Overland Campaign

 Likely after doing a Gettysburg game and possibly campaign, the work of running an overland campaign will be my target and much more material will appear here.

For now, this will do:

Good inspiration for the next little while.

View of July 1861

 A map and timeline of the pivotal month of July 1861:

Strategy, Tactics and weapons of the American Civil War

 Simple video explaining much of the mid 19th century battlefield.

More of the hidden greatness of Grant - as president this time.

 Worthy video to see, and Lawrence Wilkerson goes into some of the Grant Presidency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGVbXz5Pvx0

In Honor of the man.

 

Restart of a campaign project, forces assemble

 Many decades after starting with assembling some models, then stopping, changing occupations, marriage and three children, the restart of a project gets to a usable stage.

army command stands completed for
Bull Run, 1861

See the full forces assembled at Murdock's Marauders

Forces assemble

 The stop-start of the earlier campaign has given way to having the tools needed to run any battle in the future.

With that aim, the Union forces for Bull Run (1861) have been assembled and mustered.

Full details HERE.

wonderful imagery

 The latest campaign has produced some battles.

a great image from the tabletop

More details about these battles and the mapping/game-system will be coming soon.

New attempt at a campaign

 Again there will be a new attempt at a campaign.

This time starting in 1861, with a new map and some different concepts.

Playing along again for me, though I did design a cyberboard gamebox for the game-master to use.

screenshot of the cyberboard system

The map was designed by another player, I imported it and then did some pieces backs on the Napoleonic ones I did for Campaign of Nations.

First Campaign 'style' game attempt.

The first attempt at a campaign style game was made on July 19, 2020.

Your humble author participated via remote.

Map for the game

The concept for set-up revolved around 'deployment points' which were earned and either defended or taken away via cavalry brigades scouting efforts.

Then the forces deployed based on their points value, with 0 needed to just march on at the main arrival point.

This cross-roads saw the Union really get hammered by the Confederate scouting, so much that it took all the points just to get a flank corps into the woods and a couple of cavalry brigades on the map.  While the Confederates had a full division of foot, with artillery entrenched on a nearby hill.

The battle after action report can be found here:
ACW AAR

I also generated a sheet for the 15mm movement stands:

Mini-Campaign Concept

visualizing a mini-campaign

The first set of games will be played out using a mini-campaign concept from Tony Bath's book: "Setting up a Wargames Campaign".

Under this concept two teams of three players each will divide up a mass army into corps and divisions into three 'columns' that will face each other in the A-B-C battles, then the winning side of the best-of-three series will then face off against the losing side of the same battles in a 'final battle' that will determine if there will be a successful conquest in this campaign.

The winning side gets a return of 30% of their losses in the battle, from men returning to the colors and having access to the battlefield and the supplies needed for them are easily sourced so that they may be fighting fit.  The retreating side only gets 10% of their battle losses counting as returned to the colors as many do not have the arms and equipment needed to be fighting fit.  Moreover often times a retreating force will have difficulty calling the men back to arms due to the loss of morale connected with such battlefield losses.

Not a huge campaign, yet something that the players could at least get a sense of what a more complex and elaborate campaign might be like.

Starting Off

Grant at Shiloh

While primarily a meeting place for the players in a Campaign series handling the American Civil War (ACW) there will be, from time to time, items of interest or value to more casual game players and snippets from historical reference which others may find of value.

I plan to have all the future ACW campaign activities at least reported here, if not fully detailed via reports and reference materials to be found here on this blog.