Battle of Seven Pines ACW : May 1862

This weekend with the weather perfect for a bigger game outdoors Martin brought over his ACW collection for the battle of Seven Pines. Once again the scenario is based on one published by Brad Butkovich in one of his excellent ACW scenario books……..

…as usual I made a few tweaks mainly in the terrain. 

This official map is very useful, given the historical scale of the battle we would only be focussing on the fighting to the south of the railway.

Our setup with as many trees as I could find as much of the battlefield is wooded. Specifically the Union forces have some command issues  which is fairly easy to arrange with V&F by having the brigades spread out beyond the 12” command range. The confederates are outnumbered and on the attack. The scenario also has interesting ideas on the involvement of Hood’s Brigade. I managed this by allowing Abercrombie the option to send Regiments off the table to the North and these would reduce the number of regiment that would arrive with Hood. In the end the Union commanders didn’t take this option. The Union have significant reserves arriving from the East. Numbers wise the Confederates have 6 infantry Brigades and 1 artillery brigade. The Union have 9 infantry brigades and 2 artillery brigades.

The Union forces immediately start to reorganise their lines to a defensive position. Three Confederate brigades advance in the first couple of turns

The Confederates suffer some early failed activation rolls which means they are on the back foot

Anderson’s Brigade sweeps forward through the woods, whilst in the middle distance Garlands Brigade is advancing across the first set of abatis. The Union are pulling reinforcements into a second line. (Due to the action I didn’t seem to take that many photos early on) 

As after some delay we are now around turn 6 Hoods brigade advances across the railway line

All along the line the confederates are starting to struggle to break through not helped by some poor dice on occasions. In the middle distance the Union forces can be seen defending their rapidly dug entrenchments

Ouch…..Union reserves arrive

Peck’s Brigade has advanced through the woods to the south. Again delayed ! Rodes and Raines brigades arrive on the confederate right wing 

Fighting all down the line now…

and finally the confederates are breaking through the entrenchments

Rains Brigade charges into Pecks brigade in the woods, but despite winning the combat for several turns the Union forces keep passing their Valour tests

Jenkins brigade is now broken but Hoods brigade is ready to take up the fight

Still the Union left is holding against the odds

The Union reserves are being sent in three directions to block the confederate attacks

Some of the reserves run forward in column but also get delayed

After an epic battle the confederate forces are losing their impetus, the second Union artillery brigade opens up a devastating fire on confederates climbing into the Union defences 

Eventually the confederates win on the right flank but a second Union brigade is now blocking their path. In the centre the Confederates have almost no troops left.

On the confederate left Hoods brigade is now engaged but again the numbers are against them. A fun and fairly epic game, alThough the confederate attack ran out of steam in the end they had broken 3 Union brigades during the day. The cost of this was losing 4  brigades themselves. Given this we awarded the win to the Union Generals although a ‘fate card’ had (slightly tenuously) been used to keep Abercrombies Brigade on the battlefield, this would have levelled things up making only a minor win for the Union forces. Either way V&F worked well allowing a big game to be played to a reasonable conclusion during the day. Luckily I have a few days rest before my next battle 🙂 were I to change the scenario the Union reserves should be held back longer giving the confederates a bit more time to deal with the Union forces in front of them.

During my trip last week I also visited Egremont Castle on the west coast of Cumbria so I thought I would share a picture, an interesting Castle in the centre of the town. Although not so much left now…

Finally I also managed a ‘rare’ trip out Mountain biking on another hot sunny day, giving some nice views into the distance.

That’s it for now, many thanks for checking by on my blog. More to come with a Napoleonic battle planned for Thursday.

Matt ❤️