American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

The reason? Exactly because we Southern do not know how to run away!

BG Hank Smith
Army of Georgia
Smith's Corp Commanding

Quoting

"A good tactic if you have the time and resources available is to capture and hold the guns. Bring up you own guns adjacent to the capture guns and start killing them. You will get the full point value per tube that way for the remainder of the game"


Smacks of gameing, not sound tactics.

Lt. Col Elkin
Chief Engineer AoT

“I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies. . . . Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves. Let us look before us, and not behindâ€

Unfortunately until HPS gets around to addressing the problem the best solution is to roll up a big gun and blow away the captured one. This however only works if you have sufficient ammo to waste on it and the captured gun is in clear terrain.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
2/3/IV AoM (CSA)

Its too bad you just can't use the "recrew" order and turn the cannon into a union one, that reduces the capturing unit by the crew number, but allows the cannon to stay union when the unit moves on.

Maj.Gen. Drex Ringbloom,
Commanding 2nd Div, "Corcoran's Legion", VIII Corps
Army of the Shenandoah

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Drex</i>
<br />Its too bad you just can't use the "recrew" order and turn the cannon into a union one, that reduces the capturing unit by the crew number, but allows the cannon to stay union when the unit moves on.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I think the cannon ought to belong to the last unit to occupy it, but recrewing of captured cannon almost never took place on the battlefield. Members of the capturing infantry would often turn the gun on its former owners, but abandoned the cannon once it was no longer useful. If it was recaptured, the original crew would re-man it, as historically crews were rarely captured with their guns in a battle. After the battle, abandoned guns would be collected by the side who possessed them. The Confederates would then issue the guns to batteries that needed them. At Shiloh the South replaced inferior guns with superior captured guns and left the inferior guns, since they didn't have enough transport to take both. After Chickamauga, they replaced their inferior guns with the captured guns and put the excess in storage. After they lost the guns at Chattanooga, they reissued their old guns.

There is precedent for destroying guns, as Loring destroyed his guns when he was cut off after Champion's Hill. How effective the destruction was, though, I couldn't say. Certainly Yankees needed captured guns a lot less than the Rebs did, but on some occasions used captured Reb ordnance.

I have suggested before that perhaps you could destroy cannon by spiking them twice. Of course, then you would have to reexamine the whole point system. Also, I think it would be good if captured cannon had the same chance to run out of ammo as an isolated cannon would.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

Gen. Mihalik: what you say is true , yet we are talking about the game here and "recrewing" was a way of making the captured ordnance belong to the side that captures it. The unit could leave/abandon the cannon but it would still remain on the captured side. It could still fire since the crew remains with it. Its probably not possible to program.

Maj.Gen. Drex Ringbloom,
Commanding 2nd Div, "Corcoran's Legion", VIII Corps
Army of the Shenandoah

Hi, General Drex,
The problem with your solution, as I see it, is that after artillery has been captured, often the battle moves on. Maybe Yanks can afford to pull 50 men out of their hide to garrison a captured section, but the Rebs are more often than not strapped for manpower. There have been complaints in previous threads about the need to garrison a captured gun with anything, let alone 25 men per gun.

But if other folks believe your solution is the way to go, I feel certain John Tiller can program it, if he wants to. At Tillercon II we suggested being able to capture cannon period, scouting with cavalry, separate melee for single turn, and artillery ammunition expenditure per gun instead of by unit. He accomplished all these things, if not always quite the way I envisioned.

For myself, I am not happy with the all or nothing crew kill. I would prefer a crew that could accrue casualties like other units. And I am also not happy that killing a crew results in 0 points.

Anyway, Tillercons are where the rest of us get to make suggestions. Hope you can make it.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

General Mihalik(Mike): You have a good point about the loss of troops. Perhaps the way to go is NOT to lose troops for a crew as it is only a temporary position but the gun still changes posession. And I agree that total crew kills (especially out at 3-5 hexes) are unrealistic and frustrating. Accrued losses coupled with a reduction in firing effectiveness would be the way to go. I would give my left broken leg to be at the Tillercon,but alas, its too far from California.

Maj.Gen. Drex Ringbloom,
Commanding 2nd Div, "Corcoran's Legion", VIII Corps
Army of the Shenandoah

Hi, General Drex,

Sorry you can't make it. Maybe in a couple of years they will have a Tillercon on the west coast.

If you know someone who is going, and there is a change you would really like to see, have them bring it up in the ACW meeting. Also, Rich Walker, who has designed some of the campaign games, has always been open to suggestions. He has gotten John to make some of the changes.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

My feeling on crew kills is that it is unrealistic. Whole crews were seldom killed or captured but what did happen is the crews effectiveness was reduced by losses and their ability to move their guns was reduced by losses to horses and carriages.

I think a better simulations short of tracking everything is to change crew kills into gun losses. This would better represent the loss of skilled crew and/or horses and limbers.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
2/3/IV AoM (CSA)

Al, I have tried the optional rules in live combat, except for some of the most recent ones, where I haven't had the opportunity. My opinion is informed by experience.

As far as the cadet experience, any player can try any rules he likes, without interference from me. I'm sure that among the dozen or so active trainers in the UMA, there's a variety of approaches. I'm not one to dictate.

Gen. Matt Perrenod
<i>The Blue Ghost</i>
Superintendent, Union Military Academy
1st Brigade, 2nd Division, VIII Corps, Army of the Shenandoah
UMA Class of '01