Battle of Teddysburg discussion

Yep, Boxholder, fair call.

My thoughts (at the moment) have been along the lines of making an easy Mass Battles system (focused ATM on Regimental level), only say 25 pages long. The Teddy fluff (pardon the pun) can then be added to make it more in line with the Teddy range.

Ive recently bought both Black Powder (plus Glory Hallelujah) and Across a deadly field to look into more, but the enormity of these rules tends to be overwhelming.

What we've changed int he Teddysburg rules hasnt made it too much more complicated, alot of this discussion has been on clearing up the rules wording. I'm just writing version 1.3 and realistically I think we've added about 3 - 4 pages since we started.

Why not give the rules a go Boxholder? We'd love to have you onboard, for either the serious stuff or even just the silly punny stuff.

I'm playtesting again tonight, so I'll be able to give the new rules a run.

Block formation
Cannister only has 8" range, but no saves - I added the double canister with 12" and 4 wounds per dice (still only 2 dice to hit)
Shoot through friends, but only get 3 dice - I also added a +1 the FTN for this, just makes it a little harder to shoot through friendlys
Infantry move 8" & shoot or charge 12" - Yep
Cavalry move 12" & shoot or charge 16"  - Yep
Continuing woods melee until someone breaks  - Yep

Did I forget anything ?

- Panicked units moving around friendlys unless they cant, friendly units roll for panic if a panicked unit passes through it.
- Shooting over friendlys is ok with elevation. Artillery is always considered to do this.
- Charging a Panicked formation, base number of 9, it receives the -1 to armour (saves on 6) and +2 to their breaking point.
- Making contact with multiple Formations with a charge, assign dice to appropriate opponent, do total wounds at the end of fight



There are a few other new things that I have added:

• Added Generals charging
  
• Added attaching Army commanders to units
  
• Added Regimental traits
  

We've got a fairly large convention on this weekend here in Oz, so i'd planned to upload the new rules next week sometime. Sorry, but they are not quite edited properly yet.

I finished the game I had going. The bat rep will be up on the blog on the 30th or so. I am a bit backlogged with posts.

One point that really sticks out at me from the game is that it was dead easy to charge in, but every time the charge seemed to fail and get thrown back. This happened as column attacked line formations, when cavalry attacked cavalry, but most disconcertingly when a cavalry unit in line got a flank attack on a infantry unit in line and the cavalry still lost! Sure, ACW cavalry generally sucked and were more dragoons, but they still should have been able to roll up that line easily and it just did not work that way.

The game needs some sort of flanking/rear attack mechanic. It is possible it was there and I just missed it, or that I was playing assaults wrong. I mean they did all fail. The only time it worked was against panicked enemies, and that seemed appropriate. I am torn by this result. Part of me is glad, because next time I won't both and will instead blaze away. That is more in line with ACW battles and therefore good.

I finished my game too.

Who won? North or South? Any pics?

The block formation works ok. The 6 fire dice and 8 melee dice give it small advantage over units in line, but nothing significant.

I found myself wondering if Line was too weak, I wondered whether to give it something to make it a bit better (maybe Line gets -1 to hit?). I just found myself thinking that Block was slightly better than Line for shooting.

Only getting 3 dice and needing an 8 to hit when shooting through a friendly unit worked too. Very few extra casualties were caused.

Yep, I found that too. You can shoot through, but it doesnt always do much.

The continuous woods fighting was brutal. I had two fights in one turn where 3 of the 4 units broke, and the one left had 9 hits.

Good to hear, we didn't get to the woods.

Is it too brutal?

I am having to change my mind on cannister. It was actually too powerful. I had 3 different times when both dice were hits on double cannister. The 8 hits just eliminated 3 units from the game. They were so damaged as to be of very little use. The 6 hit from normal cannister was almost as bad. The units were panicked and then beaten in the first melee. It had too big an effect on the game. I think we need to back to cannister has a 12" range but you get saves. Smoothbore guns do 3 wounds per hit and rifled guns do 2 wounds per hit. Double cannister can still eliminate saves, but it's a special order that has to rolled for by the gun crew. The general can't help as that would make it too easy.

My first thought is to actually make the weapon more expensive (maybe double cost?)

I'm undecided as to whether to go to the detail of smooth bore and Rifled Cannons, simply because what would be the reason that you would go with rifled guns? Is it cheaper? I sort of think that we keep it as a generic cannon that can do a cannon shot or two different versions of canister.

I do agree with the canister range and saves, we only got one single canister fire onto a unit, but it seriously screwed them up.

I also realized there is nothing in the rules about how guns take casualties and the effect of those casualties on the guns. How does that work ??

Um, I hadn't thought of that...

I guess, they have 2 stands for the battery, so based on the current rules they will panic after one wound and break after 2, be removed after 4 wounds... But that doesn't sound right.

I'll think about it. Any thoughts yourself?

I didn't take any pictures this time. I'm going to try a smaller game next. Going to use 3 infantry, 1 cavalry, and 1 gun per side. The blue will get a rifled gun and the grey a smoothbore. I want to see what the difference is on the table.

As long as you don't mind that the figures are 28mm seven years war Prussians and Russians, I will take pictures and put them up on the facebook page.

The woods fighting was very brutal. I think we need to put in the ability we talked about for a unit to be able to make a die roll to leave the melee if they want to. The way it is now,given average die rolls,by the end of the fight both sides are toast. While it was nasty, it shouldn't force both sides to be ruined at the end.

Now on to our biggest headache so far, artillery.

The main difference between smoothbore and rifled guns is range. A rifle can hit the enemy sooner and hopefully hurt them when there's nothing they can do about it. Rifled guns were primarily a Union gun.

The Union had a standard battery organization. All batteries were 6 guns. The smoothbore guns were all 12# Napoleons. The rifled guns were either 10# Parrots or 3" Rodmans. Approximately 60% of the Union batteries were rifled guns. It's important for the North to be able have those guns if they want them.

The Confederate's on the other hand, we're a mish mash. While almost almost all of their batteries were 4 guns, they were mixed. Most had smoothbore and rifled guns mixed together. As the war went on they tried to standardize, but never got more than 15-20% of their batteries reorganized. Rifled guns aren't as important to the south, but they should still have the option to buy them.

So far I have only used single gun models. I haven't tried the battery with 2 guns side by side. I do think they are too cheap. With decent dice they have a much bigger effect than their points. I think a single gun should cost between 8-10 points and a 2 gun battery between 16-20 points. Right now 5 infantry units cost 25 points. For those same 25 points I can get 10 guns. Too cheap.

The gunners were stubborn,tenacious, and fought hard to keep their guns. They were very hard to drive off. I'm going to try these ideas out.

Single gun with 4 crew

Take 4 hits - become panicked
Take 8 hits - become broken
Take 12 hits - destroyed

Two guns with 8 crew

Take 6 hits - become panicked
Take 12 hits - become broken
Take 16 hits - destroyed

Just ideas to try.

I didn't have any rear or flank attacks, so no chance to see if the extra 3 did much. Maybe this time.

I'll chuck up the new rules once we sort out the ranges & costs for the Artillery