"A basic operational format for your battles" Topic

OK, the title is a confusing wreck, but….

I've been an off and on boardgamer since back in the heyday of SPI, and something that intrigued me was using a tactical game or rules to fight some of the battles in my strategic games. (The results were spotty due to the time and space it took.)

However, I'm intrigued by the notion of using some sort of operational format to set up my ACW miniatures battles. There are some operational ACW boardgames out there, but I'm not sure I want to $30 USD-$120 on this.

My miniatures would be at the scale where each stand represents a brigade -- that way you could fight a reasonably large battle on one table. My instinct is that the macro game would be divisions, but I have no idea of the distance or time (a turn might be anywhere from 1-3 days, but I still don't know the distance).

Before I start trying to invent something on my own, does anyone know of this sort of "macro game" system that I can look at? I will cross post this in the Napoleonic topic on the chance someone can recommend something in that era. Thanks.

See if you find the Volley and Bayonet Suppllement, "Great Battles of the American Civil War. It contains a campaign game for the entire war. While this is undoubtedly too big for your desires, it does contain an excellent system for translating the campaign battles to the tabletop.

Otherwise, Victory Games had an operational series of ACW games that might work for you.

Victory Games "The Civil War" one of my all time favorite games.

link

The Clash of Arms campaign series are good too. Great Invasion, Mississippi Fortress, Autumn of Glory and Marching through Georgia are all good

Head over to Columbia Games. They have a few games that are perfect. Best of all you can get the rules for free. The boards are easy enough to duplicate by hand or you can order one through their parts offerings.

The Civil War is great but very complex. Ditto the CoA games. The Columbia Games can be picked up even by noobs in just an hour….just the right speed for setting up battles without being an intense gaming exercise in their own right.

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for. Do you want a grand tactical system to play out battles where the main maneuver unit is the brigade? If so there are plenty of those out there (VnB, Grande Armee modified for ACW, etc).

Or are you asking for an operational level miniatures game that allows you to make 20 mile march moves and represents several days worth of action on the same table?

If the latter, you'll have to make that up yourself. I asked around about the same thing a few months ago and did some searching but it doesn't exist in the miniatures realm. I thought it would be a fun way to do the opening of 1809 but it's not really possible with miniatures and terrain. Maybe you could try it with miniatures and a map?

I just found Alter of Freedom's Gibraltar of the West. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. Now if I could find the same thing for other theaters.

I've always thught that "A House Divided" would work well as such a macro game.

link

Cool game aid, that!

"A House Divided" works great as a campaign framework for miniature battles.

How much time and effort do you want to put in the operational aspects?

Is this a board game with some miniature action, or tabletop battles with a little operational context?

I am doing something similar with the Frederick the Great (by SPI then Avalon Hill )boardgame for WAS and SYW, but am trying to add a little more detail operationally but NOT as much detail as the Red Sash games from the period.
I'm not sure but didn't Sam Mustafa have a campaign system in his Longstreet game?

Sam has a campaign system in Blucher that could be appropriated for ACW.

McLaddie – I want a very simple boardgame to give some context to the tabletop battles. Rather than just set up a one-off battle, I'd like to add that level of having to preserve an army to fight another day.

Sam has a campaign system in Blucher that could be appropriated for ACW.

Come to that Blucher itself can easily be converted to Civil War as it works on a stand per Brigade it's straight forward to chop out the Napoleonic only elements and add a couple of tweaks.

I've found it works really well.

So you want to play a campaign using a boardgame, but transfer the actual battles onto a tabletop and fight them using miniatures?

Yep

Howdy,

The soon to be published "A Storm in the Valley – 1862" currently contains two mini campaigns, one for the Shenandoah, and another for the Gates of Richmond.

Volley & Bayonet is a game system well suited to playing campaigns the operational aspects.

Ponder on,

JAS

Howdy,

Your pardon, got interrupted.

V&B an excellent system for looking at operational aspects. I'm currently running a campaign based on the Tullahoma campaign of 1863.

You can get the campaign rules and map in the Yahoo group for Volley & Bayonet. We're on the third turn of the campaign at present, and can cut the suspense, "What's going to happen" with a knife.

Double blind, and limited intelligence makes all the difference, that was one of the issues in simply adapting Columbia Games block games to a campaign.

I know players who are quite aggessive when they can know and assess all the factors, but add in limited intelligence and their aggression disappears. Others simply charge in. Both extremes don't fare well.

My two cents.

JAS