Threat to the flank Scenario ACW and Tallarn heavy weapons

George came up for a battle to the dungeon and I was looking for a scenario to introduce him to our ACW bolt action rules, I’ve had this Scenario book for a long time and it often provides a good starting point.

One of the scenarios in the book is a simple, flanking attack the idea being it places the commander in the position between concentrating his forces for the main assault or increasing his flanking force. 

The map in the book is as above, I adapted this slightly to squeeze it onto a 6x4 battlefield for 28mm ACW. I also gave both sides a flexible reserve off table to make the tactical decisions more interesting.

The river is only fordable beyond the tree by the bend, the objective for the Union force is to take the hill where the defending D force is stationed. No time limit is given in the book but I estimated 8 turns would be about right and put some pressure on the attackers.

The Union flanking force sets off towards the river by the bridge

The confederate flanking force moves to contest the bridge and their cavalry dismount

At the far side the Rebels open up with everything they have and rock the Union advance back

Both sides open fire across the river

But the yankies have the advantage and the rebels get pushed back

Union reserves start to arrive and push towards the bridge

A couple of very poor morale rolls and suddenly the rebel centre has collapsed luckily a reserve unit arrives but it may be too late ?

Union infantry are now moving across the bridge and the rebels have one last big volley to stop them crossing, the Union take 3 casualties but it isn’t enough to force a morale check

With the main frontal assault pushed back one of the rebel units on the hill make the mistake of pushing forward to cover the bend in the river and gets caught badly in the flank pinning them down

With cavalry now pushing on their flank and formed infantry across the bridge things are looking bad for the rebels and they have 2 more turns to hold 

The Union commander rushes every available unit to Wade across the river

The rebels are able to send the leading Zouave unit back where they regroup in the ploughed field

But with one turn left the second Union unit pushes across the river and the rebels are forced to surrender the hill 🙁

As often the case a very enjoyable battle, the scenario with the adaptations worked pretty well giving both sides a good chance, the rebels were able to defeat a whole Union brigade on the hill but the flanking movement over the bridge drew in resources when they might have been better holding the hill at the end. The rules which we have tested many times seemed to give a fun and entertaining battle including the random events. Always nice to get my ACW on the table.

A bit more painting this week but the only things finished are the heavy support weapons for the Tallarn XR force. All painted in the same style as the infantry.

Two autocannons, I do have a thirds but can’t see why I would need that at the moment unless at some point we go to a larger scale battle ?

A heavy mortar, again a have another of these for the future perhaps

A heavy bolter gun.

So lots of options here to support the infantry squads, next for the Tallarn are some vehicles/tanks I had but they will take a while

I am back in Edinburgh for a few days but do have some stuff with me which I can work on.

Thanks as always for stopping by 😀

Matt