Trying out Bob Cordery’s Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules for ACW

I thought I would try out the Portable Napoleonic Wargame rules by Bob Cordery for the American Civil War.

The scenario was loosely based on the early morning assault at Antietam by Hooker’s Union First Corps on Confederate General Jackson’s Corps, which formed the left wing of Lee’s army.  This was the part of the battle that featured the very bloody fight over Miller’s cornfield.

Although this was a Corps level battle, I used the Division level rules from Bob’s book – the book having rules for Brigade, Division and Corps level games.

Each side had 10 brigades spread across three Divisions.  On the Union side, there were the Divisons of Doubleday, Meade and Ricketts.   On the Confederate side, the Division Commanders were Lawton, Hood and Jones.

All Brigades were average apart from one elite Brigade (5SP) in each army – Hood’s Texans and the Iron Brigade in Doubleday’s Division.

As far as the rule changes were concerned,  the key ones were:

• The activation system involved having X counters, each with a different number from 1-X with X being 1/2 of all the units on the table.   Each side could place a number of counters face down, equal to half the number of units it had on the table at the time.   The counters were then turned over and that was the order in which the units were activated.   Units could save their activation for firing later in the turn if they wished.
• There was no separate artillery phase – they were activated like other units.
• Rifled artillery had a longer range than smoothbore but was less effective at closer range to take into account smoothbore grapeshot.
• I scaled the grids at about 300 yards – about the same frontage as a typical 900 strong brigade.  Each brigade had two bases and I allowed two brigades in a grid.
• I have read that troops were rather lessing willing to charge or stand a charge in the ACW.   To take this into account and introduce a bit of the to and fro action,  units had to throw less than or equal to their SP (strength point) to charge in and likewise to stand if the enemy was charging them with a bonus if a commander was present.  If they failed to charge or stand, they could fire instead but at -1.  Failing to stand meant the unit had to retreat.
• I limited musket and rifle fire to one grid.    With all the smoke around, I am not sure that rifled muskets were shooting effectively at much more than a couple of hundred yards anyway!
• If attacking, brigades got a +1 if there was a brigade lined up behind them and in the same grid.  This is meant to represent wave attaks but I am not sure about this!
• Although not relevant to this scenario,  I treat cavalry as more or less mounted infantry and took out any references to forming squares and all that milarkey!  (Although I did recently discover that,  apparently,  squares were very occasionally formed, but this, like cavalry charges, was very rare).

All in all, the changes seemed to work well in a brief solo game, with the bloody attacks over the cornfield being well replicated.

Here are a few pictures of the game:

Here is the initial deployment from behind the Confederate lines and looking North.  Dunker Church is in the foregrouns and the green felt is the cornfield.

General Jackson by Dunker Church with Hood’s reserves close by.   The 6mm scale church is a free paper download from http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/23969/239695307.pdf

This shows the activation counters.  The small dice are the current Strength Points and the colours of the dice differentiate the Divisions.

The fight over the cornfield with Confederates being driven back.

Hood’s Texans move up to stabilise Jackson’s line.

A fun little experiment that I will try again.   The Portable system can cope well with being played around with and,  I believe, can also be good for historical scenarios.