American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

My opponent and I are engaged in a Vicksburg Campaign and presently we are fighting the "Battle of Port Gibson". He has just captured the Confederate supply wagon which had 400 supplies on board. We noticed that this immediately garnered 400 points for Union.

Is this in all of the HPS games? Or only this scenario or disk? I am positive that in other games I have captured supply wagons and have been given no points. But a ratio of 1 point to one supply makes these now the "High priority" targets of the scenario's and may unbalance many a game or contribute to a-historical play. ie: go for his supply wagon rather than his army.

With this kind of point structure a whole scenario could be won or lost by the loss of a single wagon.

G. Collins
Army of Alabama
III/I/2nd Brigade

I just checked on this in Vicksburg and Shiloh vs the AI. In Vicksburg (getting started scenario) the loss of 300 supplies garnered 300 VPs. In Shiloh the loss of 238 supplies was worth 47 VPs.

I hope a patch comes out very soon for Vicksburg.


Brigadier General Dale Lastowicka
1st "Adirondack" Division
XXV Corps
Army of the James

New feature.

What is a-historical about attacking an opponents supplies?

Players will need to stop bringing wagons to the front, or using them to plug gaps in the lines. When units need to resupply, players will need to pull them out of the line and send them to the rear where it should be safe.

Players will need to use reserves to replace withdrawn units.

Players will need to assemble their supply wagons into division, corps, or army level wagon 'pools' with guards assigned. Perhaps that hight priced cavalry?

What is a-historical about commanders having to do the above. Keep your supply wagons guarded in the rear of your army, and keep an eye on what your opponent is doing so he can't get around you and cut your LOC.

What is a-hisotrical about that?

With this new feature on the big maps of the HPS games players can finally start being professionals concerned with logistics, instead of being ameteurs worrying about tactics.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

In some of the games there are Provost Guards and/or Artillery guards designed specificly to guard supplies and artillery.

In games such as Gettysburg, with its huge maps, you must use guards for slower moving or late arriving artilery and supplies.

While doing some research on the 15th Vermont Infantry (where a couple of my wifes ancestors were part of), records show that companies were left behind for the purpose of guarding routes or supply lines. This was true of other units as well.

Cavalry roving behind the main lines can have a really bad effect on your offensive, if they can easily take supplies. Many times you read of supplies just being burned.



<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
General, Commanding, Army of Ohio

ACWGC Cabinet member
</b></font id="gold">

On another board Drew responded to this question...in essence, he did mean for the wagons to be high value, but not quite that high...

"I've halved it for the first update/upgrade. I want players to keep their supply wagons away from the front lines (in most cases, units should have to be withdrawn from the line and go to the rear for ammo resupply), and also detail strong escorts for them when travelling in the rear along roads.

As for the question about it being an optional rule. It is optional only in that the designer sets the VP value and can set it at zero if he wants. the player has no choice."



LGen. Hamilton
II Corps
ANV, CSA

For the Port Gibson scenario and probably a number of others this VP for supply points is much to high. Capturing a wagon shouldn't shift a game a victory level.

Also, the rule is really not solving the problem it was added for. That is, using wagons to block fire or slow pursuit. It wasn't the ammo that was the issue, most games it is to important to both sides (usually for different reasons) to allow the other to capture it. But in Pennisula both sides had so many supply units they started using them for walls and blocking roads. This rule still allows you to use depleted supply wagons in this fashion. Once a wagon's ammo gets below about 20 it is very difficult to use the last points, but it can do a great job of blocking a road and even better job of using up an enemies artillery ammo.

The number of supply points shouldn't have been the base for calculating VP value of the capture. It should have been the loss of the wagon unit (horses, wagons, and men) that caused the VP award not the ammo. The ammo already had significant value to both sides.

The second problem with wagons is their lack of inherent defense. True normally the army detached formations to protect them but the game doesn't allow for small unit detachments. Normally companies were assigned this job except in the case of large concentrations like the Army Trains which might have a whole brigade. But these wagon units represent division wagons and the game forces you to assign 500-700 man regiments to protect them unless you are lucky enough to have detached cavalry squads or small regiments.

The wagons should have imbedded soldiers. At least enough to keep stray decimated units from being able to capture them.

The Supply Wagon really needs to be treated more like an artillery unit for combat purposes (no offensive fire though). Give it an inherent number similar to guns and let it take hits.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)

I regret that I have just become a victim of this problem as well. 400 pts for a supply wagon? as my Yank opponent put it " whats it carrying ? GOLD?"

BG D.H. Smith



EN/2IN/III Corps/AoA

http://sapper99.com

I'll agree that a one for one ratio is excessive, but it's not all THAT excessive, especially for the Union side in everything before they besieged Vicksburg, or the CSA side within Vicksburg. In both of those cases, supplies were at a premium because of the difficulty of resupply, and the VP can well reflect that. Think about it for just a moment, there's Grant, hung out on the south side of Vicksburg, with his only supplies what the riverboats can "run" past the guns on the bluff. Losing a signifigant portion of his ammo is actually a campaign changer! He could forage for food in the rich Mississippi countryside, but powder and the like? That's a different story.

Yeah, so supplies become a walking VP hex. That's just a reminder that, as Al said, you need to guard your supplies.

Major General Gary McClellan
1st Division, XXIII Corps
AoO,USA

I think the large victory point value for supply wagons is, or at least should be, unnecessary.

If supplies are appropriate to the scenario, losing a supply wagon means the army runs out of ammo before the battle is over. That can be catastrophic, regardless of the victory points, and ought to be sufficient penalty. If supplies are excessive, then losing a supply wagon is no problem, and probably wasn't historically, if supplies were ample. Longstreet lost his supply train before Antietam, but I have read nothing of an ammo shortage there.

Supplies ought to be protected, but for the right reason; if you lose your supply wagon, after awhile you can't shoot. And as long as we have this supply system, artillery ought to be subject to it as well. I hate to see more wagons, but maybe dual value wagons that carry both artillery and infantry ammo.

I guess there could be a problem in campaign format, where supply losses don't carry over; but I would rather see the carry over problem fixed than assign an artificial value to supply wagons.

Finally, a way to keep supply wagons out of the way is to greatly increase the effectiveness of fire against them. These are, after all, ammunition wagons, and one would think that the chances of an explosion if hit by fire would be great. And this could be done simply by applying a fire modifier. Anyway, my humble opinion.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

But, even stand alone battle scenarios have to look "beyond" the battle for their Victory Conditions.

Again, to take the example of Vicksburg, until the Union Army reestablished itself on the Yazoo River after Grant's March, they could not afford to have their ammo supplies captured, or else they were in a catastrophic mess. Even if they managed to win the current engagement, it may well be a Pyrric Victory.

Major General Gary McClellan
1st Division, XXIII Corps
AoO,USA

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by dalelast</i>
<br />I just checked on this in Vicksburg and Shiloh vs the AI. In Vicksburg (getting started scenario) the loss of 300 supplies garnered 300 VPs. In Shiloh the loss of 238 supplies was worth 47 VPs.

I hope a patch comes out very soon for Vicksburg.


Brigadier General Dale Lastowicka
1st "Adirondack" Division
XXV Corps
Army of the James

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I am not saying they should leave it 'as is' in Vicksburg but I do not find the disparity unreasonable. At Shiloh the Union controled the rivers-there was nothing to stop resupply and doing it by river was a lot easier. At Vicksburg supply by river was a problem south of Vicksburg and resupply was tenuous at best until they opened a base north of Vicksburg.

Brig. Gen. Phil Driscoll
1st Brigade/1st Division/VCorps/AoP

It is very difficult to obtain hard data on supplies for any of the campaigns but the VP for ammo is still a problem. First the supply units in the game represent what is moving with the divisions and is probably only a small part of the total army supply since most of the ammo is with the army trains. Second the VP value applies to both sides and only one side is usually operating under any constraint as to supply. The Rebel in Vicksburg being the one in retreat is most likely to lose a supplay wagon for a big VP hit and is the side with the least real supply problem.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)