"ACW Small Scale Scenarios" Topic

Hi all,

There are a plethora of scenario books available, and a lot of them have scenarios which just cover a small part of a larger battle (Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg etc)

However, there are dozens of battles that involved just a small number of regiments per side. For example Ball's Bluff, Dranesville, Hartsville, River's Bridge)

What are some of your favourite small scale (a few brigades or a dozen or so regiments per side) battles that you have enjoyed gaming or that interest you?

Ryan

As you said Ball's Bluff and I would add Glorieta Pass.

I've been to both battlefields and run games on each. Maps really don't tell the story as compared to walking the field.

New Market

Belmont.

Allegheny Mountain (13 December 1861) and Rutherford's Farm (20 July 1864).

The problem is that present day rules tend to ignore or overly abstract the details that become more significant at such a gaming level. If I have only a few regiments on the board I want rules that account for skirmishers, passage of lines, detachments of individual companies. etc.

Georgia Landing
Milliken's Bend
Leet's Tanyard
Hoover Gap
Bald Knob (Kennesaw Mountain)
Latimer Farm
Noonday Creek
Moore's Mill

Wildcat Mountain

Belmont (Mo.)

Ringgold Gap

VCarter--you're right about the inadequacy of maps. I live (part time) near Ball's Bluff. Maps don't convey the steepness of what comes near to being a cliff in places. I pity the Yanks trying to get down to the river,and under fire,at that.

I thought about Ringgold Gap, just having written about it in my up-coming book, but it involved several brigades on each side, so not exactly a "small number of regiments." Would be an interesting scenario, though.

I think the map thing comes from visiting other battlefields (like Gettysburg). Other than Culps hill most of the maps translate well.

Both the cliff at Ball Bluff and the hills at Glorieta Pass just don't come across in a typical wargamer map.

All,

Some great suggestions there, thanks a lot!

Maps: sadly, that and people's photos posted online are all I have to go on. Living 4000 miles away will do that for you!

Skirmishers: I mostly play Black Powder and Fire and Fury. (Although I do also own Guns at Gettysburg, I've never played a game of them) Which rules represent/deal with skirmishers at this level well?

Cleburne is one of my favourite ACW Generals. I'm aiming towards having enough regiments to play Ringgold Gap one day.

Thanks
Ryan

Ringgold isn't as big as you think. As Brummie put in his original post, "a few brigades…per side." The Union OOB looks massive, but Hooker failed to deploy most of those troops. Most of the fighting was done by about the equivalent of a division. Cleburne had 4 brigades, but most of his regiments were small. It's a very hard battle for the Union to win.

New Market, Cloyd's Mountain, Carnifax Ferry. Most of the actions in West Virginia or western Virginia involve relatively small forces, and a number of them are balanced enough to be potentially interesting wargames.

It's a very hard battle for the Union to win.

As Hooker discovered.

Olustee, Florida, 1864 is another good one.

a brigade or 2 a side. Battery Wagner. Something most everyone knows a little about.

I second Olustee and Piedmont, as well as Glorieta Pass, having run all these as games at one point or another. There are some good scenarios out there for the first two, but I haven't seen a miniatures scenario for Glorieta. The one I designed was a PC game, using a feature that allows for the creation of customized scenarios. Luckily, as I lived in New Mexico at the time, the local library had EVERY book ever written about Glorieta!

All three of these battles have very interesting features. I used the railroad gun in Olustee, and of course the Colored regiments. The scratch Confederate force at Piedmont makes for an interesting game, too. Guess where my online moniker came from?