American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

For the Battle of Shiloh, what I count in the DoR is 42 Union victories, 43 Reb victories, and 25 draws. It looks to be about as even as you can get, but factually if the Rebs press, the Union runs. You have to keep in mind though that the HPS/WDS series has so many options available that can radically change a game, and that makes the DoR results questionable at best in attempting to find a 'balanced' game.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

I copied all the HPS Shiloh 144 games from the DoR Game Scenario Report and pasted them into a spreadsheet and got:
Union 34 Victories (33 Major, 1 Minor);
Confederate 31 Victories (29 Major, 2 Minor); and
28 Draws.
Note that some people erroneously record either the USA or CSA as the 'Victor' even though the result was a Draw [I have counted them all as Draws]. I can't account for your higher numbers overall. Most of the games were battles with just under 13% (12/93) being manoeuvres.

The standout thing in the figures for me was that if either side won the battle it was a big win. Over 95% of victories are Major Victories!

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

My guess would be that you counted scenario 144 while I included 144, 145, 146, and 147.

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Gen Ned Simms
2/XVI Corps/AotT
Blood 'n Guts hisself, a land lovin' pirate. Show me some arty tubes and we'll charge 'em.
VMI Class of '00

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

"We can, and have, gone down a rabbit hole here.

Rabbit hole, hornets nest, can of worms, call it what you will.....it's been gone down

I think my original statement that arguing about individual unit ratings isn't as important as being able to agree on what the overall armies are rated. And, back to Shiloh, that doesn't happen there.
"

There will never be, IMHO, agreement, as I previously noted, amongst players, either from the same side or indeed opposing sides on force balance, scenario balance, troop ratings and a myriad other variables in 'any' wargame, never mind the WDS games. The greater the depth, the detail, and attempt to create 'balance' merely ensures the 'rabbit hole' just becomes deeper and deeper. My opinion and "two cents" for what it's worth

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Karl McEntegart
Brigadier General
Officer Commanding
Army of Tennessee





Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.

Yes, I think we may have to agree to disagree.

I generally think that the designer has rated leaders and units based upon their performance 'on the day' rather than on 'past performance'. I think that is the correct way to do it. Past performance can never guarantee what that performance will be tomorrow. Whether it be a football team, a horse in a race, or a man in battle you just don't know. [I do alright on the horses but if I knew how they would perform 'on the day' (instead of their past performance) I would be a very happy man.] Fortunately, thanks to history we know how specific units and leaders performed on the day of the battle. The designers would be remiss not to use that information and to instead use the less reliable information of past performance.

We know the performance of Iverson and his brigade at Gettysburg. We know their performance prior, and subsequent to that battle. We don't know for sure if Iverson was drunk or why his men failed to send skirmishers forward and thus avoid the ambush. However, we do know they performed badly and that is a fact. For whatever reason they did not have the cohesion that one may have suspected based on overall past performance. [I did come across some allegations of Iverson's brigade 'shirking their duty' at Chancellorsville but that does not seem to be the opinion of other commanders at the time (https://leefamilyarchive.org/9-family-papers/336-battle-report-of-the-chancellorsville-campaign-1863-september-23)].

As for Shiloh, well, past performance is again not used for the ratings. Why? Because we have the more reliable information of how they actually performed 'on the day'. Was it due to factors such as ill health, being surprised, or some sort of groupthink by the Union (Peabody and 25th Missouri excepted) that there were not large numbers of Confederates nearby? We don't know for sure but we do know they performed below previous past performances. How they performed on the day is what should be reflected, not past performance, because that is what will best simulate the battle in the scenario.
If the Union ratings are adjusted to reflect past performance then in most games of that scenario the CSA will have no hope of pushing forward on Day 1. Indeed it may well be that the CSA is pushed back and possibly destroyed on Day 1. That is not Shiloh. Other changes, such as moving the Objective hexes to CSA control could have been made so that the Union is the attacker. But, again, that is not Shiloh.

The designers did the only thing they could do to somehow simulate the conditions at the time and show the flow of the battle. The only thing in the game engine that would enable them to do that was to use unit/leader ratings. Otherwise, the scenario would be flawed and in no way reflect the battle itself as it occurred. The scenario, as designed, seems to work well with the Union generally winning a close-run thing. That tells me the designer probably got things pretty right.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

The whole point of Blake's evaluation was that the units that had yet to see combat were overrated-for both sides. How do you rate a unit's prior performance when they haven't got one?

It appears to me Blake's opinion is that combat experience automatically makes a unit better than one without that experience. Needless to say, I disagree.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/arti ... wners-farm

The bottom line is that a Rebel force roughly equal to the Yankee force attacked and drove the Yankee force back to the bluffs overlooking the Tennessee river before the Yankee force swelled with reinforcements counterattacked the next day and drove them back. That's history.

But if you think the Rebel units are overrated it is not difficult to create a scenario with the unit values Blake feels are more appropriate. And I'll bet you don't have much trouble finding a Yank to play it against!

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

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Gen. Blake Strickler
Confederate General-in-Chief
El Presidente 2010 - 2012

I think Paul has the right idea. You cant assign units a grade for something that didn't occur in the battle you are recreating.

On the other hand this is a bit of the chicken and the egg situation. How can you grade a unit for a battle when the battle has yet to occur as Steve said.

Everyone has really good points. I reckon there is no right answer.

To paraphrase the movie Gettysburg and Longstreet, you pick your side and then put your head down and win.

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LtC Thomas "Tex" McSwain
Kansas Raiders

It is the overall balance at the time (and in the scenario as a whole) that must be considered. Whittlesey's brigade may well have been of higher quality leading up to the battle, but not on the day. The scenario is trying to replicate the situation on the day, not before, nor after it. Hence, different ratings are applied in later battles appropriate to those battles, not based upon their performance at Shiloh.

I doubt that any such researchers are on the staff either. However, if you look at the design notes for each title you can see that research was done at the time the scenarios were originally designed. That is partially why I have some confidence that, in general, the ratings are appropriate for the historical scenarios to ensure that they play out in a manner aligned with the specific battle conditions. There are undoubtedly some individual errors here and there (for example the errors in the Fredericksburg map that Mike Terhune mentioned in a CSA forum) but I feel that on the whole the ratings are appropriate for individual battles. The probable absence of historical research in recent versions means that special care must be taken with any new changes that are made to ensure that those changes do not upset the historical balance that was originally incorporated within the scenarios.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia

Just another rebel trying to justify inflated ratings for their side.

How else can you judge units aside from their combat experience? An untried unit should be given lower ratings than tried units if for no other reason than they have never seen the elephant. Blake said there can be outliers and I am fine with that minor exception to the rule. But the "army" of the Mississippi isn't an outlier because it lost the battle and fought poorly. They were badly routed on the second day of battle. Did you forget that?

At Shiloh you have a previously victorious Army of the Tennessee in the field against an "army" that would fight their first - and last - battle together at Shiloh. They would launch an uncoordinated attack that fell apart and could not break Grant's line. Given their advantage in preparations they should have been more successful. But poor leadership and confusion led to wasteful frontal assaults (see the hornet's nest). Even the Army of Tennessee in 1863 or 1864 could have defeated Grant at Shiloh. But the "army" of the Mississippi in 1862 is just not well led and has too many greenhorn soldiers. That should be better reflected in the ratings.

Mic dropped.

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Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER

You will have to cite a reference about the Army of the Mississippi was routed from the field Never read any such thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Although Beauregard claimed in his report that “never did troops leave a battle-field in better order,” the remarkable cohesion the Confederate army had shown on April 7 was no longer evident by 4:00 P.M. The weary and famished soldiers dragged themselves along the route of retreat, burning camps and equipment as they went. Some had lost all they had and suffered more than others. Some artillery units had no ammunition and, even worse, no horses; they were ordered to spike the guns and leave them on the field. The retreat was miserable for all.

Smith, Timothy B.. Shiloh: Conquer or Perish (Modern War Studies) . University Press of Kansas. Kindle Edition.

All a matter of how you define a rout. When an army is whipped and immediately flees a battlefield under pressure, burning supplies, spiking guns, and not stopping until they reached their old camps, I call that a rout.

Isn't that what you rebs claim happened to McDowell at Bull Run? It happens to our army and you call it a rout. Happens to yours and its called, what?

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Maj. Gen. Mitch Johnson
ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE COMMANDER

Doesn't sound like a rout to me if they take the time to burn stuff they can't carry and spike guns they don't have either ammo or horses for! But thanks for that part about the remarkable cohesion shown on April 7th. Proves my point.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

From Mike's earlier link regarding Shiloh:
"All morning, Beauregard hoped that the arrival of 20,000 men under the command of Brigadier General Earl Van Dorn would change the battle momentum back to favoring the Confederates. He was eventually notified that Van Dorn was still far away, so preparations for a withdrawal to Corinth began about 1:00 pm. At about 2:00 pm, Breckenridge began forming his corps into a rear guard position near Shiloh Church. Confederate batteries around Shiloh Church began a bombardment campaign to deceive the Union soldiers into thinking the Confederate army was still present. Around 3:30 pm, the last of the Confederate artillery was hauled away toward Corinth. [Reference in link was - Cunningham, O. Edward (2009). Joiner, Gary D. and Smith, Timothy L. (eds.). Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862. New York, New York: Savas Beatie.]
Sounds like a well organised retreat to me.

In regards to 'The Great Skedaddle' at Bull Run [First Manassas] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Bull_Run [my emphasis in bold]:
As the soldiers streamed uncontrollably toward Centreville, discarding their arms and equipment, McDowell ordered Col. Dixon S. Miles's division to act as a rear guard, but it was impossible to rally the army short of Washington. In the disorder that followed, hundreds of Union troops were taken prisoner. Wagons and artillery were abandoned, including the 30-pounder Parrott rifle, which had opened the battle with such fanfare. Expecting an easy Union victory, the wealthy elite of nearby Washington, including congressmen and their families, had come to picnic and watch the battle. When the Union army was driven back in a running disorder, the roads back to Washington were blocked by panicked civilians attempting to flee in their carriages.[62] The pell-mell retreat became known in the Southern press as "The Great Skedaddle". [References in link included https://web.archive.org/web/20190201065804/https://historicaldigression.com/2011/07/28/bull-run-and-the-art-of-the-skedaddle/ and https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/july-21-1861-first-major-battle-civil-war/].
Here's a quote from the 'historyreader' link [my emphasis in bold]:
The tide of the battle turned as thousands of Union troops retreated in total confusion. The soldiers became entangled with the civilians trying to escape the Confederates (two Northern congressmen were captured). The Southern press called it the “great skedaddle,” and the Union was humiliated. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois termed it “the most shameful rout you can conceive of.”

There's even a board game named after it called 'The Great Skedaddle' (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/364695/pub-battles-bull-run-great-skedaddle).

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia