American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Guys

Does moving and attacking at night make any sense? Thinking about Launching an attack but the cost seems very high.
as to Movement it is a bit less but hard to do so been lucky so far trying to Take Longstreet's advice To Lee.

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COL. R.T Coyne
7th Brigade 4th Division" Coyne's Cavalry Rangers"
1st Corp Army of Northern Virginia

"Does moving and attacking at night make any sense?"

It depends.
There are simply too many variables to provide a definitive Yes or No.

I personally prefer to use Night Move Restrictions in any multi-day scenario. House Rules like that one still enable night action under certain conditions but overall prohibit mass movements and attacks. In my experience, night actions that occur with that house rule under effect generally don't last too long as the men quickly get disrupted and heavily fatigued. After several moves one side or the other either withdraws or routs away. [Rallying routed troops at night is very difficult. They are often still in rout until dawn breaks.]

Failure to have any might move restrictions can lead to completely unrealistic situations, such as: the forward movement of many thousands of men around an enemy's flank; large numbers of men moving cross country in perfect column formation; or a mass attack of an entire corps or more upon a position. I can't recall any of those sorts of things occurring during the war.

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

Thanks

I often here Horror stories of these Massed Night movements

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COL. R.T Coyne
7th Brigade 4th Division" Coyne's Cavalry Rangers"
1st Corp Army of Northern Virginia

The main advantage to attacking at night is that any ensuing morale checks incur a -2 morale penalty that can precipitate mass routs.

Not only are these routed units hard to rally as Quaama says but neither do they recover any fatigue while routed.

(As an aside, the -2 morale penalty at night has never made sense to me from a historical perspective.)

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA