Battle for Fleetwood Hill : Brandy Station 1863

There was a reason for painting up the ACW Cavalry recently that was to try and play a cavalry only ACW battle. As it happens on my recent trip I came across the cavalry battle for Fleetwood Hill which took place as part of the wider Brandy Station battle.

The battle is pretty much ideal as a meeting engagement across some high ground, a shot across Fleetwood hill, mainly open farmland and not changed much since 1863

A convenient map from the display panel on the battle field. We would be playing with V&F with small six man Troops we were able to field all three regiments, but play them as brigades. Both sides would have an additional horse artillery brigade. Although small units we would play them as normal size and we tweaked the tenancy up to 4. We also had a D6 roll for units which fled the field whereby they could potentially regroup and rally. One final tweek was to give the unit which charge plus one attack dice.

The battlefield as set up. Part of the whole point of this battle was to use all our ACW cavalry but give them enough room to range about. So we needed a reasonable day to get into the ‘shed’ the table is 13x6, so onto the battle.

The New Jersey and Maryland Regiments arrive on the table

Not surprisingly the cavalry can move about quickly and within one turn the confederates have captured Fleetwood hill and the Union have taken up a position on the slightly smaller hill in the foreground

To the south the two regiments face off and the confederates open up with a volley

To the north another face off

And then the Union charge down the hill into combat

Now the 1st Maryland Regiment charge through to try and chase off the horse artillery

After a few rounds of combat both regiments to the south are pretty much exhausted, in fact this became a theme for the whole battle fighting with units and regiments which were just on the point of collapse, at one point all 4 of the Union troops were at their maximum tenacity.

I should say at this point that following the difficult dice rolling of our recent AWI game during this battle I repeatedly had units and troops at their maximum tenacity but when I needed to take a valour test I just kept passing them again and again, to the point where it actually became something of a joke 😂

The New Jersey regiment has pulled back onto the high ground again

By this stage nearly every troop on the table is close to breaking and both sides are hanging on by their fingernails

The confederates draw back to try and rally, you can see the xhaustiob on both sides in this picture !

and still the fight goes on

The 1st PA use a fate card to chase down the confederates in the south and this tips the balance their way

 The Rebels unlike the Union forces do fail several valour and fortitude tests and several troops are knocked out of the battle permanently

But they are holding their own to the North

Briefly the battle swings this way, as the remaining Union cavalry all head in this direction, the confederates are now outnumbered and must concede the field.

As we didn’t have objectives other than defeat the enemy we kept a tally of VP for each side and despite what felt like a very close fought battle the tally was somewhat to the Union advantage !

This was such a lot of fun, having painted the figures and thought about an all cavalry battle for ages, for this to all come together in such a fine and spirited battle was great. The Union victory owed more to my ridiculous ability to pass valour tests than anything else.

That’s it for this week some more painting hopefully soon and more battles to come

Matt ❤️