American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Playing a game(Chancellorsville) against an excellent opponent, Mark Davis, as the union, I have found his artillery fire to be especially effective and deadly. In, so much, it started me inquiring of a few senior officers about "was it too good". I also commented on how effective the Reb infantry was versus the Union.

To buttress my argument, I quoted this link:
http://www.civilwaracademy.com/confederate-artillery.html



General Meyer has been very helpful in his comments. He has suggested some thoughts I had not considered. In fact his turn based vs. phased base explanation over at the Eagles Perch is brilliant.

He has recommended this book for an in depth study: "I suggest that for a critical and enlightening treatment of the ANV's artillery that you get a copy of the two-volume work, The Long Arm of Lee, by Jennings Cropper Wise. It is the best work of its kind that I have read and will give you an appreciation of the expertise of those veteran, Southern gunners, the equipment with which they operated and the obstacles they faced. The entire story is told from beginning of the war to the end, and you will be absolutely fascinated by the administrative evolution of the Southern artillery battalion organization."

I will see if I can get the Union Quartermaster (my wife) to agree to the outlay.

Meanwhile, what say the fine officers of this club?

Major General Elkin
3rd Div (2nd CAV) XVI Corps AotT

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I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies. . . . Let us look before us, and not behind

Incredible-I have a NOOK book of it "The Long Arm of Lee" for FREE.

Nook for PC is free as well as an incredible open source program called Calibre which will allow you to read on your Apple Ipad, or your desktop, your laptop or your smartphone.

Calibre is an amazing program worth checking out. Here is the site
http://calibre-ebook.com/

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I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies. . . . Let us look before us, and not behind

Well, keep in mind a number of things about artillery, terrain, and the game mechanics. If the CSA Artillery is firing at you from a higher elevation than chances are they have a 30% - 90% more effective fire than they normally do. Higher elevation is everything on the Fredricksburg/Chancellorsville map. Also, if your opponent is smart he has his guns behind stone walls, breastworks, or in a forest hex if possible. So he may be getting an even greater bonus. Or, if he is in the town itself he receives a bonus.

Personally I always felt that Yank Artillery is much superior to our own. I have often felt that with Yankee guns and Rebel soldiers I could whip anybody.

I helped playtest Chancellorsville, but in most of the scenarios I playtested the woods limited the involvement of artillery more than most games. Still, I don't recall artillery being more effective than in other games. You could compare the parameter data with other games like Gettysburg and see if Rich made artillery more powerful.

I read The Long Arm of Lee and thought it was very informative. Wise, a VMI alumni, wrote the book in the early 1900s, and had access to a number of veterans. I remember him recounting the frustration of battery commanders with the unreliability of the fuses in the Chancellorsville section, which is at the beginning of the second volume. But I don't recall the other limitations described in your quote being mentioned, although maintaining the horses was a continuing problem.

One thing you have to be careful of is stacking. If you have 800 infantry or more in a stack and are using the density optional rule (which I do), you can suffer up to 50% more casualties from fire than if you don't use that option.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

The problem with how HPS simulates artillery is very much tied in with the type of ammo available at the time and how HPS handles artillery ammo.

HPS parameter tables probably overestimate the effectiveness of long range fire. You will generally find that rifled guns which are mostly Union are deadly in counter battery fire but the reality was they hit more by accident than design. The noise and smoke was the most useful thing they produced. While the eye witness acounts give dramatic descrptions of the effectiveness of fire you will find that the few hits made by guns just overly empresses those hit.

The Confederate guns with their poor fuses were pretty much useless at distances over 300 yards. It would take an unusually deep enemy formation for their to be any chance medium and long range fire would hit anyting. The bombardment of Cemetery Hill being the ultimate demonstration of how useless artillery was. Both sides reduced the number of guns with the army after 1863 but for different reasons. Lee because he lacked horses to pull them. Grant because he wanted to make the army more mobile.

The other limitation of artillery affects their close range capacity where they were deadly. In the HPS game their is no distinction between close range and long range ammo supply. But the actual batteries carried vary little. The standard alotment for a Napoleon was four canister per ammo chest or 12 canister. Enough in the game to last six minutes. After that the gunners would normally withdraw. The rest of their ammo made the gun little more than an oversize musket at ranges below 300 yards.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)