"Brother vs. Brother, Brigade against Brigade" Topic

Gents,

I ran my Brigade vs. Brigade ACW setup this past weekend a third time, and the guys achieved a real barn burner result with it.

The action culminated in a classic charge sequence from across a deadly field, into and over a defended fence line, and to hold against a Confederate cavalry counterattack.

The Union brigade, two-regiments deep, finally approaches the Rebel position here -

Making a passage of lines, the veteran 5th NY takes the lead with fixed bayonets -

Overcoming the defenders along the fence, and gaining that toehold into the enemy defense, the Zouaves will also hold and defeat a Confederate cavalry attack -

This turned out to be a tabletop action that ended as "one for the books" – enjoyed by both players, and especially fun to watch by this GM here too!

Great!

Lopoks great. How do you handle a passage of lines in the rules?

Thanks Flashman and 79thPA!

This game passage of lines is achieved just through having sufficient movement to be able to completely traverse the intervening unit. Although historically it usually caused disorganization to both formations involved, I've simplified the action without producing any ill-effects to any of the stands or units involved.

So far in these recent Brigade vs. Brigade matchups played, the opportunity to basically manage a wave assault has not come up before – whether that's been by player choice (most games have seen each opposing brigade being stretched out instead), and also because there is a large degree of random activation order in the card sequencing that can prevent coordination between units of different elan-ratings from working together (in this instance there were two green regiments in line abreast, that then were passed through by two veteran regular regiments behind them – all coming up as a real time activation opportunity that hasn't occurred that often before in recent games).

The game rules are my modded ACW variant to the Muskets & Tomahawks V.1 edition, so still using unit card activation pulls to generate the class-action activation opportunities. The "chaos" of the cards, although an easy method of achieving activation sequencing, doesn't really allow for much planning to actually pull off coordinated maneuvers like the passage of line between mixed unit formations.

The shorter answer (you deserve that too 79th) – this passage of lines potential hasn't occurred often in-game, so there's almost a 'penalty' applied to its potential success already – (I was happy to see an instance for it actually being pulled off). :)

Cool! You always have such a nice looking game!

Thank you Craig!

It was a sight to behold at our monthly game day. Thanks for running this superbly detailed game.

Fitz is our group's activities director, who wears so many other hats also, one being for that gushing/me blushing PR work too. ;)

Thanks Kev!

You make really nice stuff, Dave.

Craig, thanks so much for that ^