ACW Clash

Thursday night the Baron was hemmed in, so I opened my doors to a few of the boys for a friendly Regimental Fire & Fury battle. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible since the new guy, Doug, would be playing his first game using these rules. With the complexity of the modifier system (among with other facets of the rules)  over the regular F&F rules, this game always seems to cause some consternation. I like these rules, so I'm hoping with a few more games under our belts, some questions answered, and some patience, others within our group will embrace the rules enough to enjoy them when we play them. I do believe the next time I host an ACW game, I'll use the simpler Black Powder rules to compare and contrast.

I chose to run a simple, generic scenario - all units being trained, equal force size, all commanders able. Minus a few rules disagreements, it was a fun evening.

Confederate and Union battle lines.

 A regiment on the Union right enters the cornfield.

Two Yankee batteries set up on the high ground.

Heavy fighting along the Union right as the Irish Brigade emerges from the corn. Yankee casualties would immediately start to mount.

Two large Rebel units would dominate the Union left along Matthews Road.

My daughter thought it would be fun for Benny to get in on the action.

15mm EIR Army Progress

A few years back I decided to paint a 15mm army from antiquity. I really didn't even consider what I'd do with it, it just sounded like fun. At first I thought I'd take a stab at Alexander's Macedonians, but decided to go with an Early Imperial Roman army because I wanted to complete something quicker than I thought it would take to complete multiple phalanx battalions (I don't even want to ponder how I'd have done the sarissae).  Since none of the fellas has a 15mm enemy of Rome, I decided to double-down and paint up a massive army so we could split it up and throw the two halves against each other (even though Pre-Imperial, the period of Pompey vs. Caesar fascinates me).  Doug (New Guy), has decided to paint a sizable Gallic army to match these Romans in battle using To The Strongest or Hail Caesar rules. I decided to base these for the popular DBA rules so as to unload them easier down the road if they start to collect dust. In this army, a unit is comprised of four 40x20 bases for foot and four 40x30 bases for cav. When complete, there will be ten units of legionnaires, four units of auxila, five units of archers, four units of cav (probably all light for now), a pair of elephants, a pair of scorpions, and a pair of trebuchets. Mixed in will be a pair each of mounted and dis-mounted army commanders, several command leaders, and several heros (lone centurions). Five legionnaire units and three archer units are already completely finished and based. All together there will be over 100 bases and probably over 300 minis. I had set these aside for quite a while to focus on my 25mm ACW and WW2 projects, but decided to complete them around the new year. As you can see, I am nearly finished with the legionnaires (I need to apply all of the shield transfers and touch up), and still have quite a bit of work left on the cav and elephants. Everything else is finished for the most part. Basing everything will take quite a while. I anticipate another couple months of work.