Across A Deadly Field: The War in the West

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & THANKS

No published historical study or wargame design was ever done by one person. Every author stands on the shoulders of the many others who went before him and is always dependent on the talented contributions of others. In the field of Civil War research, despite the thousands of well-researched books and widespread availability of both printed and digital official records, correspondence and participant memoirs, there always seems to be some new piece of research or a new way of looking at how the interplay of terrain, tactics and pure chance shaped both battles and campaigns. Both professional and amateur historians are taking fresh looks at previously accepted interpretations and wargamers are using their miniatures and tabletop terrain to examine the results of alternate decisions or the vagaries of chance. Needless to say, all knowledgeable wargame and scenario designers are quick to take advantage of these fresh ideas, viewpoints and the ongoing contributions and support of a very large pool of extremely knowledgeable and talented Civil War aficionados.

Likewise, this book would not exist without the contributions of many of those same talented enthusiasts. Dean West, who is well known for his meticulous historical research, authored two superb small scenarios for the first scenario book – The War in the East – and has worked up a large very detailed scenario on the Battle of Champion Hill for The War in the West. To my knowledge, this is the first time – ever – that such a detailed order of battle has been presented for this battle, and I owe Dean a personal apology for constantly badgering him with almost daily, is it done yet? inquiries. Well, it did get done – and it is a masterpiece. We are also very pleased to include new contributors to Across a Deadly Field. From the UK, we welcome noted Civil War authority, Paul Stevenson – one of the grandmasters of scenario design – who took the time to give us a well-researched and superbly presented scenario on the Battle of Pickett’s Mill from Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. Mike Bradford, another well-known UK lead pusher, has worked up a set of creative rules and charts highlighting many of the weird weapons that appeared, could have appeared, or better should never have appeared on a Civil War battlefield. So, a special thanks to Paul and Mike, and welcome aboard.

From their work on the rules themselves and the long hours honing the scenarios into a delicate balance between what actually happened and what could have happened, I could not have asked for a better team. It is for good reason that the Civil War wargaming community has come to appreciate the hard work of Dean West, Patrick LeBeau, P.J. O’Neill, Todd Davis, Stephen Huckaby, Robert Hoy, Cory Ring and Chris Ward in making Across a Deadly Field the success it has been. Before the game was even published, they were making beautiful terrain boards and running demo games at conventions and in game stores, both large and small, with often nothing more than yet another version of my crude playtest charts. If someone wanted to try the game, these fellows always were willing – and still are – to walk them through a turn or two, or even a complete game. And their contributions did not stop there.

Charge! Confederate infantry assault a strongly defended Federal fence line.

Patrick LeBeau toiled uncounted long days and weeks preparing a spectacularly well-done, meticulously detailed miniature terrain board, along with painting all the units for the entire first day of Gettysburg, which went on to become one of the big visual hits of Little Wars, Nashcon and Historicon and the many photos of his stunning game in the first scenario book, The War in the East, give testament to his hard work. None of that would have happened without Patrick. But, no matter how well-painted the figures and how well-presented the game, its long term success or failure may eventually turn on the exact wording of the rules – are the final written rules clear, consistent, understandable and relatively immune to even the most creative interpretations of gamers determined to win? However, thanks to the continuous eagle eye reviews of P.J. O’Neill and his team of rule lawyers, they slowly got there. Throughout the process, P.J. has tirelessly taken the lead in patiently answering the ongoing stream of rule questions, providing important rule clarifications and tweaking out yet another potential rule contradiction or ambiguity.

We live in a visual world and how a rulebook looks is as important as what the rules say – perhaps even more so, as no one wants to read an ugly rule book – and that requires unique and very talented individuals who are masters of the technical and sometimes arcane arts of graphic design, photography and miniature scene composition. In addition to the many talented individuals at Osprey, the obvious pictorial appeal of the rulebook would not be as stunning as it is without graphic artists like Todd Davis and the incredible photographic and scene setting skills of Cory Ring, Chris Ward, Scott Mingus, Doug Kline, Alan Sheward, Malcolm Johnson and, of course, Dean, Patrick and P.J. But, today, even more is required for a game to be successful, and that is a website that is dedicated to helping the gamers enjoy the game and provide critical ongoing support. Fortunately, Cory Ring and Chris Ward have stepped up and offered their own website – Cigar Box Battles – as a forum for all things related to Across a Deadly Field, including publishing the latest rule clarifications, variants, and – most important – offering no-cost downloads of the one-page quick reference charts that any gamer may need to play the game. As of this printing, well over 1,000 free ADF reference chart downloads have been downloaded by gamers from Cigar Box Battles.

While the gamer’s response to Across a Deadly Field has been overwhelmingly positive, the unique aspect of many of its game mechanics can generate situations that may have needed further clarification or additional diagrams of play. This, as would be expected, has led to very specific gamer questions that whenever practical were presented in a question and answer on the various web-based discussion groups and blogs such as Cigar Box Battles. These questions and suggestions were the basis for the following additional rule clarifications, suggestions and additions and reflect the enthusiasm and desire by hundreds of involved wargamers to become involved and to contribute to a fuller explanation of the intent of the rules. I certainly want thank all those gamers that took the time to write up their questions and send them to one of the blogs or made a point of talking to myself at one of the conventions in an effort to better understand the game and to point out where something needed further explanation... and there is always something. This kind of interaction and discussion is what makes games better and that gamer involvement was the genesis of the section on Rule Clarifications and Additions and all I can say is, thank you for your input and keep those comments, complaints, suggestions and questions coming.

The Shiloh army lists and unit strengths were based primarily on David Reed’s detailed, The Battle of Shiloh and the Organizations Involved. Reed was the first Shiloh National Park historian and his work, published in 1902, made use of all the official records, manuscripts along with primary sources now lost to history. As a member of the 12th Iowa Infantry Regiment, Reed fought at Shiloh. And after the war, he had another tremendous research advantage over modern historians, as many of the participants were still alive and if a question came up, Reed could often inquire directly of them. We all owe a heartfelt thanks to the University of Tennessee for republishing his work in 2008 along with Reed’s very detailed oversized original maps in CD format. In addition, we would like to thank the Park Rangers at Shiloh National Military Park for making available to us their own unpublished research on the specific weapons used by each unit at the battle.

John Hill

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WESTERN SCENARIOS

DESIGNER’S NOTES

While we have been pleased with the overwhelming positive reception that has been given to both the original rulebook for Across a Deadly Field and our first scenario book, The War in the East, we certainly hope that this latest effort, The War in the West, will be equally well received. In both scenario books, it has been our desire to not just produce a collection of wargame scenarios but to use them as a means to examine particular battles within the larger context of at specific campaign within that theater of the war and to show how the armies had evolved up to that point. Both the Union and the Confederate armies had advantages and vulnerabilities, but how they leveraged their particular advantages to compensate for their vulnerabilities was often the overarching factor that contributed significantly to the success or failure of a battle and eventually that campaign.

Federal Infantry counter attack on the second day at Shiloh. (Doug Kline)

In terms of scenario victory conditions, to ignore such background issues is to ignore their historical military impact. For the Union, their extensive resource and logistics infrastructure usually meant that their Western armies could almost always survive even a serious setback as, immediately as the sun set on any battlefield, fresh reinforcements, replacement supplies, a new commander or whatever else was needed was being rushed to them by rail or river. For the Confederates, it usually meant that any victory must be so overwhelming that the opposing Union army was routed beyond repair and that its final destruction would be accomplished in the following days – before the Union’s logistics establishment could replace whatever was lost. If not, given time, that Union army would be repaired, usually given a new commander, and eventually would be back on the offensive looking for revenge. The classic example is that the decisive Confederate victory at Chickamauga was incomplete as both armies settled in for a lengthy siege, which – as could be expected – played to the Union’s advantage and the next major battle saw the Confederates driven off their formidable Missionary Ridge position which then, in turn, set the stage for the even greater victory of Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. And therein lies the victory condition conundrum. If the scenario result is anything but a decisive Confederate victory of strategic proportions then, for almost all practical historical impact, the Union has won. However, that makes for a very unbalanced and unsatisfactory wargame experience. With that duly acknowledged, the scenario victory conditions have nevertheless been structured so that, within reasonable parameters of chance, both sides have a roughly equal chance of winning the scenario. That said, there are a few scenarios that have a definite underdog as winning with the weaker hand is always most satisfying.

Very few battles happened in isolation. They were almost always a part of a larger campaign that was shaped by the plans and visions of the commander’s concept of the objectives of that campaign and how the results of one or more battles might impact his vision of that campaign. This leads to the question of what is needed to win a scenario. To defeat an army, do you have to actually destroy that army or is all that is required is to so psychologically damage its leader that he abandons his campaign vision? Obviously, General Rosecrans was a beaten man after Chickamauga and President Lincoln’s assessment of him being ...hit on the head like a duck... was generally accurate – so, if that is a victory condition, then the Confederates had certainly won that battle as Rosecrans’ campaign was clearly over. On the other hand, Ulysses S. Grant was made of sterner stuff and the fact that his army was very roughly handled on the first day of Shiloh had little impact on his campaign objective of maintaining his offensive movement against Corinth. As he said, ...lick ‘em tomorrow... and he did. Likewise, the many failures of his multiple campaigns against Vicksburg did not end his campaign – but only delayed its eventual successful conclusion. On the other side of that issue, the disastrous Confederate attacks at Franklin should have convinced Confederate General Hood to abandon his drive on Nashville; but, in this case his persistence in pursuing his Nashville operation was not based on an achievable campaign objective but on delusion fueled by hope and opiates. Had it not been for the brilliant rearguard actions by Bedford Forrest’s cavalry corps, Hood’s army might have been totally destroyed instead of only severely mauled at Nashville and in the weeks that followed.

It was those larger issues, that shaped our belief that a better historical scenario book would result if the battles were presented within the context of the events, the commander’s perception of those events, his operational concept of the upcoming battle along with the organizational, administrative and logistic differences of the opposing armies. It is when all these factors interact with the available historical weapons, the battlefield terrain and the specific fire and maneuver tactics, that a richer historical scenario results. This in-depth historical approach to scenario presentation, however, has a downside and that due to time and space constraints the number of scenarios that we could present in any one book, would be limited. The most glaring fault is perhaps the sin of omission. Wargamers and historians alike will have legitimate complaints as to why many excellent and worthy battles have not been included in these books. For example, the Eastern scenario book has no scenarios from Antietam and the great Battle of Chickamauga is obviously absent from this book. The reason for these omissions is that each of these battles are so rich in scenario material, both as total battles and with many great smaller tactical slices, that it was felt that each of these deserved a separate scenario or wargame campaign book of their own – and at some point we hope to do that. So, please accept our apologies if, in either the Eastern or Western scenario book we overlooked your favorite battle. We do, however, hope to eventually cover many more clashes – both large and small – in the future.

ADVANTAGES AND VULNERABILITIES

The war for the American Heartland was an unequal contest that pitted Northern resource and leadership advantages against Southern material deficiencies and strategic vulnerabilities. The ever-present defensive issue for the Confederacy in the West was the geographic problem of large distances and rivers going the wrong way. In the East,