"Pre-made Picketts Charge scenario?" Topic

Does anyone know of an ACW scenario book that includes a scenario for Picketts Charge?

Thanks!

Good news and Bad news…

ENDURING VALOR Vol 2 by Scott Mingus has detailed scenario description with illustrated map and Order of Battle. It is exactly what you want.

Bad news it is out of print and sometimes hard to find. Sometimes a copy shows up on eBay.

link

PDF link

These might help

Thanks much, I will investigate both!

Years ago I did a re-fight of Gettysburg. Each day played out based on historical results. On the third day, I set everything up for the charge, looked it all over, and decided that there was no reason to run the game.

I find it a good test of rules, Col Durnford, and to calculate the length of a turn. But if you're already happy with that, you're quite right.

Roll 1d6:
1-5 Pickett loses
6 roll again

Col Durnford, that is exactly why I didn't include it in my scenario book.

Roll 1d6:
1-5 Pickett loses
6 roll again

that is exactly my concern. Is there any interest to play a scenario where you have thousands and thousands of infantry going straight to slaughter?

Lots of artillery….Lots of dice rolling…long shot at victory…id give it a go! Especially if I've already painted up enough minis for other parts of Gettysburg.

To me its really not that different from running a D-Day scenario or Neys charge at Waterloo.

It also strikes me as a good way to test the rules you are using.

Take one of those rules which tell you they have no fixed ground scale, or a turn takes up no fixed amount of time. A replay of Pickett's Charge will give you both. Also, if you suspect the rules are off on artillery firepower--see whether the preliminary bombardment does the right amount of damage, and once you've got that adjusted, whether Pickett really is repulsed.

A scenario with no options is a bad multi-player game, but it can be a very good way to test and calibrate rules.

Even if you never play Pickett's Charge, the OOB would be useful for playing Pickett's Flank March.

- Ix

I ended up ordering this book. If it has anything close to an OOB I'll repost here:
link

Even if you never play Pickett's Charge, the OOB would be useful for playing Pickett's Flank March.

Nah. It would have been Longstreet's Flank March--and Longstreet's Corps. The non-Pickett units involved in the Charge would have shuffled over to cover the frontage of Hood's & McLaw's Division. Mind you, I don't think that would have worked either. If the ANV had a shot at winning, it was gone by the evening of the Second Day. But it wouldn't have been the fiasco the Charge was.

Keep in mind that Lee ordered the charge to move in quick time. The actual time it took for the Rebels to move out to contact within 150 yards of the Union was 19-20 minutes.

In every Pickett's charge scenario I've seen, regardless of the scale or rules, it requires an entire hour in game scale to accomplish the same advance. The scenario given above is a good example. It is @48 inches from Confederate base to Union, or 1200 yards. Infantry more at 12 inches in a turn of 15 minutes max. Even with the rules quick time of 16 inches, it still requires twice the time to advance to the Union lines as historically.

What is interesting is that the map for the PDF scenario given above has been 'squished' so the distance between the battle lines is 1200 yards instead of near 1600 it should be.

Something to think about.

McLladie, I've considered the problem of time as well. Most ACW rules I've seen have 15, 20 or 30 minute turns (if they even mention a time scale).

That Means The Leading Brigade Would Cross The Distance To The First Union line in 1 maybe 2 turns.

The one way I've considered to slow up the advance is the fence that the CSA Brigades have to cross. The other 2 items that can slow down the CSA advance is the light woods in front of Pettigrews Division and the slight uphill advance they make. Though the change in elevation really seems too gradual to make a big impact.

I haven't played BP yet but I just aquired the ACW expansion so I'm curious to see how it works out, even if it's an exercise in futility.

Uesugi Kenshin:

The advance time for Pickett's Charge is one of the best documented that I know. There are questions of when it started and when it ended, but all accounts agree on the time involved.

In this time, the advance crossed two fence lines, dressed lines twice and 'obliqued' the lines to more focus on the trees, which was part of Lee's tactical orders.

Even doing all this, they crossed better than 1400 yards in 19-20 minutes at quick time, 108 yards a minute. Under fire

And no, it doesn't mean "The Leading Brigade Would Cross The Distance To The First Union line in 1 maybe 2 turns."

In the RF&F scenario given above, units move at 12 to 16 inches a turn, 12" being 300 yards. That means 3 to four turns to reach the Union lines, each turn being 10 to 15 minutes according to the rules scale.

The recent rules set "Pickett's Charge" has the same problem even though the designer didn't give a time scale. with 1mm equaling 1 yard, it still takes brigades far longer to cross 1400 yards than historically.

So if a rules set has 15, 20 or 30 minute turns, then you know how long it *should* take them to cross 1400 yards of ground. F&F has the same problem with 30 minute turns as do most all ACW rules sets.

There are game reasons for this, but it still is a problem. The Reasons are, if units move on the table as far as they historically could:

1. They would scoot across the table in very few turns
2. Would move so fast that artillery would not have the time/turns to inflict attritional damage.

The answer has been for most all rules to hold infantry units to 6-12" moves regardless of terrain and time scale.

I haven't played BP yet but I just aquired the ACW expansion so I'm curious to see how it works out, even if it's an exercise in futility.

I haven't played it, though I have the rules. As there is no actual time or ground scale given, it is still easy to see it will be a low odds chance event that gets troops across that much terrain. [Simply establish the size of the units and ground scale is determined by frontage, and from there time scale is easy to establish.]

Well! I guess I learned better than to post questions in the ACW forum in the future, lol!

The original Fire & Fury rules have a Pickett's Charge scenario; the scenario has victory conditions which give the Rebs a fighting chance.

Hi Uesugi,

But the first two replies were exactly what you needed, weren't they? (Larry and DW pointing you toward scenarios for the Charge.)

For the rest: well, some people think it's glorious to game as an isolated event, others think it's pointless. Myself, I'm more in the latter camp as I like a game to be about making decisions, and Pickett's Charge doesn't offer either side enough options to make it interesting for me. But that doesn't mean you can't have tremendous fun out of it if your personal victory conditions are different from mine.

Having fought Gettysburg a few times (the whole battle, that is), I can kind of see how Pickett's Charge came about. If you haven't previously committed to a major flank attack instead, and you have to hit the Union line frontally somewhere, well, that saddle between the two streams is relatively accessible.

And, as Bill says, you can cross it in 15 minutes! In my BBB scenario for Gettysburg, I'm guilty of the slow map movement rates he criticises: infantry move 12" per turn, which is 1500m, and a turn is 2 hours. Having said that, 12" is enough for Pickett to carry out the charge in a single turn, and of course that turn includes the decision and orders process and forming up beforehand, and the fighting when he arrives, and the falling back or exploitation afterwards.

Not what you're after, but for what it's worth and for anyone else who is interested, the BBB scenario is freely available from groups.io here:

PDF link

Good luck with finding the scenario that suits you and getting a good game out of it.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
groups.io/g/bloodybigbattles
bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com
link

Thanks both Dexter & Chris for the info!

It also strikes me as a good way to test the rules you are using.

I was responding to Uesugi's comment above.