From Shakos to Coal Scuttles ACW Test Game

Monday night George and I tried the FS2CS Rules in the ACW period. We wanted to test all the rules so set a central objective and a one and a half hour time limit to make us advance and engage. Both sides had 9 units and 6 Command Dice. We set up a busy tabletop typical of the conflict, we also ensured there was the obligatory ACW stone wall 😊. The idea was to try every rule we could so we included some larger, smaller, elite and raw units.

At the end of the session and eight turns completed we were pretty happy that FS2CS would allow us to play a huge ACW battle on one of our Monday night sessions. Like any set of rules covering a broad time frame they will never be perfect for a particular period but this one worked okay so we'll definitely schedule it in for a Monday night!

Below are the changes we will be using for our ACW FS2CS games, some of these will also be used for other wars/time frames when we use FS2CS. Just a note for ACW games for which we use these rules we are assuming each foot unit is a regiment and each base within it represent around 125 soldiers.

FS2CS ACW Rules Updates:

Army Rating Leadership & Command Dice;

We will allow you to not use your leadership Dice when rolling Command Dice (a big call) but if you do include the dice allocated by Leadership in your Command Dice Roll include a D12 in the throw, if a '1' is rolled on the D12 subtract one from the Leadership value (minimum of ZERO) for the rest of the game, this indicates a Leader casualty. If your Leadership level is ZERO obviously you can disregard this, If your Leadership starts at say 3 this result could occur up to three times!

This is in addition to the existing Lead from the Front and Heroic leadership rules.

Formations;

For the ACW period, we will have three formations for Foot/Dismounted Units;

Existing 'Advancing' Mode is really a March Column, it acts as per rules but may not move within 12" of an enemy unit in its Line of Sight. If it starts a movement phase within 12" of it must deploy from this formation.

'Attack Column' Mode will be 2 bases wide and at least have one base in a second rank, once a unit reaches only 2 bases in strength it may not use this formation, the remaining two bases automatically go to 'Battle' mode. This formation may turn up to 45 degrees before moving or charging, it moves the same distance as the 'Advance' Mode.

'Battle' Mode for Foot/Dismounted Units must have room to extend to a full single line to deploy and act as per the rules.

Interpenetration of foot units by foot units is allowed if they can clear the other at no penalty.

Interpenetration of horse units by horse units is allowed if they can clear the other at no penalty.

Interpenetration of artillery units by foot and horse units is allowed if they can clear the other at no penalty.

Single Base Units;

A unit reduced to a single base may still function as a 'Battle' mode unit, for this period many Regiments had very small compliments and still functioned, they are still able to merge with another unit as per the rules.

Movement:

In addition to requiring a Shock Die to enter or move through Dense terrain a unit also suffers the Sparse terrain movement modifier i.e. 'Whenever a unit enters a sparse feature or begins a move within one, roll 1D6 per stand in the unit. For every 6, reduce the remaining available movement allowance of the unit by 1”. This can force a unit to halt, unable to move any further.'

Rear/Flank moves, when in 'Battle' formation units may move at half speed directly to the rear (retain facing) or directly to their flank, no oblique moves.

Infantry in 'Battle' mode may about face for free and follow it with either a move or fire.

Fire Combat;

Artillery firing directly at a Unit with a second rank receive a plus one die modifier.

Artillery firing directly at a Unit with a third rank or more receive a plus two dice modifier.

Artillery enfilading an infantry formation receive a plus one die modifier.

Note the first two modifiers above will encourage players to follow the usual formation doctrine used during the war of operating in extended lines.

Push Back Result, if a unit is in cover and receives a Push Back result they can at their discretion can take one level of Disarray per Push Back this replaces the 2" move(s).

Move & Fire Phase;

Units should be marked with Move or Fire 'markers' as they complete their action, we are doing this purely for our own administration purposes.

Marking Firing/Moving, unlimbered/Limbered Artillery bases, if an Artillery base moves replace it with the limber this indicates it moved so can't shoot, we are doing this purely for administration purposes so we don't accidently fire and move a gun!

LOS Clarification:

Two linear obstacles between firing units that they are not adjacent to block LOS

Important rules that can will be using to give units ACW character are;

The (Obligatory) Rebel Yell Rule, using two Shock Dice to activate a Rebel infantry unit to charge gives it two extra dice in the Impact Phase of the the Charge sequence.

Elite, these will be for Veteran units for ACW purposes, they can be no larger than three bases, Veteran units will also be hardened so have a Disarray rating of 5 and have a 50% chance of being Hesitant (role before the game).

Raw units are fresh eager ones, these will have only three Disarray as per the rules but can be five or six bases!

Some pictures from our 'game'! 

Our Battlefield, both sides objective was to control the bridge in the centre and we were playing to a fixed time of 1.5 Hours, in which we had 8 turns!

There were two formations for each foot and horse unit: 'battle' i.e. line and 'advancing' a single base wide column. Below you can see regiments of four bases in 'advancing' formation. for these ACW games we believe the latter required changes!

A Yankee Zouave Regiment in Line shooting it out with Rebels, they have two levels of Disarray as shown by the mini die. We are only going to allow single rank lines for our ACW regiments.

A Yankee regiment in trouble, it is up to four levels of Disarray (so will be required to retire next Union Moral Phase unless they reduce this total!) and in the sights of two Confederates Units!

Rebel Guns unlimbered and drawing fire from the Union troops, they ended up with three levels of Disarray, lesson learned, don't unlimber too close to the enemy!

In the foreground is the Confederate CiC.

If by chance you use FS2CS please let us know your thoughts on our thoughts!