Rules Recommendation?

[Mick A]

I’ve decided to start on a long term ambition to do Gettysburg in 1/300, what rules would any of you recommend?

[ExtraCrispy]

Hi Mick:

I am doing this myself. It’s on the back burner right now because my terrain board fell apart and I haven’t had a chance to re-start it. I’m using my “Bitter Angels” which are currently in development. They use a 1″=100 yards ground scale. Brigades are represented by a single 3″ stand. But as I live in a condo I’m converting to centimeters. See the details here:

http://deepfriedhappymice.com/html/ht_gettysburg_pocket.html

Other possible rules are Volley & Bayonet (similar scope to Bitter Angels), Altar of Freedom (kinda DBA-ish but ground scale of 150 or 175 yards per inch). Then there’s the ACW variant for BDA itself which gives a surprisingly good game. And this may help. Here are summaries of a whole bunch of ACW rules:

http://deepfriedhappymice.com/html/rd_acw.html

You could also look there in the 19th Century section.

I guess the first place to start is really, how much room do you have?

[Steve Burt]

Is 1:300 the figure scale or the man to figure ratio (with perhaps 15mm or 25mm figures)?

If you want to do the whole battle I’d suggest Volley & Bayonet.

 

[Nick the Lemming]

I quite like Longstreet myself, but you’d only be able to do a selection of Gettysburg’s greatest hits rather than the entire thing with those rules (a division or two at most). I haven’t come across any army level ACW rules that I like yet.

Glory Eagles de l'Empereur! blog

[John]

If one can grab an old copy of Brigade level fire and fury, it’s doesn’t take a lot of conversion to scale up to a division per unit. ( most civil war brigades were quite small, so it might save some time)However if you can’t get your hand son a copy a set I just bought is Feuer und Furia Francese, which runs along the same sort of lines as Fire and Fury, but with enough variations in dice rolls and weapons stats to cover from 1840-1880. For £8.70 it offers the rules plus supplements for Crimea, Italy 1859, 1866 and 1870 as well as ACW. It is only available in PDF form though.

Link to Page http://www.thewargameswebsite.com/forums/topic/new-acw19th-century-rules-feuer-und-furia-francese/#post-7473

To model the effect of Nuclear weapons on the wargaming table, apply jerry can of fuel to board, light match and stand well back.

[Mick A]

Thanks for the replies gentlemen. 1/300 is the figure scale I will be using and usable area is either 12’x4′ or 8’x6′. This period is totally new to me re wargaming but I have become very interested in the battle, and from that the ACW, after watching the film a few months ago…

[Jeff Glasco]

If you want to do the entire battle, then I’d suggest either Fire and Fury or Volley & Bayonet. I’ve played large American Civil War battles, including some of  Gettysburg, with both rule sets, and they both worked fine. Both are well written and easy to learn as well.

Jeff

[Mick A]

We were having a chat about it at the local gaming club last night and someone jokingly suggested about using the Battle Cry system (the one that Commands & Colours/Memoir’44 is based on), the more we thought about it the more it seemed it might work. If I use the Memoir big battle set up where the table is split into six areas with one commander for each of the two flank areas and one commander for the two centre areas and an overall commander all I need to do is work out some order cards and decide on movement rates and ranges. This should let six of us fight the whole three day battle in a days gaming. I know its going to be a very simplified game but the card system will certainly recreate the confusion of the battle…

Your thoughts gentlemen?

[1 yorks]

Last year we did Longstreets attack on the second day with 4 players and around 280 bases using Longstreet. And it worked very well.

[ExtraCrispy]

There is a local gent Bill who uses the “Battle Cry” and converts it for larger battles. He doubles the unit sizes and so on. Each side still gets a hand of cards and there are fun debates as players vie for cards (sounds like command friction writ large to me). It’s kinda short on “period feel” but there’s no doubt it’s a load of fun and easy to teach. Plus it can look quite good. I’m doing it for the SYW until I find a rule set I’m really sold on:

Here is how I made my mat (I marked hex centers instead of sides – this was REALLY fast):

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=326533

 

[Glenn Pearce]

Hello Mick!

 

You should take a close look at Crisis of Allegiance, Polemos, from Baccus6mm. The complete Gettysburg scenario is in the rule book. In case you don’t know Baccus also sells great ACW figures, easy to buy and a breeze to paint, mount etc. Also as mentioned check out Alter of Freedom, they use Baccus figures and bases as well. They also have a u tube video on their re-fight of Gettysburg which is a blast to watch.

 

Best regards,

 

Glenn

[dave morris]

Played a game of the Feuer und Furia Francese rules on Sunday. We used two of the Federal Corps (total of about 36 bases plus 4 artillery bases) from Gettysburg and one Confederate (32 infantry bases and 6 artillery bases). I had not played the rules before, and have only played the original Fire and Fury rules once,  but found they gave a quickly moving free flowing game. The mechanisms are pretty straightforward and very easy to pick up. I certainly think they are worth a serious look if you want to play Gettysburg using 1/300 scale figures. My armies use a 20mm frontage for a single base, although I have quite a lot of multiple bases, as they were originally based for Polemos.

[McLaddie]

We were having a chat about it at the local gaming club last night and someone jokingly suggested about using the Battle Cry system 

We’ve done the Battle Cry system on the table, but the game system requires you divide the board into right, center and left flanks.  With Gettysburg, you have a ‘fish hook’ battleline by the end of day one, which creates some problems.  How do you divide up the battlefield without going to basically separate battles?   The other thing is that the movement rates would be bizarre with any attempt to draw a scale map of the terrain without making the individual units divisions, which then has it’s own problems.

It’s a fun game, but as Richard Borg says, it’s “Stylized History”, so you have to be prepared to do a lot of ‘styling.’

I can recommend Volley & Bayonet.   

[willb]

We used From Manassas to Appomatox from Hoplite Research with 1:300 figures for Gettysburg.   The battlefield fit on a 6×9 table using the one inch = 100 yards scale.   The rules also use a one inch = 50 yards scale for smaller battles.   The Confederates were able to force the Union army to withdraw on the first day due to agressive attacks from Ewell’s Corp.

[Graham Knight]

I bought a copy of Across a Bloody Ground.  I quite like the mechanisms of it which are reminiscent of the old Johny Reb system. Same author. JR are still my favorite – they have the look – but these are quite sophisticated whilst allowing battalions on the table, even if only 2 bases per unit. En Masse the effect is pretty good.  Again one can play without rebasing.

Graham

Delhi

[Mitchell Bates]

Altar of Freedom (AoF) is a great set of rules largely designed for 6mm figures. The stands represent brigades and the system relies on command and control. The rules, along with two scenario books, terrain modeling tips (to include one one Gettysburg), and after action reviews can be found at their website:

http://www.6mmacw.com/

 

Mitch (Oklahoma, USA)

[John D Salt]

Not my period, but I will put in a word for Ragnar Brothers’ “Whipping Bobby Lee”. The simple but rather clever command system has two main effects. One is to minimise the amount of time wasted in handling the approach march, and getting your troops into contact; the other is to provide the players with a nice decision puzzle, as there are never enough command points to do all you want in a single turn. These factors make for what I considered a good and enjoyable game, and I think the rules are simple enough to scale up to a big fight like Gettysburg. Having said that it’s not my period, I’m less well placed to comment on how historically concincing I found the rukes, but they gave a good match to the image of ACW combat that I had picked up from Paddy Griffith’s “Battle in the American Civil War”.

All the best,

John.

[Henry Hyde]

I’m late to this debate, but I’ve become something of a convert to Fire & Fury, but Regimental and Brigade level. The Command roll system is very sophisticated, effectively combining command & control and morale into a single die roll. Very clever. You might also be interested in the book on the battle by John Drewienkiewicz and Adam Poole – Wargaming in History Volume 3, Gettysburg 1863: Brandy Station, Barlow’s Knoll, Sickle’s Folly and Pickett’s Charge ISBN 978-1-907417-18-4 published by Ken Trotman Publishing 2011. Thoroughly recommended.

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