2mm ACW - Refighting 1st Manassas

Or Bull Run depending if you go by Confederate or Federal naming conventions. On Tuesday Paul Dawson came over from York for an ACW game using Altar of Freedom. The scenario for 1st Manassas runs to eight turns and we played to a conclusion in around four hours. If we had been used to the rules it would probably have taken a little less time as it was we had a few occasions of double checking the rules to be sure we were doing things correctly, but not many. I played the Federals as McDowell, Paul had to split his attention between Beauregard and Joe Johnson as the Confederates.

1. The map from the scenario book

Altar of Freedom has two scenario books one for the eastern theatre and one for the west.  These are well worth having as they provide the maps order of battle and most importantly the commander's traits for each of the major battles.  First Manassas is fought on a six foot by four foot table but with far fewer units than any of the other engagements in the books.  In fact Greg Wagman the author actually states that "Altar of Freedom was not designed to handle engagements with so few divisions".  However the lack of manoeuvre elements does pose the same questions faced by the two commanders of how to cover all the crossings while maintaining an adequate strike force. 

2. Overview of the game table looking South East

 

In the picture above Bull Run is running diagonally across the table from Sudley Springs (nearest to the camera) to Union Mills. The nearest long edge of the table is the north edge.  Centreville is on the ridge at the North East of the table.  South of Bull Run running right to left are an unnamed two level hill (lets call it Sudley Springs ridge), Matthew's Hill, Henry Hill south of which is Mt Pone none of the other hills appear to have names.  Oh, and the troop positions in picture 2 are not the initial deployments, just where I plonked them down pregame.

Historically the Confederates knew what McDowell's strategic plan was through their spy ring in Washington.  This gave them the chance to have Johnson move his army from the Shenandoah valley to join with Beauregard north of Richmond using the rail junction at Manassas  Junction.  Two days before the battle there was a clash between one of McDowell’s divisions and Beauregard’s covering force at the fords crossing Bull Run south of Centreville. The Federals were pushed back from the crossings.  On the day of the battle McDowell decided against repeating that attack.  Instead he covered the approaches to his supply lines back to Washington which ran via Centreville with Mile’s division and sent Hunter and Heinztelman’s divisions west to cross Bull Run at Sudley Springs to turn the Confederate left flank.  Tyler was to demonstrate before the Stone Bridge to distract the Rebels.  

Overall it wasn't a bad plan but it didn't take into account the poor levels of training and lack of experience in the Federal army (to be fair the Confederates were no better).  Despite that the flanking move was successful but Beauregard was warned that his flank was turned by an observation post to the south who was able to send a message by semaphore.  The main fighting took place on Beauregard’s left flank on Matthew’s and Henry Hill.  Although the Federal’s had the early advantage in the fight there, Confederate troops were quickly able to move to block their advance due to the semaphore warning.  Throughout the afternoon the fighting continued on Henry Hill until the Federals exhausted themselves and were forced to retreat.

In our refight the Federals started deployed around Centreville with Confederate forces able to deploy anywhere south of Bull Run.  My plan was to push Hunter’s Division south from Centreville to threaten the crossings north of Manassas Junction.  Heintzelman’s and Miles’ Divisions would advance towards the crossings around the Stone Bridge with Tyler’s moving towards the fords at Sudley Springs.  Paul covered the crossings from the Stone Bridge South-Eastwards towards Union Mills but only placed one brigade on Matthew’s Hill to cover the approaches from Sudley Springs.

3. The starting deployments.  Federals nearest the camera

Command and control in AoF is interesting.  Each general has a number of priority points to spend; these are split between gaining control of the turn clock, bidding to determine the order that divisions are activated and end of turn actions.  Although McDowell has more priority points than Beauregard and Johnson combined he has restraints on how he can use them.  He is not allowed to bid the same amount for any of his divisions which means that he cannot coordinate his divisions actions.  That also means that he needs the turn clock to allow at least four activations a turn if all of his divisions are to be activated.  On average the turn clock for this scenario would run out after three activations which gives the Federals problems.  If you want a fuller description of the mechanics of Altar of Freedom take a look at my earlier post which is here: Small but Perfectly Formed: Altar of freedom - I done seen the Elephant (elenderilsblog.blogspot.com) 

From the get go Tyler had problems firstly I didn’t deploy his troops as far to the West as I could have done (entirely my fault I misread the deployment locations). Secondly the approaches to his objectives are heavily wooded which slows his troops dramatically.  Lastly (and due to Paul's good generalship) McDowell struggled to allocate enough priority points to Tyler to keep his troops moving.  After the game ended I also realised the the scenario set up rules (even when read correctly) make it impossible to get troops around Beauregard’s left and ready to attack as quickly as happened historically!  

4. The end of the first hour

While Tyler was slogging through the woods, Hunter was moving his division south from Centreville. However, Johnson wasn’t sitting idly by.  Instead Paul had him cross Bull Run with his troops to threaten Centreville (which is a Confederate game objective).  He pushed Stuart’s cavalry brigade forward on the far left of Hunter’s division while the rest of of Johnson’s wing advanced frontally on them.  I had to respond to this and for the rest of the game I had to prioritise the action on my left more than I had intended and that of course meant that I had less points to bid for my flanking movement.  

I pushed Heintzelman’s brigades towards the Stone Bridge as fast as I could and the first fighting erupted there.  This was skirmishing across the Stone Bridge that fight see-sawed back and forth for two or three hours.  One reason for this was Paul’s siting of his artillery, he placed batteries on the hills overlooking the crossings around the Stone Bridge.  Two were sited on the North Edge of Henry Hill and a third on the rise to the west of there which placed any Federals advancing on the bridge in the centre of interlocking fields of fire.  Artillery has an ability to use interrupting fire against activated enemy divisions which can drive a brigade backwards stopping them completing their movement.  Paul made maximum use of this to prevent Federal troops from crossing Bull Run in this area.

5. Fighting around the Bridge

In photo five you can see how Paul's artillery dominates the approach to the Stone Bridge and Farm Ford.  The tokens denote fatigue blue for one, green for two etc.  Any unit accruing a fifth fatigue marker is broken!  We didn't get any units past two fatigue all day, clearly we were not pushing things hard enough.

Meanwhile to the east Johnson’s attempt to advance towards Centreville forced me to give high priority bids to Hunter’s Division to guarantee they could deploy into a defensive line before Johnson could launch an assault.  I also turned Miles’ Division back to support him.   I managed to block Stuart’s route with Palmer’s cavalry brigade and put a defence together and despite Confederate close attacks this stabilised the position on that flank.  The worst moment was when Burnside’s brigade broke leaving a hole in the line.  I was lucky though as McDowell had moved across to that flank and was able to rally them and get them back into the line.  I had to bid high for Hunter’s and Mile’s activations to stabilise that end of the battle field though, which left Tyler stalled in the woods northeast of Sudley Springs.

6.  Fighting south of Centreville as Johnson pushes through the woods

7. After the end of turn five

By turn five Paul had crossed Bull Run at two points and although Heintzelman had his division in a defensive line facing the Stone Bridge his left flank was under threat from Confederate brigades who has crossed down stream of the bridge.   Tyler by this point was as close as he was going to get to crossing Bull Run having been allocated zero priority points to allow Hunter to keep the initiative over Johnson.

8.  Paul surveys the field at the end of turn 6 *

9.  McDowell holds the line at Centreville (Turn 7)

The battle was drawing to a close by this point and Paul was looking for the win.  He silenced my artillery facing the Stone Bridge and pushed troops over the Bridge and also the fords either side.  In reply I formed a defensive line with Heintzelman’s Division.  Paul launched close assaults against the line and despite my best efforts was able to break an infantry brigade and push another back.

9. Confederates attacking around the Stone Bridge in turn 7

Those attacks opened a route through to McDowell’s second HQ unit which Paul pounced upon giving him a second destroyed unit.  This was at the end of the last turn.  Paul gained the win with two of his required five Destroyed Federal units achieved v none of his own destroyed.  He was also able to remove fatigue markers from his troops so only had three fatigue markers against his units compared to the Federals who had seven markers.  

10. Can McDowell hold the line until night?

17. At the day's end -red line shows the Confederate front line

The overall result clearly favoured the Confederacy and I would call it a tactical win for Beauregard and Johnson.  The Federals have not lost  as many brigades as they did historically which is probably because both Paul and I were a little tentative in pushing troops forward to close combat.

What did we learn?

Artillery interrupt fire is useful for breaking up attacks but can’t create fatigue on enemy units and they can’t use canister in interrupt fire.  Also interrupt fire is a special case of defensive fire, so if you use it you cannot also shoot after the enemy movement phase.  If artillery holds it’s fire until the defensive fire phase it can use canister at short range which gives a huge firing bonus and almost certainly creates fatigue in the target if not outright breaking them.  

It’s hard to get troops into close combat but when you do the results are devastating.  Attacks need to form up in depth so that if the leading brigade is pushed back by artillery fire the supporting brigade can continue the attack.  Oh and we learned that we didn’t know the rules as well as we should.

It was a great day's gaming and both of us enjoyed the rules.  We will be revisiting the ACW and Alter of Freedom again in the near future.

* You may notice that Paul commanding the grey clad Confederates is dressed in Blue, bizarrely I was commanding the blue coated Federals and was dressed in grey!