"Thoughts on the 'On to Richmond!" Rules" Topic

What are everyone's thoughts on the classic On to Richmond rules, once published in the The Courier, and now fortunately reprinted by Mark Severin (Extra Crispy). I'm interested in how accurately they represent combat in the ACW, and how they compare with rulesets such as Fire & Fury, Altar of Freedom, and Johnny Reb III.

Has anyone tried them for conflicts other than the ACW?

There was an official Franco-Prussian variant, "nach Paris", and I think a few more horse and musket variants published with tin the pages of the old Courier.

I remember an "On to Philadelphia" (AWI) and an "On to Sevastopol" (Crimean) showed up at conventions a few times.

I did a scripted--all deployments and decisions historical--Picket's Charge with OTR a few years ago, which came out spot on, though I did have to invent a "light cover" category. You also have to move multi-brigade columns on the card of the lead brigade, and I highly recommend the optional "mixed gun artillery battalion."

They're my preferred ACW rules for brigade as the maneuvering unit until you get too many brigades--or too many players. Card draw is excellent for solo, fine for two players and progressively worse as you add more players. At that point, you need something more like "Altar of Freedom," which I find gamey but playable.

Johnny Reb is set lower, and has many admirers, but for me, varying unit size by altering the number of castings on a stand instead of the number of stands is a serious drawback. You can easily require differently-based regiments for each day or phase of a battle, and in some cases, the scenario designer is simply guessing. We don't have level of detail on numbers and equipment the rules call for.

I really don't know anything wrong with Fire and Fury. I was irritated when F&F Regimental moved out of alignment with OTR, but evidently there weren't a lot of us. Many people enjoy this one.

I did a corps vs corps battle back in June pitting Thomas' XIV Corps against a partially made-up Hardee's Corps during the 1863 Tullahoma campaign. I used division cards and a corps card (for the corps commanders and corps artillery) for activation. I had four Union divisions with 11 brigades (3, 3, 3, & 2 brigades) versus four Confederate divisions with 11 brigades (also 3, 3, 3, & 2 brigades). We had each division move all of its brigades on the single division card.

The main thing we found was the ability of artillery to inflict a lot of damage without taking much in return. Infantry fire didn't have the effect we thought it should have had against deployed artillery. Everything we've read about ACW battles indicates that if the artillery got close enough to an infantry line, then the battery(ies) starting taking prohibitive casualties. I haven't figured out a way to implement that in the game yet.

Hope this helps,

Jim

I was looking on his site Scale Creep and could not find the rules. I have not played them in years and I would like to be able to get a new set. They were fun, though we moved over to Fire & Fury when that set came out.

I still like the rules, but I have not been able to get many people to play them given all the newer rules there are. Plus some players just dislike the random activation and having such a variety of possible results when rolling to remove a morale marker.

I don't particularly like the Scale Creep reprint for two reasons:
1. It used the original magazine version as its basis without incorporating changes made to make the rules better in the pamphlet version later published by The Courier (this is especially true of the terrain rules). I wish he had used the pamphlet version as the basis instead and much prefer to play using that version.
2. IMO I feel it missed the mark in how multiple morale markers should handled. FWIW I feel the morale marker was intended to represent disorder as well as the need for a morale check so it's not clear what the multiple morale markers are meant to represent except someone's nifty idea.

Well, I played it once at a convention and will never play it again. Charging made no sense to me what so ever. So I charged with every infantry I had and won "player of the game". Rather play Johnny Reb anytime.

The reprint is available as a PDF from Wargame Vault:

link

When I did the reprint/compilation the goal was simply to get them back in print and in to the hands of gamers. Full disclosure: I have only played them twice. I consulted the original author when doing so. It was not intended to be a "new edition."

It includes the four variants for Ancients (Ad Gallica!), Napoleonics (On to Vienna!), Franco Prussian (On to Paris) and the Crimea (On to Sebastopol).

There are also reprints of several articles and scenarios from The Courier.

As this was a reprint I left much of the original language intact, including some interesting grammar and spelling.

Thanks Mark. I will order a copy.

Chris B.

Sometimes you have to scratch your head while you try to figure out what the author intended.

Firing is pretty simple. Melee is a lot more complicated. Melee Value = S x (CV + A) x M + D10.

Morale can get a little wonky and some strange things can happen.

I liked them back in the day but the group has moved on – we mostly use Black Powder or Fire 'n Fury

There are those (I include myself among them) who opine
that FnF is the son (or perhaps g'son) of OTR.

Some here may recall that I, with permission and prior to
EC's purchase of the system, gave away copies of OTR
via file transfer to anyone who wanted one.

I ran OTR for years as a system which gave a fairly quick
and not terribly inaccurate game of ACW brigade-level
ops. Of course, there are today descendants of FnF
brigade level which are, presuming resources (space
and miniatures), more appealing to those with time
and the resources mentioned.

Our group in Chicago burbs in the 90s – The Benedict Arnold Society – played through the whole Civil War over a period of several years using OTR. We made a number of changes (unlimbered artillery could not move, for example) that really helped in terms of believable results. But the one aspect which always seemed out of line was the Charge Melee calculation.

And, yes, FnF is the direct son of OTR. Per a discussion with Rich H at Historicon many years ago.