Monday 7 March 2011

Brother Against Brother

A morning in early summer 1863 somewhere in the Blasthoff valley...
The Union army of General Abner Badday has been blundering around for some time trying to track down the Rebel army led by the hard-fighting Hiram P Fudpucker III. At last it seems the two armies may well finally get to grips with one another and both sides send forward scouting forces to probe the enemy defences. As the early morning mist clears Lieutenant Rufus Hudson leads a small force of men into lightly wooded  terrain on one flank of the Union army, little does he suspect that a small band of Texans has been sent to scout the same area...


I've been painting some Perry ACW Blue and Grey men recently and the boys wanted to play a game of soldiers after school last week, so I set up a simple fight for them. I thought I was going to have to play, but in the end they decided to take each other on in proper brother against brother tradition.
We used the Legends of the Old West rules, using the infantry list from Blood on the Plains but with equipment restricted to muskets and bayonets for the men and heavy pistols for the officers. To keep is simple I ignored all the Fate and Might (or whatever they're called in LotOW) and assumed that the officer just had an extra pip of leadership. Sadly I'd fallen behind with painting so the elder offspring had to make do with a mere seven of the grey men against his brothers nine including an officer. To try to off-set the difference in numbers I declared that the Rebel Yell meant he'd get +1 on his combat rolls as long as he charged.
With that, we were off.



Johnny Reb

Johnny Blue

View from behind Union lines

View from the Rebel side

On their right the Union advanced on the rock formation known as Webster's Knob 

To their left Hudson led them to the fence

The rebels made for a wood on their left
And hugged the treeline on their right

 Leading from the front Lieutenant Hudson advanced behind a large rocky outcrop

 And was shot at. A lot.

Meanwhile his men siezed the nearby hill known as Little Flat-Top

Fierce hand to hand broke out near Webster's Knob
After a sharp exchange of fire the Union forces charged from Little Flat-Top and got stuck in!

Repeated pot-shots kept Hudson pinned down behind the rock that now bears his name

In the end numbers told. The Rebs got lots of hits but few wounds. Hudson kept failing his pluck and hiding behind the rock but the Union men managed to pick off a couple of confederates with just a single loss themselves. When it came to hand to hand the rebels rolled so low that even +1 for charging didn't help, so they soon lost the four required to start testing and had to "head for the hills" not long after.
The rules were fun and the boys seemed to enjoy it, though eldest son (who took the rebels) has clearly inherited his dad's knack with dice.

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