the subject and you will be drawn in even further. Try Peter Cozzen's series of three books on the major fights in the west:

No Better Place to Die
This Terrible Sound
The Shipwreck of Their Hopes

and Wiley Sword's Embrace an Angry Wind, on Hood's 1864 Tennessee Campaign.

You will be hooked!

After that, take a look at my site for some excellent 10mm ACW figures. I now have over 60 codes.

crackerlineminis.com

I liked the comment that you can use the same terrain for the AWI. May I go further, and suggest that all those ploughed fields, standing crops, worm fences and log cabins would work equally well for the FIW and War of 1812? If you like to make terrain and really decorate the table, an ACW game can look even better than a Napoleonic game.

Do not forget the terrain in many battles was quite rugged, overgrown or both. Fog of war, and relatively close range exchanges and surprise encounters should be common.

We have been using AWI & ACW terrain interchangeably for years works well for both periods.

You have to watch those railroad tracks though! :o)

If you want to avoid slugfests, avoid the sieges. I find this true of wargaming any period. And yet I continually find myself drawn to gaming sieges, the Alamo, Delhi and Chitral to name but a few. I must have ten forts in various scales.

Apart from the Napoleonic period, it is the longest war of the nineteenth century, so the variety and number of engagements, sieges and skirmishes offered can't be matched.

The possible downside is that it was a Civil War, so the variety of units, tactics and differences between armies and units were minimal.

The American Civil War has long been a staple of miniature gaming. Many of the pioneering giants of this hobby, such as the late Donald Featherstone, pioneered this hobby developing rules to the Civil War. A quick search of online blogs will reveal miniature gamers fighting the
decisive conflicts or the sharp violent skirmishes fought in a hundred fields, town or road intersections from Florida to the Arizona Territory, from Pennsylvania to Geogia and almost every state in between.

Some gamers even seek to answer the not only the common "what-if" questions such as "what-if Stonewall Jackson was at Gettysburg?," but questions such as "what if the Royal Navy intervened to break the naval blockade of the Southern ports?" It is interesting to note that ACW blogs document the efforts of players not only in the United States, but Australia, Germany and Norway as well.

In my 25 years of fighting this conflict in miniature, gamer's battlefields have evolved from green felt covered ping-pong tables to highly sculpted and flocked layouts that any museum would be proud to display. Figures have evolved from stiff, woodenly posed castings with no variation into highly detailed, well researched, dynamically
posed figures that allow you to build regiments with no two soldiers alike! I have seen gamers fight out their bat- tles in 2mm, 6mm, 10mm, 12mm, 15mm, 18mm, 20mm, 25mm, 28mm, 30mm, 40mm and even 54mm (I sup- pose as some gamers get older and their eyesight poorer, we will eventually see battles being fought on the lawn with figures the size of garden gnomes!)

Commercial support for Civil War gaming seems to keep getting stronger. Routine trips to TheMiniaturePage. Com reward the visitor with announcements of new lines of miniatures and new scales. Hobbyists and professional publishers continue to introduce fresh rulesets in an attempt to recreate their vision of how battles in the Civil War were fought. ACW rule sets that have become the pillars of the hobby are continuing to be revised and updated. Hobby suppliers continue to tempt us with new ranges of figures and terrain. Miniature gaming the Civil War remains on of the mainstays of the hobby.

I was never interested in the ACW either and what drew me in was the incredible characters and the story of the conflict. The Confederacy fighting a losing battle against increasingly insurmountable odds yet giving as good as they got all the way up to the end, the larger than life generals and determination of the soldiers involved. It was really the story of the ACW and how much those dividing lines are still apparent in US socio-economics.

As for gaming, if you are into card based systems, I would recommend Longstreet from Sam Mustafa because the relative size of troops required is small and the card mechanics provide interesting choices in an otherwise tactically homogenous fighting. Some people will be put off by the cards though so it really depends on your personal taste. Otherwise I would try one of the F&F sets of rules although I understand the miniature requirements are quite high for those.