Battle of Bloody Creek-Longstreet with the Mad Padre

Yesterday the Mad Padre had me over for an Indian take out and some dice rolling.

We briefly thought about getting out his new masses of 6mm Napoleonics and learning Blucher, but then decided the smarter course would be to play Longstreet which he has already been teaching himself. The Padre being a retired ACW re-enactor, we even had the appropriate head gear to wear.

We used the terrain generation system of cards to make a table, which ended up having an appalling amount of rough ground in the middle. But it is the Civil War after all. The figures and terrain are all from Mike's 28mm collection. We probably could have doubled the troops on table but my host sensibly wanted to keep things easy to manage. His regiments feature an eclectic mix of old Minifigs and RAFM, Perry plastics and newer sexier sculpts.

My Union brigade

Rebel left wing

Rebel right wing

View from Union left

 My artillery get game MVP, using their position to inflict a lot of harm on the Texas and Mississippi regts advancing on the mill. Some timely playing of cards to improve their shooting helped too.

Some canoodling by the marsh

Fight develops around the mill

Staring down the Rebel cavalry

Epic struggle over "Bloody Creek"

I pushed the Texans back with heavy losses, but the Mississippians counter attacked, bundling me back over the creek.

The Padre, with the poo-eating grin, plays an 'Interrupt' card to foil my clever maneuver

pressure building in the middle

Mississippi regt pushes over Bloody Creek (notice all the casualty markers)

I've lost a gun to counter battery fire, and with the Mississippi regt advancing on their flank it's time to limber up and withdraw.

My playing the "Like a Stonewall" card isn't enough to help me against Mike's "Rebel Yell" card

Musketry, artillery fire and hand-to-hand are all pretty straight forward. The use of cards to either modify your die rolls or mitigate hits received adds some chrome. It might seem overly gamey, but I think in a bigger game you're going to have more to worry about so you won't be able to play a card on every combat to effect it. The hand of cards, it's limitations and the management thereof does nicely reflect command problems and where you as the Commander are going to focus your efforts.

I also like that there are year specific cards. My unfortunate rolling up of 1861 meant the Union had fewer (if any) cool specific to them cards and the Rebs got several (like "Rebel Yell" pictured above). However, if we had rolled up 1864 or '65 then things would have been different. The additional, year specific cards also make the decks different sizes, so in the early war the Union deck runs out faster, and each time you hit the end and have to reshuffle you remove six cards. When you have no cards left then your army is exhausted and you withdraw. Obviously, later in the war the Confederacy has the smaller deck.

All in all, I quite enjoyed the game and could see it easily scaling up to bigger battles using the other Mike's 15mm Fire & Fury armies.