Friday Night Game - ACW with "The Devil to Pay" free downloadable Rules.

 

The Devil To Pay

 

The Devil to Pay are fast playing rules for American Civil War miniatures.  They focus on the challenges and excitement of commanding an infantry brigade, while at the same time delivering that most valuable commodity in wargaming - FUN. 

 

If you are looking for a set of rules for your local club or to host a nail-biting convention game, then it’s The Devil To Pay!

 

The 2018 Edition of the Devil to Pay is now available for download.  It is free of charge; we hope you share it with other gamers and Civil War enthusiasts.

So much for the blurb - what are the rules actually like?

To me, they are a combination of many familiar ideas and concepts from other games (aren't they all?!) Every player has several units, each with two command/action tokens. In charge of three or four units is an officer, who also has between 1-3 command tokens, depending on how good he is - you roll a D6 before starting to determine this. If all units remain within a base width of each other/the officer figure, he can use his command tokens to issue "group" orders. 

In a bag are action "type" tokens, one grey, one blue, with FIRE, MOVE, or RALLY. The colour denotes which side does the action first (both sides do the same thing in the same turn) Also in there are four CARPE DEUM tokens; when they are drawn, the players roll off with a D6 each and the highest gets to choose what sort of action they want from the three options above. Finally, there are two "Whisky" tokens (I don't know!) - once both are drawn, the turn ends, and all tokens go back in the bag. This could be important if the game was set for eight or ten turns, as we had a couple of "moves" where only two or three actions were completed before both Whisky's were drawn.

So, elements of Bolt Action, Great Escape Games and Sharpe Practice (amongst others) are in here.

All rolls are with D6 and invariably, 1 2 3 are failures, 4 5 6 successes - so firing, a standard unit rolls 1 D6 per base and every 4-6 is a hit on the target with no saving throws. The first hits cause a marker per base, this reduces ability to fire back. Once every base has a marker, any subsequent hits remove a base from play. Of course, in the RALLY phase, you can roll to remove these markers by scoring - you guessed it - 4 5 or 6! But usually, you can only roll 2 x D6 per unit - but then again, you have at least two RALLY actions per turn (blue and grey) PLUS the four CARPE DEUM could potentially all be RALLY too, depending on what best suits the deciding player. The result is, it takes a really long time to actually cause genuine casualties on units, but at the same time, most units are carrying some disadvantage most of the time, so may only be firing 3 D6 instead of 5.

There are nuances, like getting an extra D6 in rally if you are in cover or taking one or more D6 off your firing roll depending on distance to target unit and whether it is in cover etc, but that is most of it - and as you can tell, I have been able to remember 75% of the mechanics after one three hour game which, to me, is the sign of a good rule set!

So, how did the actual game go - see below!

Above and below - initial set up (and I use the phrase advisedly, as we were a bit outnumbered!)

Several eye candy shots - all figures are OG from Julian's collection.

The theory was, all four forces had been maneuvering around in the darkness hours and as dawn broke, they find themselves on convergent routes. 

Johns small (three units of four bases) Union cavalry brigade prepare to defend the fence line against Julian's infantry brigade of four units of five bases, including one elite Zouave unit, supported by a battery of artillery.

After the first few rounds of fire, one unit of cavalry was forced to "skedaddle" (an actual thing in the rules) meaning a voluntary retreat.

The carbine armed cavalry was at a distinct disadvantage against infantry with rifled muskets. 

Union artillery (in my command) arrives and unlimbers.

John (who had played the rules with Julian previously) commented this battery was not long for the world and he was to be proved correct!

My plan had been to redeploy from the left flank to reinforce John and hold the bottom right corner of the table against Julian and Chris - I might have been better just to deploy in line and slug it out with Chris.....

At this point ALL Johns dismounted cavalry had been forced to pull back from the fence line, although thanks to the RALLY action, none had yet suffered any game ending casualties!

This is the last shot of my artillery - they were harder to hit (3 x D6 rather than 5) but still only requiring 4 5 or 6, and two hits per base. With fifteen bases firing, Chris destroyed them in one round of musketry!

Some of Chris's Rebs who wiped out my guns.

Meanwhile, bolstered by the arrival of infantry reinforcements, the US cavalry are once again manning the fence line.

View along the length of the table - a thin grey line at the far end marks Chris's command

Finally, after about two hours of exchanging fire, Julian's Rebs commit to a charge!

Two fresh regiments moved through the firing line and assaulted the fence line -one taking on the weakened, smaller cavalry unit, the other confronting my infantry.

And here are the results - my infantry rebuffed the Rebs and they rolled 3 D6 getting something like 15 inches - they can just be seen in the far distance in the shot above - but to the right of my unit, the dismounted cavalry is gone, and the grey coats are across the fence!

Victorious Rebel infantry finally gain the fence line.

Meanwhile, Chris converges on the woods, three units firing against one of mine - another inevitable result really - in a couple of rounds of fire, another Union unit was removed from play.

The final position when we called the game - an overwhelming Confederate victory - they lost no units at all whereas we had lost at least two, and possibly three. 

Two factors were at play - my tactics of marching to John were probably wrong - I should have just deployed more or less immediately (as Chris did) and confronted him line to line. The second factor was, we were quite seriously out gunned - I had slightly more fire power than Chris on our flank, but Julian had about double what John could deploy on their flank - so without my support, John's cavalry was bound to be overwhelmed eventually. For a learning game, however, it did its job - the rules were pretty simple and straight forward to pick up and remember after a couple of turns and for those who like "friction" and unpredictability in their games, these fit the bill without anything too complicated - and best of all - NO BLOODY SAVING THROWS! 

Doubtless, we are destined to play a few games using these rules over the coming weeks at Julians place, so look out for further game reports in due course!

PS

While tidying up the images used above, I noticed I had omitted to post one of my War of 1812 British units in my previous post - so here they are!

Now - that is DEFINITELY the last word for this post!