American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I am interested to learn from both sides of the club, members opinions for/against the optional rules listed or any other optional rule anyone cares to discuss.
quality fire/melee modifier,higher fatigue recovery rate,rout limiting,higher disrupted movement.
regards
Lt Col Andy Taylor
4/1/111
AOG CSA

Hi,

Quality fire/melee modifier-yes, I believe elite troops were more efficient in their fire and melee.

Higher fatigue recovery rate-While up to now I have used this, I have come to believe that the lower recovery rate is probably more realistic.

Rout limiting-I have always used this, and I think for veteran troops it is probably more realistic. With green troops, deselecting it might better reflect reality.

Higher disrupted movement-Yes, inability to maintain formation shouldn't translate to slower movement, particularly if that movement is retrograde. One of the anomalies of this game is that troops in line formation can run down routed units in any terrain but on a road. That just doesn't make any sense.

Isolation-For a long time I used the isolation rule, even though I didn't agree with it. I no longer use it, and feel my reservations about it have been fully justified.

Alternate Fire/Melee Tables-I think alt fire is more realistic for reflecting sustained fire over a twenty-minute period. The original table would be better to reflect a single volley, which is not the case. I use the alt melee table, but can't justify it. Probably more realistic to go with the original melee table, since it is a more variable situation.

I use all the other options (manual defensive fire depends) and believe all are enhancements to the game.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

I generally like most of the optional rules for the same reasons Mike gave.

I will add though that I favor having the Isolation rule but only in conjunction with soft ZOC rule. While the Isolation rule does have a lot of problems it is still necessary to penalize people that insist on not maintaining continous lines and send small formations out raiding like they had radios to coordinate their movements. If you maintain good tactics and keep your troops together you will rarely lose a unit to isolation. However, if you use poor tactics and insist on sending brigades and divisions off without support you will suffer for it and should.

There are some problems with some of the other optional rules and some rules must be used in combination with others or they will unbalance some scenarios.

Using Soft ZOC option generally cuts down on ZOC kills but it has one side effect. Scenarios that require a defender to hold a fortified line like in many of the Peninsula scenarios will find they can't using Soft ZOC's.

The new Artillery capture rules are nice but have some bad flaws. One is in Campaign games captured guns are returned at full strength to the other side so don't use this rule in Campaigns. The other is no VP are awarded unless you occupy the hex at the end of the game. In scenarios where one side knows it is the attacker throughout and will hold the terrain even if they lose can use this exploit. Guns can be run up near the enemy agressively since their loss will have no affect on victory.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)

I'll offer another viewpoint. I love history but I'm a gamer. I play to relax and shed off some of the stress that has accumulated during the day. When it comes to the options that we use, I always play with all options on regardless of whether they make sense or not. The last thing that I need is six games going and every one of them with different optional rules selected. I wouldn't win any of them because I wouldn't be able to remember what options that I was playing with. Even with that as my standard, I still get mortified because (for example) on one HPS disk, routed units move 9 hexes but on another HPS disk they only move 6 (new options aren't fielded to all disks anywhere around the same time frame). Now how is anyone as dumb as I am supposed to remember that?

Another point: I also find it very easy to get opponents to play with using all options on. It became more difficult to find opponents after HPS introduced the blitzrieg version along with the old BG version because the club members polarized on them. I have high hopes for the new option available in HPS Antietam that provides the best of both worlds.

With all that said and done, I realize that the options are there exactly for the reason to provide players OPTIONS and as long as two players agree on them then the club has provided another game for someone's entertainment. Mission accomplished!

Lt Gen Ned Simms
1/1/VIII/AoS/USA
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

I used to play with all the optional rules on simply because I didn't want to 'miss out' on anything and It's easier to arrange games with new opponents that way, rather than argue about what gets left in or out. Also, I trusted that the designers had developed each additional rule for a reason and that each enhanced the game experience somehow.

Oddly, the two optional rules that I felt were perhaps the most realistic and deserved to be included, are the two that have caused me the most problems! The Fire & Melee quality modifiers. I now no longer like to play with them on and try to insist that they be excluded when I meet new opponents. At first glance, giving higher quality units that added bonus seems very correct, but I think in practice that advantage becomes rather too heavily emphasised?

As I've said elsewhere, again and again on these forums, I think the quality of Confederate Infantry is overstated greatly. The fire & quality modifiers just exaggerate that bias further.

All the other optional rules have pros & cons that could be argued for and against their inclusion. Overall, the optional rules add a bit of scope for 'fine-tuning' the game experience.

Lt.Col. Jim Wilkes.
2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, XX Corps.
AoC. U.S.A.

Playing with the Quality modifiers off is a necessity for me. I tend to think that in most of the games the Union troops are slightly underrated in quality and therefore pay enough of a penalty with compounding it with the quality modifiers. Also, if I'm not mistaken the higher quality units will have a better chance of not routing, not disrupting, and of firing defensively, which I think are advantages enough. I've taken to playing with the rout limiting rule off but flank modifier on as I think it is more historical. I'm open to discussion on the others.

General Mark Nelms
6/3/IX/AoO
"Blackhawk Brigade"
Union Military Academy Instructor
Union Cabinet Secretary

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I'm not hold to HPS but definitively I prefer playing with all optional rules at the exception of Higher Fatigue recovery /Rout limiting and of course Manual defensive.

It's definitively more a choice based on historical reason than gamey advantage

Fatigue is the only way to reduce the loose rate that is far more important than historically. Who have been ever been able to fight 3 days at Gettysburg?

Historically general panic occurred very often, specially during the first years of the war. So no reason to limit the rout specially for D Unit.

By the way there are a lot of reason why the rebs was superior in quality with infantry.
On the other hand the Union Cavalry after 63 was superior and I will not speak about quantity.

<b>
Field Lieutenant Bill Bertrand
Forest Cavalry Brigade
Army of Mississippi
CSA</b>







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Definitively green I'm with HPS system.
Just today I understand what would be Blitzgried Strategy.
I was in situation to use it but I didn't because it would have been unhistorical.
Anyway I always prefer short range fire to melee because fatigue is the key in large battle.

<b>
Field Lieutenant Bill Bertrand
Forest Cavalry Brigade
Army of Mississippi
CSA</b>







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