AAR; ACW (Longstreet rules) 9 Oct 2016

This was the 7^th battle (early 1864) of a 9 battle mini-campaign using Longstreet rules by Sam Mustafa (Honour Publishing). My Union force played against the Rebels commanded by Ian. I was ahead in the campaign by 5 victories to 1 defeat (24:21 EP), and in each battle the defending force had won. The composition of my force can be viewed in my previous blog post (November 2015).

 We randomly selected the ‘Meeting Engagement’ scenario and there was minimal additional terrain added. This scenario is interesting because there are no objective markers and there is no advantage to being either the attacker or defender. So this should be an equally matched contest. The thing we had not taken in to account was the club AGM which was also scheduled for the afternoon. Like all club AGM’s I have ever attended, this went on longer than expected, and so the time available for our game was severely curtailed. We decided to carry on in the couple of hours left to us.

Both armies entered from diagonally opposite corners, so the first turns involved rapid movement in columns, followed by deployment into battle lines. All my games against Ian seem to involve great swings in lucky/unlucky dice rolling. The ‘dice gods’ seem to be toying with us. In this game whenever I had a situation that I was optimistic about, I rolled badly. Whereas when I was in trouble and pessimistic, I rolled exceptionally well! My vastly superior artillery just could not destroy an opposing Rebel battery despite numerous opportunities to roll 4+. A successful charge by a fresh Union infantry unit against another exposed, isolated rebel battery was repelled by melee combat! In contrast, I shot at a 5 strong Rebel unit with 10 dice needing 4+ to hit, scored 10 hits, most of which converted in to kills, wiping it out in a single turn! Ian pressed a well co-ordinated attack against my left flank and I thought I was in deep trouble, but here luck was on my side: firstly, I played the ‘They couldn’t hit a...’ interrupt card which removed all of Ian’s careful hoarded 6 cards just prior to his key attack turn; then in my turn, I used a recently obtained ‘Retrograde’ card to move my endangered units out of the path of attack. Without my fortunate card play, I’m certain the game would have been lost! On my right flank the action did not develop as quickly, but I was confident that my 7 base coloured regiment and battery of 3 Napoleon guns would hold their own.

Unfortunately time was not on our side and the game ended early in a draw. Both sides had lost 10-15 bases each (the victory target was 23). I felt I had played poorly (I only scanned the rules before the game and was very rusty) and that Ian had the upper hand, so a draw was a good result in this game. Due to the constraints of time, I only took 1 photo and this was as we were doing the (hurried) campaign phase at the end (also the battery was out of juice, and the photo was taken accidentally!). Neither of our commanders was promoted (Ian need not have rolled because he has already reached the maximum 4 Eagle rank). My army did suffer in the campaign attrition phase, with my coloured regiment losing 3 bases! My campaign cards yielded an improvement to scouting in the next game (as if I needed such a bonus), a couple of new units (including another large coloured regiment), plus repeaters for my Maine regiment. My Union force available for battle number #8 will be:

Commander	Personality				Rank		EP’s
“Art” Rooney	Indian Wars Veteran (Scout: 2D6 & keep higher)				3 Eagles (2/63)		26
Unit	Type	Elan	Exp.	Strength		Notes
9th Pa Artillery	ART	-	-	3		3x Napoleon
37th (Prov) Pa Infantry	INF	Season	Veteran	7
13th\14th Pa (Prov) Inf.	INF	Season	Veteran	4		Sharpshooters (5,6 Skirm Fire)
16th\45th Ohio (Prov) Inf.	INF	Caut.	Veteran	4		Sharpshooters (5,6 Skirm Fire)
26th NJ Artillery	ART	-	-	3		3x Lt Rifle
29th NJ Artillery	ART	-	-	3		2x Lt Rifle, 1x Hvy Rifle
7th US (Coloured) Inf.	INF	Eager	Recruit	4
8th Maine	INF	Season	Veteran	5		Repeaters
10th Vermont NEW	INF	Season	Veteran	6
11th US (Col.) Inf. NEW	INF	Eager	Recruit	10
				49 bases
Broken Code: add +2 to scouting score in next game.

Notes: The units are listed in order of campaign appearance. The Pa units are from my original force. The 37^th Pa, 12^th NH and 88^th NJ were so battered that they were combined in to the ‘new’ 37^th (Prov) Pa regiment.