28mm Black Powder American Civil War Battle 5-26-13

After a few weeks of planning and coordinating, 7 of us met up at Crusader's Retreat (a local game store located at 40th Street & Thunderbird in Phoenix) yesterday for a large ACW battle using Black Powder rules.  By large I mean both the size of the table and then number of figures.  The game was played on a 12' x 6' table and pitted 3 brigades of Confederates against 4 brigades of Union.  The total figure count for the game was around 770! 

Robert and I supplied all of the miniatures and Tim K, Robert and I supplied the terrain.  My contributions for the terrain were the church, camp, store, farmhouse and the vast majority of the fencing (all by Renendra...great stuff!).  I won't give a running commentary as this was really an introduction for us to see how well the game played with 7 players (no problems), with that many troops (again, no problems), using such a big table (wonderful, though Tom F did need occaisional assistance reaching the middle of the table as the tables were a little high), and that much terrain (definitely needed for ACW as it helps control movement and helps reduce the effectiveness of shooting).  We knew the Confederates would be hard pressed from the beginning as they were outnumbered 4 to 3, but two of their brigadiers seemed to be plagued by poor command dice and that really sealed their fate.

I believe that everyone had a great time and we will likely play again in the next couple of months.  For our next game we will be introducing some variability to unit size, unit quality, special rules, armament, quality of commanders, etc. as well as having the game be more scenario driven with objectives. 

The pictures below show the layout as well as the battle at different stages.