American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Gentlemen:

Some of you have heard of the Tessier style of game. For those of you who have not, you’re about to be given an opportunity that will change the way you look at these games.

Imagine yourself a mid-level commander in a Civil War battle. You receive your orders from higher up and have to interpret them. You send orders to your troops and hope they reach their intended audience - and pray they are carried out as you intended. You may not know for some time if the courier actually made it or not, or if your orders were understood the way you intended them. If things don’t go the way you expect, you may have to go there yourself and give some lower-level officer some ‘gentle guidance’.

In this style of multi-player battle, players do not move individual units. Instead, a Game Master acts as the go-between, receiving and passing along orders and carrying them out (or not, depending!). As a player, you will assume the role and persona of a specific officer on the field. (That is, if you are assigned General Thomas J. Jackson, you will send and sign orders with his name, not your own.) No player will know the real identity of any other (and it would be considered extremely poor sportsmanship to try and find out!).

You will generally have one week to get your orders sent to us, and we will usually play one turn a week, so this is a long-term commitment. But it shouldn’t take much time on your part each week.

For more details, see the web site General Miller has put together: http://btc.thealleghenyblues.com/

General Ken Miller has run two games of this sort in the past, and he has graciously agreed to tutor me in the fine art of Game Mastering. The scenario we came up with has positions for two Union and four Rebel players. If you are interested in one of these positions DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS POST! Instead, send an email to General Miller and to me. Our email addresses are listed in the DoR.

Any questions should be sent to General Miller and me, as well. We will answer them and, if we feel the questions are pertinent to others, we may answer them here.

Again, if you are interested in participating, DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS POST. Send an email to the two of us:

Dwmallo01 – AT – Yahoo – DOT – com
Kmiller_USA – AT – Yahoo – DOT – com

_________________
General 'Dee Dubya' Mallory
Chief of the Armies, CSA

Just as a note, the following OR are not needed as the game is done in phases:
- Optional Melee Resolution
- Automated Defensive Fire
- Full Melee Defensive Fire
- Proportional Opportunity Fire

And does Gettysburg lack the Extreme Fog of War OR or is it just not wanted for this game?

_________________
Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Was originally considering playing in turn mode but I think it makes the attack too strong.
Need to remove the Options for Turn play from the webpage.

I thought that ADF was required if you didn't want to do the Defensive Fire manually ?
I have no problem letting the AI do the firing, just don't care for the 50% reduction in defensive fire.
The idea behind it was units would fire more than once, however I've found they often don't fire at all.

As to EFOW, once again the basic idea was good, showing a ? for long distance sighting rather than a 3xx makes sense.
However due to the fact that you can't tell how many men are in the woods hex next to you (within 100 yards) I won't use it.

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
AotP

I appreciate the responses we have received thus far. However, gentlemen, I would remind you that any questions should be sent to General Miller and me, directly, rather than in this post. This is to retain anonymity, in case any of the respondents decides he would like to participate.

General Miller and I will answer any questions sent to us. If we feel the questions would be helpful to others, we will post the questions (again, anonymously), along with out answers.

Thank you.

_________________
General 'Dee Dubya' Mallory
Chief of the Armies, CSA

@General Mallory
I was so free to remove the post of an interested officer, so anonymity is retained.

@General Miller
ADF is purely for turn gameplay, in phased gameplay you need to play out the defensive fire phase manually. None of the fire options(Automated Defensive Fire, Full Melee Defensive Fire, Proportional Opportunity Fire) will work in phased gameplay.

_________________
Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

General Hecht,

ADF is not required to be ON when playing in Turn Mode, in that mode it is a default rule.

When playing a PBEM game in Phases however ADF ON has the AI run the Defensive Fire Phase, this is the same option that was used in the old BG games.
It allows playing the game in Phases without having to send multiple files for each turn.
More importantly for this game you have 1 replay showing the whole turn instead of separate replays for Movement and Fire/Melee Phases.

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
AotP

Gentlemen of the Tavern,

FYI: I neglected to mention that we will be using a modified scenario from the Gettysburg game for this session. In order to watch the replay, all players will need to have the latest version (3.0) of John Tiller's "Campaign: Gettysburg".

_________________
General 'Dee Dubya' Mallory
Chief of the Armies, CSA

Yes sorry for posting nonsense.
I wonder if one could call it even more realistic with ADF as the human player would likely optimize his fire in consideration to the whole line, while the real regimental commander would fire what he sees as the greatest threat to his regiment.

Anyhow I checked my notes and I wonder if there is any consideration for the possible higher volume of fire that is dished out. Ammo was always a problem for the rebels and I remember a game were my opponent had to turn his guns or they would waste there ammo without much effect.

_________________
Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

You can always use "A/I menu - adjust adf" for infantry and artillery, but that affects all units on your side.

_________________
General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Yes but even minimum can be troublesome if your artillery pounds on a unit in very good cover and isn't doing any damage.

_________________
Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Gentlemen,

Thank you all for the responses. We have the players needed for my 'training session'. Once this completes (assuming I 'graduate! lol), another post will be made for a full-blown Tessier-style battle.

Your humble servant,
Gen 'Dee Dubya' Mallory

_________________
General 'Dee Dubya' Mallory
Chief of the Armies, CSA