Saturday 15 April 2023

The Devil to Pay - Friday Night ACW Game

 It was only three of us, Julian, Rick and me, at Julian's last night, and Rick had never tried the free download Devil to Pay rules, so Julian and I diced off to see who would partner Rick commanding the attacking Confederates, and who would command the smaller force of defending Blue Bellies. As it turned out, I was paired with Rick, and after Julian provided a brief outline of how the rules work for his benefit, we were off.


A slightly blurry image of initial deployment. Union forces behind parapets, one brigade of infantry supported by a battery of three guns. The attacking Rebs had two brigades plus a pair of guns, 


Variable quality units - 4 bases = elite, 5 bases= standard, 6 bases = green




The defending Union brigade had a similar mix, with a very small (3 bases) unit of green coated sharp shooters.
A second brigade would arrive at some point in the game to reinforce the defenders.


The Union position seemed pretty strong.


But in pre-game rolling, I achieved a brilliant commander (3 extra group order pips) Rick and average commander (2 pips) and poor old Julian a bumbling commander (only 1 extra order pip)


Ricks Reb Brigade in column of lines, smack bang in front of the Union battery - nice unit placement, Julian! The two red markers are the organic orders each unit has, the extras for commanders mentioned above are in addition.


Situation after a couple of moves - the initial firing in the first three to four action phases took care of all the guns on both sides. As we started the game about 14" apart, any 4 5 or 6 was a hit, and it only took two hits to remove a base - the Reb guns went first, but the Union ones didn't last much longer.


My brigade shook out into line - one unit (6 base greens) "skedadelled" (a kind of voluntary route) when they were sitting on 6 hits (1 per base) but the other three units lined up and poured fire into the outnumbered Union defenders, as Rick maneuvered his command into a flanking position where the Union battery had originally been.


The small brown teardrop shaped markers are hits on the units. These affect firing, until you have one hit per base, and the unit cannot fire at all. Thereafter, more hits start removing bases - which is why it can be a good idea to play the Skedaddle move if a unit is in that situation (which is what I did with my green unit earlier). The hits can be rallied off with a 4 5 or 6 roll, but only two at a time normally and only in a rally phase, so you have decisions to make all the time.


The one and only view I took from behind the Federal lines - the reinforcements have arrived, but wouldn't you know it, Julian rolled another 1 for the commander rating!


As my brigade pinned the Union defenders in place, gradually whittling down their numbers (I wiped out the elite sharp shooters!), Rick developed his flanking attack.




My dice rolling was at the least average all night - this one was a bit better - four hits on a unit of Union troops already carrying a hit on each base - this roll wiped them out completely!


A three to one advantage plus extra orders - effectively, if the correct tiles emerged from the action bag, my three regiments could fire five times in a move, compared with only three for Julian's (based on the extra command pips of the officers)


All the units of the first Union brigade were either destroyed or forced to make the voluntary skedaddle move to avoid that fate, and my brigade moved up to the defensive parapet, which now gave me protection from what remained of the second Union brigade.


We called the game here - I think Julian requested we play one more round just to see what happened, but he had minimal hits on our guys, and when we fired back, every base in his remaining two units took a hit!



The final situation - definitely an overwhelming victory for the stars and bars!

I really enjoy these rules and am thinking I could easily adapt them for solo play AND for any period. The actions are absolutely generic - fire, move, rally, charge - plus 4 "Carpe Diem" tiles where you roll off to be the player who decides which of these four actions will apply to the next phase. One of the advantages we had in the game was, the Carpe Diem tiles came out more often than any other, and we won 90% of them, so if it suited us to fire, we could, or if it suited us to rally off hits, we did that.

Julian and his wife Jane are off to the UK in a few days for seven weeks to visit their daughter who is a medical researcher based in Oxford, along with her partner, who is in a similar line of work, so, no more Friday games in Remuera for a couple of months - might have to look at some alternative to get a few games in!

Thanks for visiting and I encourage anyone who has read this far, to leave a comment!


40 comments:

  1. Interesting looking game and rules. The carpe Diem bit sounds cool and I’m always on the hunt for adaptable multiperiod rules, I’ll see if I can find these on line. As to gaming, zoom seems to be working out for me, ever thought of giving that a go?

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    1. Cheers JBM - I have left the link to the rules on your most recent blog post, but here it is again, if you happen to return here (and for any other interested parties!) https://www.thedeviltopay.com/_files/ugd/852841_0fe1541a07b842049a2b1fb387f1b2a8.pdf

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    2. Cheers Keith, I’ve downloaded them from your link.

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    3. All good Mark - hope they provide some useful ideas - I reckon they would work really well for solo games to be honest, as both sides are constrained by the Action Tiles and the number of order tokens they have.

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  2. These do seem an interesting and fun set of rules

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    1. Thanks Scotty - some may decry a lack of "realism" but I find it a fun game on a Friday night after work, with a couple of beers and take away meal thrown into the mix - beer and pretzel games, I believe the North American colonists call them!

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  3. That looked like a fun and compact game Keith, just the thing for a Friday night. Did having a brilliant commander make much of a difference in the game?

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    1. Hi Lawrence, it was just right for the end of the working week! Yes, having 3 extra orders is pretty helpful. The way the rules work, there are two tiles of each action type (one Reb, one Union) plus four Carpe Diem - so potentially, 12 different actions per turn - and units only have two intrinsic order/action tokens. If a move action is turned over, and you want to move, you remove an action token from each unit, to fire, rally or charge is the same - so, you can see, it becomes a bit of a juggling act with what you are trying to achieve versus having all your units with no actions left - because the other side could potentially walk right up and charge you, without you being able to react in any way. The commanders can use their command tokens to allow a unit to take an action - if you have all units within a base of each other and the commander, his order can be to the group - so potentially increasing each turn to five actions versus three for a brigade with a crap leader. Thats quite an advantage, as long as the tiles come in the right order! We also had a lot of luck with the Carpe Diem tiles, which allow you to choose what action comes in the next turn, thus, we could fire a couple of times, and have Julian return fire - and if we suffered a lot of casualties, if we won the Carpe Diem on turn 3, we could choose Rally, and hopefully get rid of half the damage Julian had done, BUT, if Julian had done very little damage, we could choose to fire a third time, and possibly, Julian would be unable to do anything, because he had already expended all his unit activations.
      Sorry, a bit long winded - but the short answer is Yes, having a good leader can make quite a lot of difference in this game!

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  4. You seem to be getting in some really large games here lately Kieth- this ACW game looks just great...I assume the figures are 28mm.

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    1. Thanks Kev - yes, well, almost - they are all Old Gory 25mm figures painted by out host Julian.

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  5. no cavalry ? great to see a infantry only stoush

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    1. Thanks Bruce, I guess the scenario and terrain did not really lend itself to cavalry...thankfully!

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    2. im working through the , they died for glory franco prussian scenarios and half of them have no cavalry, not they are much use in 1870. really having to work on my infantry tactics.

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  6. Very attractive table and troops!

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    1. Thank you Peter. Everything you see as provided by our host Julian.

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  7. I enjoyed your battle report. My, counterbattery fire is deadly to take out all guns at the start of the game. Lee would have liked that result at Gettysburg. One thing that does not make sense to me is that a unit can sustain one hit per base before bad things happen. Why is it that poorer quality troops have more bases than better quality troops? I would think the relationship would be the opposite.

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    1. Hi Jon - your comment had been held for some reason - can't see anything controversial in what you had to say though! Julian said on Friday that the "green" units being larger represents them being full strength, straight from recruitment, but with no battle experience - which is as good a reason as any I suppose - the more experienced you are, the more of your men are no longer with you. I don't know a lot of detail about the ACW but I seem to remember reading that they did not reinforce existing units, they just raised new ones so, I assume, the 1st Maine, raised in 1861 , would have ceased to exist by 1862, and anyone still alive would be added to the new 2nd Maine, and this process continued until by 1865, they were on the 19th Maine etc. I have seen a similar mechanism in a Napoleonic set we played years ago - there, the other side was not supposed to know the quality of your troops - but because green units were always larger, it wasn't hard to guess who was who!

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  8. Hmm. My comment must not have passed the censors (again).

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    1. That's really weird Jon...it's not that "push Publish 4 times" issue that Norm has mentioned?? It happens to me too occasionally but I put it down to using a fifteen year old iPad and sometimes being a bit far away from the router!

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    2. Nope. I (thought) I saw it publish and now it’s gone. SPAM folder?

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    3. Hmmm...very odd, I will try checking....

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    4. Could you try posting again? Seems odd the two comments above have appeared ok!

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    5. All resolved Jon - see above :)

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  9. It is always good to find a set of rules everyone enjoys for a fun game. I did download the rules from one of your previous posts, I will have to have another look.

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    1. I am sure they would not be to everyone's taste Peter. I have played quite a lot of TtS and FKAP, but I an not entirely a fan of grid based rules...they have some advantages, for sure, but also some problems, to my mind. Likewise Command and Colours...I do like the combat dice system in that, but the movement being almost entirely reliant on getting the correct cards I find a bit of an issue....

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  10. Yes, looking really great and interesting!

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    1. Thanks Michal, glad you found the report interesting

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  11. A nice playable set of rules, I particularly like the idea that the number of bases represent troop quality - an easy visual mechanic.

    I am just reading through the Andy Callan rules in the ACW paper armies book by Peter Dennis, with a view to putting a ‘fun’ game down.

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    1. Cheers Norm, yes, nothing too complicated but I found the game quite enjoyable - maybe if my dice roiling had not been above average, I would not have liked the rules so much?!

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  12. A nice game there Keith and obviously perfect for you guys at the end of the week, where you want fun and not too detailed and complex rules to make your head hurt. In fact these days for me simple but not simplistic rules tick the boxes, plus them coming from the same 'stable' so it is easier to move from one period to another. I hope Julian enjoys his trip to Oxford and that you can get some games in whilst he's away.

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  13. Great looking game Keith. Some interesting mechanics in the rules.

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    1. Thanks Ben - I seem to find, simpler is better in most rules these days - its probably an age thing!

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  14. An entertaining looking game Keith…
    I am definitely leaning towards simpler and easier to learn games these days… I’m not trying to recreate history… I just want to play with my toys 😁

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Thanks Aly, and therein lies the question Jon F at PWJ posed a few weeks ago...I would like to think I try to do both ie occasionally play realistic scenarios of actual battles, but we don't do it very often!

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  15. THIS is relevant to my interests as I’ve been thinking about ACW gaming lately. Nice when posts line up like that.
    Good looking ACW battle. Prying troops out of fortifications is usually hard. I wouldn’t want to do it. 😀

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    1. Thanks Stew, I am well aware that in your opinion, the AMERICAN Civil War is the ONLY civil war worth talking about, or playing! These are quite "gamey" rules but I am happy enough with how they work....maybe give them a try...you mentioned last time, that you had a copy somewhere ( I think!)

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  16. Wow - quite the bloody victory for the Reb's! Great looking game and I like the sound of those rules too.

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    1. Cheers Dai..."cheap and cheerful" is a description used by some people in this neck of the woods for something that does the job without knocking your socks off...as in " a cheap and cheerful pinot noir" from the local supermarket....I think that'd be a good term for these rules! Not too complicated, not particularly realistic but easy to remember and providing a fun game!

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    2. Cheap and cheerful was my stage-name when I was a young man. ;)
      I'm now doing my best to resist the urge to start a new ACW project! (I sold my original CSA collection to Stew @ TerribleLossofLeadandWealth blog)

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    3. Oh dear! That's why I have never sold off any old collection, regardless of lack of use! You never know when I might need that troop of Buffalo Soldiers I got for Pony Wars fifteen years ago and have used about twice!

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