American Civil War 1862

North America, June 1862, the Battle of Cross Keys, well a rough approximation anyway. We took a scenario from an old Miniature Wargames magazine, and converted it to Volley and Bayonet for our first American Civil War game in quite some time. It probably should have been fought at the lower Wing scale, but we opted to use the map and forces at normal VnB scale. The game was fought using my 15mm ACW forces (mostly FreiKorps figures). The buildings are scratch built from card.

The Union forces (largely M4 troops) are attacking a better quality Confederate force.

Confederate forces deployed in some of the many wooded areas of the battlefield.

The Confederate right/Union left, where so much of the action took place. The ravine that was so significant in the original battle is just behind the Confederate forces in the upper left of the photo.

The Union commander masse much of his artillery in his centre to try to blast the Confederate defenders out of their positions.

The Confederate right deteriorated in to a swirling melee with massed short range fire ringing out through the trees, and mad screaming as units charged and counter charged. The battle was eventually won by the Union attackers.

In the meantime the Confederate defenders boldly attacked through the centre. Here they are seen charging one of the defending Union brigades. However even here they were bloodily repulsed, and overall victory went to the Union forces.

We were in this case more interested in creating a good quality game than in recreating the original historical battle, and we succeeded. This was  a close fought battle in which the balance swung several times. The Union forces snatched a final victory with a series of last turn charges that took advantage of a couple of very small battlefield advantages that had occurred on the Confederates' previous turn.

As always, a damned fine game.

One slightly contentious aspect of the second edition VnB rules for us is the zone of control. We decided to opt for a house rule where the ZOC only exists directly to the front of a stand (rather than extending to the sides as well), and to use the DBX WADBAG interpretation used in DBA games called the 'rolling carpet' interpretation. That is, The ZOC stops when it meets the first enemy unit. It works well in our opinion.