Artillery I tend to fire individually or in small groups but rarely as an entire stack. They usually will inflict some decent casualties and increase the chance for disruption, fatigue, and routing by spreading out their fires, rather than one massed barrage. Infantry I like to fire as stacks, especially against large Union units, but again depends on the situation on a particular part of the battlefield. Initial attacks I would like to inflict as many casualties as possible to break their will at the beginning of a battle, but as units get worn down in battle I would rather fire individually to increase fatigue and the chance for disruption and rout. This may seem gamey and not historical, but from the Napoleonic times, units were drilled to fire in many different manners, platoon, rolling echelon, single massed volleys, by rank etc, etc. So I would suggest what you are trying to achieve at a particular point on the battlefield, inflict massed casualties to discourage the enemy, or incur fatigue to increase chances of disruption and routing to halt attacks or cause the enemy to break to be followed by immediate pursuit. In conclusion, I do not like to limit myself to individual or massed fires, and have the ability to fire according to the tactical situation, as the individual regimental unit commanders had the same leeway in their training and drills. I used to own the printed version of "The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Figthing Methods and Combat Experiences of the Civil War" 2003 by Brent Nosworthy, a good primer, now only on Kindle, from Amazon anyway. Covered many aspects of infantry, artillery and cavalry tactics of the times. Opportunity fire is a whole 'nother can of worms, but PLEASE, a commander moving to a unit triggers an entire enemy hexes's opportunity fire, or a commander changing from mounted to dismounted, or vise-versa triggers opportunity fire, never against the commander, always against the unit, LOGIC please that a hex full of units is triggered by a handful of command and his staff moving in the heat of battle, there were sharpshooters in the war, but they were limited by weapons, training and certainly did not trigger a salvo by an entire hex full of soldiers over a movement of a few men on horse. Yes, I am aware of the death of Gen Leonidas Polk while scouting positions at Pine Mountain during the Atlana Campaign, that was certainly an anomoly, I do not see why command movement triggers massive salvos, I guess a attempt to duplicate Stonwall Jackson but he was well in front of the lines, deaths such as AS Johnston at Shiloh in the heat of battle are of course historical, but any movement by any commander triggering fires doesn't make much sense, as especially there are plenty of leaders killed logically in battle leading their troops. And then we get into phased play versus turn play, evidently there are many subjects up for discussion and many more possible optional rules, unless we get to the point where we overwhelm the game with optional rules trying to please everyone and every view.
|