Wednesday 19 September 2018

AAR 1 - ACW Skirmish - Sixty-One Sixty-Five Rules

Confederate infantry defending a fence line in a skirmish while foraging near the Potomac June 1861...



Time for some ACW Skirmish action so Dave and I hit the gaming table with the Sixty-One Sixty-Five rules!


We played Scenario One from the Rules, the table started like this...



The AAR

I'll let the pictures do the talking!


The Confederates were outnumbered but they had a fence line near there set up just asking to be defended so they moved toward it but suffered some shocking activation roles slowing their advance! 

 The Federal troops seeing Rebels in the distance crossed the stream before them as quickly as possible they were out to teach these Secessionists a lesson!

A couple of section of Yankees crossed at a small ford on their right flank (we added this ford into the setup to test the command control rules!)

 Third turn in and the first of the Southerners reached the fence and opened fire!

The Yankee view of the first shots...they are deploying into lines and with skirmishers...

 By turn five things were getting hot around the fence line, due to their slow advance the Confederates had got their only just before the Northerners... 

The command control rules work! Some advice don't get out of command range! In the game the Yankee flanking sections were pretty slow to advance due to the lack of leadership activation bonus's and the woods, the second section were so far behind they diverted toward the centre!

The fighting raged around the fence! The Yankee Zouaves on the right pushed the Rebels back from it elsewhere the Federals were in the open and enemy fire was causing casualties! 


Then came the crucial moment the Yankee section plodding through the woods emerged taking the Confederates in the flank just as several sections charged their front! The Rebels were pushed back...

Overall view after the Yankee section flank attack. You can see the Rebels had all but been driven back from the fence and their left had been 'turned'..

The Northern masses pushing forward their Captain and 'Colour Party' safely in the rear.
I know colours would rarely be in such skirmishes but they look so cool and the rules include a couple of benefits when you including a standard and a musician in the OOB... 

 The overall view at the end of the action...


The objective of the scenario was to break the opposition which meant inflicting 33% casualties on them (but this includes a sliding scale i.e. an infantryman is 1 casualty and an officer is 4 casualties!). Anyway in our game neither side was broken...

Casualties
USA 12
CSA 8


We called the game at this point as we both had early starts the next day but were pleased with how the rules played. It was a great night including a lot of hollering and cheering in poor accents...funny most of our troops sound a bit like Foghorn Leghorn whether from the North or the South! I have a couple of questions on the rules I'll send through to Ganesha Games or maybe put on the Song of... Yahoo Group. Once we play another game I'll write up a rules review. We will definitely replay this scenario the whole way through though and soon!

2 comments:

  1. Nice looking troops, seems like an ok set of rules too.

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  2. Thanks Anthony!
    We’re playing scenario Two from the rules book tomorrow night.
    Played this one a second time and it was another Yankee victory I’ll write up an AAR for that soon...general consensus after a couple of plays is the rules work well but we also like to Song of... Rules too so are biased!
    😊

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