J. Ferry wrote:
In playtesting Overland, melee in column was an accepted tactic. I do not recall that anyone took issue with it, ever. At the very least, it should be allowed after May 10, the date of Upton's famous assault, when attacking fortifications.
We were having issues with house rules for night combat in a Gettysburg MP game. Finally came down to "no house rules" for night combat. Everything goes. There was confusion on when combat would be allowed, such as whether firing voluntarily under any circumstances against adjacent units would be permitted.
Did I ever tell ya about the time I caught Albert Sydney Johnson within three hexes of Pittsburg Landing early in the battle of Shiloh. Replacement officers? Some don't even make that distinction.
J D Ferry
LTC 2/20th Corps
There are a number of problems with allowing column infantry melee. One of the major problems is the HPS column is really road column not assault column as Upton used which is usually an attack in column of companies. The fire penalty in HPS for being in column is appropriate for a strung out column of fours but not for a mass target that the 20 file depth of an assault column would present. Upton succeeded not because of the formation but because of fog. To properly simulate a column like Upton used the game would need to use fire penalties about 3 to 4 times larger for rifle and on the order of ten times for artillery. Upton succeeded because he was able to close before the defender could fire. Otherwise the result would have looked more like Cold Harbor than a success. The tactic failed later when not combined with night and/or fog.
Because the game doesn't make a distinction between Assault Column and Road Column the player can use the ability of column units to move using road/trail bonuses to increase their reach through terrain like woods to 12 hexes instead of 2 or 3. The embedded melee stopped the worst of this Panzer Blitz tactics but it still allows a tactical reach they should never have.
The third problem I have with it is that in combination with Turn Play's poor AI defensive fire it becomes the primary formation for assault. I have seen games using Column melee where entire Corps never left column formation. The benefit of fast movement along the road net more than compensated the light casualties taken from defensive fire. The battle degenerates into a battle fought entirely by column melees. The faster movement rates allow the attacker to find and concentrate against weaker units with speeds that no Civil War battlefield ever saw.
Which leads me to what I consider the biggest problem from my point of view as a historical gamer. I want the game to reflect as best it can actual tactics used during the Civil War. Column assault was used during the Napoleonic period but for different reasons. During the Civil War other than a few unique instances like Upton's attack it was never used. Instance of CW formations using Column of Company or Column of Division to actually approach enemy positions is extremely rare. These formations were used to bring up troops that were not exposed to fire. Once close enough to be engaged they spread out into line type formations.
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J D
