Using Napoleonc rules for ACW

Started by Last Hussar, 01 January 2021, 01:53:09 PM

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Orcs

Quote from: Last Hussar on 02 January 2021, 12:06:46 PM
I have other rules. Fields of Glory is the next level up from BP - you are a corps commander, and the sub commanders are divisional.  Blucher you are the Army commander, ordering corps. With Blucher it plays completely differently to BP - its not just saying that unit is a Brigade not a battalion. Because Sam Mustapha has gone for 'open' points system to allow you to work out costs of your own units, you can easily say "Ok, Gamble's cavalry actually count as Infanty, that is 'Mobile' [can move and fire], and has 'Skirmish' [skirmish fire more likely to hit], 'Mixed' '[affects enemy skirmishers] and has Elan [combat strength] of 7  [one more than 'standard'].


Yes, that would make  sense then.
The cynics are right nine times out of ten. -Mencken, H. L.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. - Robert Louis Stevenson

DaveH

Napoleonic Rules can work for the ACW as command and control is not really different.

With weapons, its worth noting that in the Shenandoah Valley campaign in 1862 most of the Confederate regiments were still armed with smoothbores and even at Gettysburg both sides still had some regiments with smoothbore weapons. In Peter Cozzen's book on that campaign it does mention at times Confederate units being outranged by Union infantry due to the rifles and rifled artillery being able to outrange the smoothbores.

With the artillery I'd not treat normal batteries as being like horse artillery due to shortage of horses so only the occasional unit should be like that.

The Union cavalry with repeating rifles and breechloading carbines did start to have a distinct firepower advantage, but that is later in the war

The primary differences would be that charging cavalry was pretty much absent as the terrain often did not favour those styles of tactics and more often than not cavalry acted as mounted infantry.  Infantry does not seem to have often formed square though it is in the drill books as a formation still and in the attack there was a tendency to bog down at musket range with both sides ending up firing at each other rather than pressing on with the bayonet.