Chattanooga, 1863

On Sunday myself, Dave, Greg and Phil spent an enjoyable 4 hours playing the 1863 battle of Chattanooga using the Altar of Freedom rules. For those not familiar with the rules, they are as set we found several years ago when we embarked on ACW and are specifically aimed at 6mm, where I base of figures represents a brigade. We use bases of circa 30 infantry or 9 cavalry as a Brigade, albeit in most games cavalry are fairly non-existent.

The rules themselves are quite short, running to just over 15 pages of the rulebook, and some of these pages contain illustrations and period quotes so the actual rules are even shorter. They are meant to be played using historical scenarios and are supported by two scenario books. These contain maps and full ORBATS for the battles, plus markers for all the units and generals involved listing the unit strengths and the character strengths or flaws of the Commanders. This is a great help to actually setting up a game plus it makes each game unique and challenging.

As well as the normal nuts and bolts of movement, firing and close combat the rules contain several innovative mechanisms which really set them apart from other rules. Commanders all have a number of “priority points” based on their historic battlefield effectiveness. These are allocated to their various Divisions and during a turn Divisions move according to the allocation of priority points. If you want to go first allocate a high number but then risk other units not going that turn. Linked to this is the “turn clock”, which dictates the pace of the battle. Each turn the “turn clock” is reduced as each “priority point number” is activated, and when the turn clock reaches zero the turn ends. Each side can adopt different strategies for the turn clock depending on their set battlefield objectives or simply the tactical situation during the turn.

We have now played the rules several times and are finally beginning to understand their subtleties. Playing the Union on Sunday Dave and I came onto the table from the North and West and had to either break the Confederate morale or take the Rossville in the south-east by the end or turn 9. We had a preponderance of troops but close terrain to fight through and seemingly never quite enough priority points, but that does force hard decisions to be made. By the end or turn 9 it was a close-run thing. We hadn’t managed to take Rossville but with a final attack we did manage to take a Divisional HQ and break the Confederate morale, winning by the skin of our teeth.

After our first run-out with Altar of Freedom where some people tried to micro-manage units, we have now pretty much got the hand of them and realise that although individual Brigades do fight the results are often fairly inconclusive at Brigade level with the overall strategy of Army and Divisional command being the battle-winning factor, just as it should be!

The models in the photos are all Baccus figures with Leven Miniatures buildings.

Simon

Altar of Freedom – 6mm ACW, Peachtree Creek

The Union forces started with a strong position on the ridge, overlooking Mount Zion Church, but were unable to spend any priority points on turn one. The Rebels used this surprise attack opportunity to storm the ridge in force. While the left flank of the Rebel attack faltered, on the right, a single brigade pushed all the way to bridge North of Colliers Mill, driving all before it!! While this audacious attack was in danger of being cut off, the Rebel left rallied and attacked the ridge again, dislodging the Union forces. Meanwhile another Rebel Corps had marched around the far left flank and were threatening both bridges over Peachtree Creek on the East flank.

Union forces were still not getting an Command Priority Points, not helped by having two Generals captured and one killed and to make matters worse, the Union counter attacks were finding themselves bottled-up in the narrow roads to the North of Peachtree Creek. A rebel win.

Altar of Freedom, Seven Pines

This was just a small re-orientation game for Altar of Freedom, ahead of running the Gibraltar of the West campaign. This game was straight out of All Quiet on the Pontiac, the Seven Pines scenario. 

Longstreet’s massively powerful Anderson’s Division barrelled through Seven Pines, sweeping Couch’s Division (Union IV Corps) before them. Keynes attempted to pivot Casey’s Division onto the left flank of Anderson’s Division, but Anderson merely split his Division, with one half chasing what was left of Couch’s Division back through their own HQ, while the other faced down the re-deploying Casey’s Division. 

However, Anderson’s Divisional artillery rolled up on the now exposed flank of Casey’s Division, causing them to fallback to the hill just North of Savage Station. Heintzelman (Union III Corps), on the Union right flank, was attempting to stabilise a front near Dr.Trent, awaiting Union reinforcements, but harassing fire from Hill’s Confederate Divisional artillery drove them back. This collapsed the Union bridgehead over the Chickahomany River to an unviable sized, so come nightfall, the Union army withdrew.

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