"Old School Fun ACW rules?" Topic

Are there any fun Old School style rules out there being used for the civil war? Prefer they cover moral, commanders, quality, rifled cannon etc or easily shoe horned in.

What does "Old School" mean to you. Almost every rules set I can think of has all the items you mentioned?

How about "On To Richmond"?
Old School in the fact that it was the first Civil War rules I was introduced to way back in 1990……am I really that old?

Tom D

Try Round the Flag. Still a great set of ACW rules.

Stars N Bars

Hiya Extra Crispy. Simple easy to remember rules. For example I plan to use the 'Charge" rules by BGen Peter Young & Col. J.P. Lawford for my 18th century armies.

@ 79thPA Your Stars and Bars suggestion ended up sending me down the rabbit hole of a 13 page Angry TMP thread from 2010. TMP link Oh the memories.

Be aware that there are two different rules sets entitled "Rally Round the Flag".

Max,

Suggest you look into Larry Brom's "A Glint of Bayonets" from sergeants3.com/19.html .

These rules are fairly easy to understand and result in some good games. They use the infantry regiment and artillery battery as the basic maneuver units. They can be used with any size figures and with any basing as long as both sides are based similarly.

Here is a battle report:
link

Jim

Well, you want simple, that include troop quality, morale, leadership, gun type and more. Seem a bit like opposite needs.

That said, most ACW rules these days are pretty simple. Frankly, these days, it is hard to find detailed/complex rule sets – you inevitably get pointed to rule books that went out of print 20 years ago…

Black Powder is simple, covers what you want, and is fun.

Thanks ColCampbell. Ordered A Glint of Bayonets
Your link took me back to a time when I used to read all the Jackson battle reports I think even prior to the move to the Angle fire site.

I've played a game or two with that rules set using 54mm plastics. I believe the rules call for 20 man units, but you can do what you want.

New osprey one: "rebels and patriots"?

"Rebels and Patriots" is a skirmish type game with about 20 to 30 figures a side. You could consider it the Horse and Musket equivalent to "Lion Rampant" I just got it and it looks interesting and very playable

Aa vote for the "old" Rally 'Round the Flag. Lots of fun and pretty simple.

"Rebels and Patriots" is a skirmish type game with about 20 to 30 figures a side.

A typical 24 point "company" in RAP would have 60 to 70 figures.

I started with the old original "Rally Round the Flag." The movement is really slow. I would double it.

We have been playing "Mr.Lincoln's War." It is regimental, which IMHO, is the unit scale best suited to ACW play. We had to re-work the rules a little bit. But once you get by that, they are pretty to learn and play.

I started with the old original Rally Round the Flag. The movement is really slow. I would double it. We have been playing MLW and we like it. It is regimental, which IMHO, is the unit scale best suited to ACW play. But once you get by that, they are real easy.

@Son of MOOG (Tom)

I think my playing group were using OTR in the mid to late 80's.

Yes, we are that old.

I think I found Rally Around the Flag on the wargamers vault. The Vault is down for maintenance so will try again tomorrow.
Thanks everyone for your generous help!
David

Be careful. There was an ACW set of rules that were released a few years ago and for some reason they took the same name. They are not in anyway connected. You want the "Rally 'round the Flag" from Battleline Publications, copyrighted 1976. I still have mine. The paperback book is blue with an image of Zouaves on the cover.

Black Powder are pretty simple.

Just how Civil War they are might be debatable, although they do have their ‘Glory Hallelujah!' supplement which has ACW specific rule adjustments.

@Rallynow thanks for the tip. I'll look out for the right rules.
@Trajanus. I have the Glory Hallelujah supplement which I like. BP are my fall back rules if these don't work for me.

We liked ‘Airfix Guide Number 24 : American Civil War Wargaming' By Terence Wise

There are some copies of the Battleline RRTF rules for sale on ebay currently.

WHAT?????

No love for "Blue Light Manual"?

;-)

B

Airfix Guide! Blue Light Manual !

They are both 42 years old, now that's really old school and no mistake!

Before Stars and Bars, Scotty Bowden did JEB!

Old School, yes. Fun, not so much.

Kim

My first war game was with Terence Wise rules from his Introduction to wargames book using Timpo figures. That makes trying His Airfix set a must if I can find them.

There were quite a few on eBay last year. Cheap, too. That was the book that started me off, and I still read it now and again.

Terence Wise's 'Introduction' book does not seem to have any ACW rules in it:

link

There is a review of the ACW rules here:

link

(it's a cached version as original link kept 'timing out').

To note for these rules, the review states, "For what it may be worth, I have used these rules and like them, they are aimed at quite large battles -- none of this couple of regiments per side nonsense!"

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the review wmyers!
Unfortunately Ebay and Amazon currently don't have any copies they are prepared to ship to Australia. I will keep looking periodically.

The rules in 'Battle Gaming' are the standard Horse & Musket rules of the time, but they are clearly more ACW based than Napoleonic and the battle report is for the ACW using Terry's Airfix figures.

If you go over to the Plastic Figures page and look for Pauls Bods posts, he is using the Airfix rules and has a review on his blog. I last used them in about 1981, being pulled into other periods and other rules. I now use a modified version of a set from Wargames Illustrated by Brian DeWitt which are dead simple and work really well. I was tempted to marry his command cards to the Airfix rules to see if it made them less predictable.

You don't say what level of game you're interested in. Back in the '70s I co-wrote and published rules called Grand Army for Napoleonics and ACW. You might be able to find a used copy somewhere. (No, I don't have any except my personal copy.) In them, each regiment/battalion of infantry has three stands.

More recently, I authored what I called Easy ACW rules where each stand is a brigade. Some gaming magazine published them a few years ago, I forget which. Maybe someone here knows.

Johnny Reb II or III is the best old school ACW set in my opinion. 80s.

"Grand Army" rules are available for download at the Historifigs site.

link

Follow the tree from "Wargamers Corner" to "Grand Army" to find the PDFs for each chapter of the rules.

We had some great games with : Airfix Guide Number 24 : American Civil War Wargaming.

"Easy Civil War Rules" can be found by Googling:

lowry easy ACW rules

Ah, so that's how the Grand Army site works. I found the cover picture but couldn't figure out how to find the chapters. (Hey, I'm not a teenager!)

As for the page with my Easy ACW rules, I don't know how they got there. No one asked my permission. But use them if you want.

Coincidentally, I looked at my copy of the 1962 classic "War Games" by Donald Featherstone for the first time is some years and read the account of "Action in the Plattville Valley" set in 1863. The rules do not come anymore Old School than that. Worth a look!

Yes Graham. He had a ACW set in "Battles with Model Soldiers" as well. Which I owned. But went missing during a 2,000 mile cross country move. So I've been tempted to rebuy.