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American Civil War Gaming - General Discussion

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Author Topic: American Civil War Gaming - General Discussion  (Read 4001 times)
egg_salad
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« Reply #30 on: July 23, 2014, 11:23:02 pm »

As I reflect, I suppose I am a pretty big ACW fan.
 + Leo -- I also am a big fan of A5A -- it is a great, playable game.  If they ever reprinted this I would buy 20 copies to give out as gifts to folks who like history to get them hooked on wargames.  This is wargaming crack. 
  + GCACW is my all time favorite series.  I am a map ho.  Counters, eh.. not as important.  Plus, I think it is a very playable operational scale look at the ACW, which is fairly uncommon.  I need to play these games more.
  + As you can see from the above, I like LoB based on my initial play.  I need to dive deeper and learn the orders system, which intrigues me.
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« Reply #31 on: July 23, 2014, 11:49:24 pm »


I'm planning a game of 'Three Days of Gettysburg 2nd Ed." next year..the full three days
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« Reply #32 on: July 23, 2014, 11:54:37 pm »

Yeah. There are a lot of configuration issues that I can't handle because of the host.

SMF is pretty decent on its own.
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« Reply #33 on: July 24, 2014, 06:53:56 am »

Overall:I really like it, and it may easily become one of my favorite wargames.

Nicely done!

LoB is a nice system, certainly much quicker playing than the old RSS stuff, but I do miss some of things that were in the CWBS/RSS rules. I've played through most of the first day with LCV and really liked it...
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« Reply #34 on: July 24, 2014, 07:33:09 am »


I'm planning a game of 'Three Days of Gettysburg 2nd Ed." next year..the full three days

Wow! Good luck with that. I hope it works out well. Impressive.
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« Reply #35 on: July 24, 2014, 03:28:11 pm »

I don't know if it was this thread, or somewhere else, but there was a discussion about Mark Simonitch's new Civil War game and what game(s) it is based on. Apparently Mark Herman has been playtesting the game, and he describes it on his blog as:

"It's DNA is Eric Lee Smith's Civil War game after a one night stand with For the People, as intepreted through Mark's lens on the war writ large."
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« Reply #36 on: July 26, 2014, 04:49:47 pm »

I am currently in a PBEM of Last Chance for Victory, playing the full battle with the Confederates, although our plan is to first finish 1st day, and then see whether we are totally exhausted or want to go on.
We used the normal start, not the traditional early entry, and even with the two or three ours of moving troops down the road the beginning was rather slow, mainly due to the bad command rating of Davis and Archer. Archer hasn't moved the last three turns or so, and Davis, realizing that there is no one on his right flank, chose to stop as well. And that only a 200 to 300 yards away from the enemy...
With the reinforcements of 1st Corps coming in, I am rather frustrated with the poor performance of my generals.



To add to the discussion of CWBS/RSS and LOB. While I did miss some features of the old CWBS (can't speak for RSS, never played), Dean has made those changes for a reason, and I am a 100% convinced that they were for a reason. Loss Sheets had a nice touch to them, but were an enourmos amount of bookkeeping, especially with the hourly straggler recovery. The same is true for the fire combat itself. Even with the colored dice method it took way too long to read the results. My most favourite part of it though is probably the closing roll and the locking EZOCS, slowly draining your units. I have seldomly seen a wargame rewarding reserves as much as LOB, and you always sigh with relief when a brigade from reserve fills up your big holes.


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« Reply #37 on: July 26, 2014, 04:55:11 pm »

Yes, I like what I see behind some of the big changes in LOB. Others though are cutting into
the detail of the story in the interests of economy of action. Those I'm less thrilled
with.
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« Reply #38 on: July 26, 2014, 04:58:38 pm »

Isn't that a pretty picture. Thanks for sharing it with us.
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« Reply #39 on: July 26, 2014, 05:41:49 pm »

Yes, I like what I see behind some of the big changes in LOB. Others though are cutting into
the detail of the story in the interests of economy of action. Those I'm less thrilled
with.

Can you elaborate? I initially thought so as well, but actually the new orders system (while it has its downsides, mainly vague wording. A few pages and examples extra could have helped) adds to the stories the system tells you. With the new relaying, it can happen that a division or brigade is starting its attack, while the rest of the Corps is sitting behind, watching, having a coffee. Same is true for the brigade leader zero-rule and fluke stoppage. In my first match against the opponent from aboth we were playing the final two hours of the second day attack on Cemetery Ridge. One of his brigades just didn't move once, leaving the flank of the other completely exposed to my units. I do miss loose cannon, that is true, but I guess you can easily come up with your own variant (rolling an initial 2, only true for leaders with a rating of 2 or less or something like that).
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« Reply #40 on: July 26, 2014, 06:02:22 pm »

Note that I haven't played it yet - so, I'm just giving my impression on reading the rules a couple times.

I miss things like the loose cannon. I DEFINITELY am not happy with stragglers being abstracted the
way in which they are. Taking the gun loss table out, and adding losses (which can be recovered!)
is again a situation where I suspect I'm losing little bits of the story. There's other stuff (like the
stoppage) that I can't even guess which way I'll feel. Ah, and no localized ammo depletion for
small arms fire. Also looks like you can't divert artillery ammo to other units - which seems actually
too restrictive. The steps in fire combat and melees have all been simplified too - each step told
a little bit of the story. It may all be as  more 'realistic', but there are details being burned away.

I'll say this much, RSS (as opposed to CWB) felt like too much effort. But now, I'm afraid the game is going
to be too abstracted for my taste. We'll see. At the worst, I have v3.0 of the RSS (not going to print a rulebook
for v4.0, but maybe there's a changelog). Most likely, I'll bastardize what I really know I like out of LOB.
For example, the locking ZOCs.
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« Reply #41 on: July 26, 2014, 07:17:30 pm »

Note that I haven't played it yet - so, I'm just giving my impression on reading the rules a couple times.

I miss things like the loose cannon. I DEFINITELY am not happy with stragglers being abstracted the
way in which they are. Taking the gun loss table out, and adding losses (which can be recovered!)
is again a situation where I suspect I'm losing little bits of the story. There's other stuff (like the
stoppage) that I can't even guess which way I'll feel. Ah, and no localized ammo depletion for
small arms fire. Also looks like you can't divert artillery ammo to other units - which seems actually
too restrictive. The steps in fire combat and melees have all been simplified too - each step told
a little bit of the story. It may all be as  more 'realistic', but there are details being burned away.

I'll say this much, RSS (as opposed to CWB) felt like too much effort. But now, I'm afraid the game is going
to be too abstracted for my taste. We'll see. At the worst, I have v3.0 of the RSS (not going to print a rulebook
for v4.0, but maybe there's a changelog). Most likely, I'll bastardize what I really know I like out of LOB.
For example, the locking ZOCs.


Do you know if you'll be vidding LOB anytime soon? I'm interested in your first impressions.
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« Reply #42 on: July 26, 2014, 07:18:11 pm »

I am aiming to. Maybe something short first, but I've been
prepping to do so.
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« Reply #43 on: July 26, 2014, 09:01:18 pm »

I miss things like the loose cannon. I DEFINITELY am not happy with stragglers being abstracted the way in which they are. Taking the gun loss table out, and adding losses (which can be recovered!)
is again a situation where I suspect I'm losing little bits of the story. There's other stuff (like the
stoppage) that I can't even guess which way I'll feel. Ah, and no localized ammo depletion for
small arms fire. Also looks like you can't divert artillery ammo to other units - which seems actually
too restrictive. The steps in fire combat and melees have all been simplified too - each step told
a little bit of the story. It may all be as  more 'realistic', but there are details being burned away.

Completely forgot about the stragglers (proving that LOB has a point here?), but they were possibly the biggest issue for me as well when moving on to the new system (and close combat now that I think of it, no real fire table in the whole thing!  Cry). Yes, you do loose a lot of detail there, not from a gaming point of view, as the results will be the same with them or without them, but in perceived reality. Note however that incorporating stragglers into normal SP losses, but moving their actual occurence solely to the morale table makes them still both noticable and understandable.
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