9/14 SBGC Meeting and Battle Report

 

Last Saturday I once again attended our monthly SBGC pow-wow where I joined Pete's "Bring Your Own Toys" ACW battle using Regimental Fire and Fury.

I have played FnF before and found it confusing but this second time around was easier, and I actually do like almost everything about the rules, except for the single dice combat resolution. I felt like it made things too swingy and random. There were times on both sides were a overwhelmingly superior tactical situation still resulted in a loss due to poor rolling.

This would not be a recreation of a particular battle but an opportunity for a bunch of guys to dust off their ACW minis and play a game, Pete made up a simple attack and defense scenario where the Confederates held a crossroad that the Union had to capture.

It was a 3 versus 3 game and I took control of the Confederate left opposite Pete. Initially our side was eager to attack (I had command of Pickett, that means I have to charge right?), but decided against that after determining that we were outnumbered 26 brigades to 34 and we'd stand a better chance of holding the crossroad if we held the high ground and entrenchment.

The main Union assault seemed to be on the center and right, while Pete appeared to be deployed to refuse their flank and pin me in place. 

Absentmindedly, we didn't ask Pete what the objective was before we had already deployed, so we weren't deployed optimally to defend the objective. We stretched our line across the entire table when we probably would've been better off focusing our troops around the crossroads. With how thin our lines were, my first move was to try to reposition to the right and compress our lines to give us some depth and reinforce our center and right.

But upon seeing me shuffle my brigades towards the center, Pete decided to launch his own attack in order to pin me in place.

 

In our center, Damon was fighting against Ix for control of the town surrounding the crossroads.

 

And on our right, Doug was being beaten back by John's Union forces.

Unable to move to reinforce my allies due to the coming Union assault against our left, and with our center and right crumbling, it seemed the writing was on the wall. Damon and I opted to make one last ditch effort to spoil the Union attack. We marched off the hills and entrenchments we held and occupied the creek, where we could get a defensive bonus, before the Union could take the creek and get it instead.

My rationale for going on the attack was that, because Pete was marching a bulk his force in a long column, he wasn't completely deployed to meet my own brigades yet. If I remained static on the hill, he could reorganize his men, but if I moved first, I could position my forces to get favorable engagements and attack his flank.

 

 But despite being able to reach the creek and get 2 to 1 engagements in our center and right, our shooting rolls went poorly and most of the Union center and right were barely harmed. On the Union turn they charged us and then it was their turn to roll poorly. Only one brigade managed to break through on our left and I had reserves left to plug the gap they made. One of my brigades was able to defeat a charge that had a 3 to 1 man power advantage and I chalk that up to the single dice combat resolution I mentioned earlier, because by all rights, they should've lost that one.

Unfortunately at this point it was 4PM and I had to leave, but the other guys stayed to continue playing. From what I'm told, the Rebs would eventually lose, which we all saw coming. We got lucky and repelled the first Union assault but they had a bunch more coming. I had a lot of fun though, and aside from my one gripe, I'm beginning to appreciate FnF and see why its so popular.

Other games being played were Nick's Battle of Alma game, and Chuck's air game.

That's all for this post. I'm sorry to say I have a long backlog of posts that I need to make, I still have to make a post about Pacificon, last month's Battle of Albuera game and this Sunday I'll be hosting a game of Charlie Don't Surf for the Fremont boys that I'll have to write about, but I've unfortunately been busy. First with preparations for Pacificon, and now for my upcoming CDS game and a Cyberpunk RED campaign I'm going to GM this weekend. Lots of stuff to do. Luckily none of it is work related so thank god for that. Until next time, folks!