Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report: Daybreak at Hangman's Creek

I finally got around to trying out the American Civil War scenario from the Black Powder rulebook. Daybreak at Hangman's Creek sees a small Confederate division advancing on the town of Hangman's Creek at dawn. A small Union division is in the area, but they are not expecting trouble and most of them start off the table. All of the Union officers start in the town, and they will have to scramble to get their brigades moved up and deployed once they realize they are under attack. To the Union left of the town is a large Union camp. To the right, across the river, is a gun foundry. The Confederate objective is to capture the camp, town, or gun foundry, with a greater victory earned by capturing two or all three of them.

At the start of the game, one Union regiment is deployed in skirmish order in the fields north of town. They are allowed one free initiative move each turn until they are given an order, but the Union commanders (in the town) are not allowed to issue any orders or move until the alarm is raised. The alarm is raised at the end of any turn in which any unit fires or fights a round of close combat. The Confederates split their forces to attack all three objectives at once. They will need to advance quickly on their objectives before the Union officers have a chance to organize a proper defense if they are to secure victory.

HMGS MidWest Little Wars 2017 Convention

I attended the Little Wars 2017 convention in Lombard Illinois on April 28th. Unfortunately I was only able to attend on the convention on Friday. There were a lot of events I was interested in scheduled for Saturday and Sunday as well that I had to miss out on. Even so, was able to play in two games: a Hail Caesar game of Romans vs Britons, and a Black Powder game of Poles vs Russians set during the Polish uprising of 1794. And I found some bargains in the dealer hall and flea market. I also took some pictures of the other games that were set up Friday morning. Have a look below for my general pictures of other games, followed by pictures of the two games I played with details of the how the games went.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report: Surprise in the Forest

A Union division and a Confederate division approach each other cautiously through a vast woodland. Each commander is performing a reconnaissance in force, probing the wilderness for signs of the enemy. As such they don't know where they will encounter the enemy or in what strength. In addition to seeing off any enemy they encounter, they will be well served by occupying and holding onto any tactically valuable positions in anticipation of a potential escalation in the fighting.

Simple 10mm Roads and Fields

I have needed some dirt roads and farm fields for my 10mm American Civil War games for a while now, but I generally find it hard to get excited about making terrain. With my limited hobby time, I didn't want to spend a ton of time making roads and fields. However, I really needed some to make convincing layouts for my games, so I decided to just try something really simple and see how it turned out.

I had a lot of felt stored up, in green and a few different shades of brown. So I figured I'd see what I could do by just starting with that as a base. With very little time or effort, I ended up with something that looks convincing enough. Not only was it quick, it was also easy enough that my almost 3 year old daughter could help with it, which meant I could actually find the time to do it.

Black Powder - Glory, Hallelujah! review

Since the release of Black Powder by Warlord Games, I've been using it to play games set in the American Civil War without difficulty. Still, I was looking forward to the release of their American Civil War supplement book, "Glory, Hallelujah!". I was interested to see how they suggested handling some of the defining aspects of the war that aren't particularly reflected in the main rules. These aspects include the different role of cavalry, presence of river gunboats, susceptibility of brigade and even division commanders to falling casualty, and varying sizes of artillery batteries (some 4 guns, some 6) and infantry regiments (which could vary greatly in size). Also, having more scenarios never hurts, though I already have plenty of scenarios I haven't played yet from other sources.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report: Blow the Bridge

A Union infantry division under Major General Winfield Scott Hancock has been sent to secure a strategically important bridge. The Confederate army on the other side of the river is not ready for an engagement, and needs time to either redeploy and dig in or evacuate. They have sent Major General James Longstreet with two brigades of infantry to delay the Federal advance and blow the bridge. The Union division arrives before the explosives are ready, and now the Confederates must scramble to delay the Union advance long enough to blow the vital river crossing.

Black Powder officer personality cards for American Civil War

I saw on another blog a great idea of using a deck of playing cards for assigning officer personality traits in games of Black Powder, instead of rolling on the charts. He designed some loyouts with different combinations of personality traits and portraits of fictional generals on them, then got them professionally printed onto a deck of playing cards. So instead of rolling for traits, he draw cards from the deck instead, with the added bonuses of having the card as a a handy reference during the game, and having an image to associate with your general. I decided to make a deck up for my Black Powder American Civil War games, using photographs of actual generals on the cards instead of artwork of imaginary ones.

Painted GHQ 10mm Civil War Confederate Stonewall Brigade Regiments

I recently finished the last two regiments I needed to complete my 10mm Confederate Stonewall Brigade. These will represent the 5th Virginia and 27th Virginia Infantry Regiments. Those designations are basically arbitrary, though. I haven't labelled the units in any way, so they could really be any Confederate regiments, except that one of them has a Virginia state flag. The pictures are below. As always, click the pictures for larger versions.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report

The Confederate Division under Major General James Longstreet has successfully held their position on the battlefield, while unfortunately the rest of the Confederate army has fallen back. The swift but somewhat disorganized Union pursuit of the fleeing Confederates has put Longstreet's division in danger of being cut off from the rest of the army. They currently find themselves surrounded by Union forces, and must attempt to break out and re-join their retreating army. The game was played using the Breakout Scenario I have previously posted on this blog.

Black Powder Scenario - Breakout

This scenario for Black Powder was designed for my American Civil War armies, but I'm sure it could be generalized to other periods easily. We play using all distances in centimeters instead of inches, so playing this scenario in the normal scale of Black Powder would require a larger table. I've played it once and it worked out pretty well, though it might work out better to give the Union player the first turn. In our game, I think if the Confederate player had rolled better command rolls on his first turn, the game might have been over very quickly. I will write up and post a battle report of the game in the near future, but for now have a look at the scenario rules.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report

The Story
This was a pretty simple concept. Forward elements of the Union and Confederate armies have encountered each other, and both are now rushing to claim the best ground before the enemy can take it. There is a large hill between the two forces that is the obvious choice, so both sides are attempting to control the hill and drive off the enemy. It turned out to be a very dramatic and fast-paced game that came right down to the wire.

Painted 10mm GHQ Confederate Stonewall Brigade Regiments

Today I've just got some pictures of two recently finished regiments to add to my Confederate Stonewall brigade. The miniatures are 10mm GHQ from the pack "Marching in Shell Jacket & Forage Cap (CSA)", with some command figures from other packs. I still have two more regiments to finish before my Stonewall Brigade is complete. I've already done the Rockbridge Artillery and General "Stonewall" Jackson himself.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report

The Story
A detachment of two Union Infantry Brigades, and some accompanying Cavalry, is ordered to return with all possible speed to meet up with the main body of their army. They march almost non-stop, with very little food or sleep. Through skillful maneuvering, a small force of Confederates has managed to get behind the Union detachment and deploy between them and their destination. Hungry and exhausted, the Union soldiers come upon the Confederates. They outnumber the enemy, but are already in bad shape. Nevertheless, they have no choice but to fight their way through the enemy to meet back up with their army.

GHQ Painted 10mm General Stonewall Jackson

This is just a quick post to show off some pictures of my completed 10mm GHQ Brigadier General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. This command stand will be for my Confederate Stonewall infantry brigade, which I'm currently working on painting up.

GHQ Painted 10mm Confederate Rockbridge Artillery Battery

I completed my version of the Rockbridge Artillery Battery, which was part of the Stonewall brigade of infantry, for my 10mm Confederate army. It originally contained cannons taken from the Virginia Military Institute, which had gun carriages painted red. They were probably quickly repainted, but I've portrayed them red to add a little variety and make this battery stand out more on the table.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report - Supply Raid

This is a battle report that a friend of mine wrote for a game I played against him recently. The rules were Warlord Games's Black Powder. The scenario was one I invented, which I have posted here. If you try out the scenario, please leave a comment and let me know how it went, and what changes you made or would suggest. The basic idea is that one side is escorting some supplies down a road, and the other side is setting up an ambush to steal or destroy the supply wagons. Here's how our game played out.

Supply Raid Black Powder scenario

This is a scenario I wrote for a recent game of Black Powder. There are some things in the scenario specific to the Black Powder rules, but I tried to keep it generic enough to be easily used with other rules. We use centimeters instead of inches for Black Powder, so all the measurements in the scenario are in cm.

Supply Raid
Side A is on the march, and with them is a column of their supplies. Side B has set up an ambush in order to capture or destroy the supplies.

Black Powder casualty markers

For a while I've been trying to come up with a good way to track casualties in Black Powder. I don't want to use dice or counters because I want something that won't detract from the look of the game, which is important. What I ended up doing was making bases the same size as my infantry bases, but with 4 figures on them. Between one and four of the figures was fleeing or wounded. This way I had bases to represent one, two, three, or four casualties. You can see some of them in my previous post on 10mm Confederate Infantry Casualty Bases.

There are a few problems with this system that make it impractical. First, it is inconvenient to have to switch out bases in a game as units take casualties and rally to remove them. Second, it isn't that easy to tell at a glance how many casualties a unit has, not to mention how easy it is to miss the base and forget to move it with the unit. Finally, it requires creating a huge number of bases, since theoretically for each unit I make I'd need three wound bases (since the standard stamina of a unit in Black Powder is 3).

I finally came up with another solution that I think will work much better. Initially I thought it would be nice to have round wound bases with a dial in them that can be rotated to show a different number of wounds. Unfortunately, I couldn't find dial bases anywhere that were thin enough to not look ridiculous next to my units on their thin metal bases.

The Battle of Prescott's Mill - Aftermath: Part 2

If you haven't already, you can read Part 1 of this battle report here. After the first four turns, the Union and Confederate Cavalry were engaging near the large forest on the flank. In the center, the Union Infantry brigade was slowly advancing towards the Confederate defenses.

The Battle of Prescott's Mill - Aftermath: Part 1

I recently had a chance to play my first game of Warlord Games BLACK POWDER: Battles with Model Soldiers in the Age of the Musket. If you're interested in learning more about the rules, you can read my Review of Black Powder, which is pretty extensive. I'll also include comments on the rules in the following battle report. I will put rules comments in italics to separate them from descriptions of the battle.