Dusting off Altar of Freedom

For the first time in many years our tireless reporter stayed on the same Continent even if he did move 84 years in time from the AWI to the ACW. Having checked through my e-mails we bought 6mm ACW back in 2018, and since then have played 2 games of “Altar of Freedom” (AoF) and one using modified “Blucher”. With many of us having bought and painted armies it seemed a shame to leave them unused in boxes, so I decided to dust-off AoF and give it another go.

The scenario chosen was “Cedar Creek”, a medium-sized scenario which appeared a little less terrain-heavy than many in the scenario books.

The game features an early morning Rebel attack on a widely distributed Yankee force. Chris and Tony tried to co-ordinate the Rebels, with Phil and Greg manfully resisting whilst marshalling the troops. The Yankees deployed first, with Divisions encamped all over the table and Major General Sheridan somewhere off-table, together with 8 vital Priority Points.

The Rebels deployed second into in a long line with their cavalry of the far side of Cedar Creek, threatening one of the Yankee Divisions flanks. The Rebels had effectively a free turn and raced towards the Yankee troops. 

Things didn’t go well for Jonny Reb. The Yankee centre managed to hold a frustratingly unified line, and even got lucky breaking several Confederate units with high dice rolls. 

Phil’s Cavalry Corps soon had the smaller Confederate cavalry command in trouble and as well as breaking a unit cleared the western bank of Cedar Creek of Rebels, leaving the infantry to take the fight to their Confederate counterparts.

Greg managed to form a solid defensive position on the outskirts of Middletown, and gradually the Yankee reinforcements started to enter the line.

When Phil Sheridan arrived on turn four the game turned decisively in the Yankee’s favour, as they now had more Priority Points to spend each turn plus better troops. The rebels tried a final “Rebel Yell” and charged, breaking several Yankee units but lost more of their own in the Northerner’s turn. By the end of turn five it was all over. The Rebel morale broke and Chris and Tony conceded defeat. Sheridan had defeated Early.

At the end everyone thought it had been a good game, and looked nice in 6mm. With two rookie players in the forms of Greg and Chris, and the rest of us not having played for five years it was always going to be a challenge as the core mechanisms of allocating Priority Points and the Turn clock are unique to the game. By the end of turn 3 I think everyone “got it”. Playing at the club all those years ago one of the main problems had been the lengthy set-up time. I could obviously negate this by setting up in advance including labelling everyone’s troops. This had taken me nearly two hours but hey, it’s what retirements is for! The biggest gripe is still the tendency for some “micro-management” of individual Brigades to try and manoeuvre into optimal positions, especially when ½ an inch can mean the difference between using devastating canister or not. A hex mat holds the possibility to improve matters but none of us have a mat with hexes that small. I have thought of some easy improvements. Colour coding the Divisions’ labels with marker pens to help identification, plus making up some small rulers marked with the various permutations of moving and firing, such as were common for DBA back in the day.

I’m pretty sure we will return to the ACW using Altar of Freedom sometime in the near future.

That’s it for this week

Simon