"Battle of Perryville, an Altar of Freedom AAR" Topic

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This is a link to my blog. In this first post I give a captioned photo AAR of the Battle of Perryville, played out using Altar of Freedom today at Treefort Games in Fayetteville. I highly recommend the rules.

Thanks for posting. I've had the rules and have been wanting to teach them to my group, but they aren't really solo-friendly so it's been hard for me to get up to speed enough to teach others.

Then again, the rules aren't that hard, so I'm just a little dumb. :)

drummer. Very much appreciate your report.These rules deserve more of an outing.

darthfozzywig. I want to give them a run as wel. If you have the armies and terrain, I am willing to send by email prioroity point decisions for one side.

I played in that game and as it was my third full game, I can honestly agree with Drummer that it has become my very favorite ACW set.

The great terrain certainly helps as well!

Nice looking game! I have the rules and am planning on trying them out as soon as I get the chance. I have 10mm armies mounted for VnB that I haven't used in years. I can't wait!

I will play the rules as written. However, the more I think about it the adjustment to combat power based almost solely on a units strength doesn't sound right to me. The reason why this is important is that I would like to try these out for Napoleonics. If unit strength was the main determination for combat prowess I don't know if it would work well for that period.

Thanks,

John

Hi John:

Interesting point. We were discussing that in the car headed back after the game as to how you reflect Wilders Lightning Brigade at Chicamauga. It isn't particularly large but at a crucial moment the combination of quality and breechloader driven firepower is crucial.

Thanks all for your kind comments.

@ John: I had the same reservations about grade, but I've noticed from playing that at this scale most good battle performances by a brigade can be easily explained by "a couple good die rolls."

BTW, I checked the Chickamauga scenario, and Wilder's brigade is cavalry with a +2 modifier. Given that +3 is the maximum, and hasty works only give a +1, I think the designer took the repeaters into account in this case.

The game focuses on the peculiarities of the major (above division level) commanders which makes sense for a game of this scale. I've played it twice and did not feel the game suffered from the lack of "grade ratings."

Having said that, when you use these for Napoleonics you will have to worry about grade. I've been thinking about using AoF for Napoleonics too, and think that I would have to rate the brigades by grade, and then vary the amount of fatigue they can take by size. So a label will have 2 numbers instead of 1, but that's still pretty manageable.

Drummer, those are some good ideas. I am impressed with my reading of the rules. I just want to try them for Naps and the later 19th century. So, I'll have t o make some tweaks.

Thanks,

John

I would think Franco-Prussian and Crimea would be particularly amenable to these rules.