All Green Alike

All Green Alike is the name of the "bonus" game included with Stonewall Jackson's Way II, Multi-man Publishing's reprint of Avalon Hill's Stonewall Jackson's Way, the second game in the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series.  The original game dealt with the campaign around the battle of Second Bull Run.  All Green Alike features the 1861 battle fought in northern Virginia.

Both "games" feature a number of scenarios, divided into basic and advanced.  The advanced ones (including the long campaign scenarios) incorporate the advanced rules, while the basic ones either eschew the advanced rules altogether or only use certain ones, and are generally shorter in duration.

Above is the set-up for the 3rd scenario, "McDowell's Opportunity," which is a hypothetical scenario that has the Federals attacking the Confederates at Manassas Junction two days before they did historically.

The game provides Force markers that you can use to keep big stacks off the main map, as shown below.

Each turn there are a number of initiative phases.  Both sides roll a die and the high roll wins the initiative (generally the Confederates win ties).  The initiative player either takes an action or passes the initiative to the opponent.  If both players pass the turn ends.

The basic actions a player can choose from are march, assault, and activate leader (you can also burn a railroad station or entrench).  Marching is both moving and attacking, though you can only attack with a single unit.  Assaults are the only way you can have more than unit attack at a time.  Activating a leader allows you to move several units at once, or at least sequentially, and these movements can also include an attack just like a regular march.  But you can't assault unless you initiate a "grand assault" with a leader activation.

The movement is random.  You roll a die and that's how many movement points you get (generally the Confederates always get a bonus).  These movement points are what you spend to attack when marching, and the cost of those attacks depends on what kind of attack you're launching.  I won't go into the details of combat, other than to say so far it seems to give reasonably accurate results.

Below is the general Union plan.  The divisions already engaged will try to march around the Confederate left, while additional Union troops to the Northeast will move up and hold the center, mainly Centreville, which is a Confederate objective, all the while trying to minimize their losses.

ECW Cavalry

Finished the Warlord plastic boxed set of ECW cavalry finally.  I still can't believe that it was so easy to fix the humidity caused haze that I thought had screwed these figures permanently.

I painted half of the figures with red sashes to denote their allegiance to Charles, and the other half "tawny" in honor of Parliament.

I admit it's hard to tell the difference.  But that's kind of the point.

Bridges and Buildings

Bought these buildings at Historicon, 10mm Southern Europe.

Airbrushed some basic colors on them, then just picked out the doors, shutters, and foliage.  After that brushed on some stain and then sprayed on a matte coat.

While I was painting the buildings I dug out these bridges that I've had for over a year now but had only undercoated.  Painted them up more or less the same.

The First Battle of Newbury, English Civil War (part two)

Okay, regardless of how many figures I have, I've decided to do one half of the battle.  More accurately, I've decided the battle was fought in two halves (this really isn't true, but it suits my purposes), and I've decided to game the bottom half.  Basically, one part of the battle was fought among hedges and was a close quarters affair among the foot, while the other half was fought in open terrain among the cavalry.

Since I plan on using Carnage and Glory, trying to game the upper part of the battle doesn't make sense.  Also, I'm more interested in seeing how a sweeping cavalry attack by the cream of the King's army against Parliamentarian foot and cavalry would play out.

In other news, I've gone back through the Carnage and Glory rules and realized I wasn't deploying the cavalry correctly.  Well, in the program they were deployed correctly but the figures on the table weren't.  Basically the cavalry fights in a "fighting column," not in line.

Next up, I'll show some screens of how you build your army list in Carnage and Glory.

Painting Update (Oh! The humidity of it all!)

Finished up my ECW cavalry more or less, all that's left is basing them.  But.., oh, the horror.  I guess it's been awhile (last Summer I reckon) since I had to varnish figures in hot and humid weather.  So I forgot that you shouldn't, you know, varnish figures in hot and humid weather and now I have 24 ECW cavalry troopers that were painted kinda nice but now look all cloudy.  Oh well.  I'm not doing them over again.  To me, they're just all dusty from being in the field for awhile.

Won by the Sword (Anno Domini 1632 The Lion Goes South) Part 1

In Won by the Sword each player controls up to four "columns."  These can range in size anywhere from small cavalry detachments to armies.  They can be combined and split apart at will, but the players are limited to a total of four.

These columns are made up of infantry, cavalry, and artillery.  Though like I mentioned earlier you can have a column consisting of only one cavalry regiment.  Along with these basic units you also have various leaders and the baggage train.

Along with the columns each player has a number of garrisons in the various towns and fortresses on the map.

Here is the set up for the Lion Goes South scenario.  The columns are the little standees, and in the beginning of this scenario there are two Swedish columns (at the top of the map) and three Imperial/Bavarian columns (the Imperial army is at the bottom of the map, while the Bavarian ones are towards the middle and top).

In this game you accumulate victory points (vp) by defeating the enemy in pitched battles and conquering his cities/towns by siege.  The bigger the victory in a pitched battle and the bigger the city/town you conquer, the more vp you get.  Also, you get some vp from foraging in the enemies territory, which in this scenario is basically the Swedes get vp from foraging in the South and the Imperials/Bavarians get it for foraging in the North.

So..,  One more thing.  As far as pitched battles are concerned, a column can "offer battle," once it's activated, if it's in the same spot as an enemy column and spends a command point and a baggage point.  However, unless the attacker has played the Surprise Attack card, the defender doesn't have to fight.  He can refuse to fight and in doing so loses 3 vp.  In a pitched battle if you win a major victory the reward is 15 vp.  So...

At this point we see that a Swedish and Bavarian column have met at Augsburg.  What happened/happens?  Wait and see.

Won by the Sword (Anno Domini 1632 The Lion Goes South) Intro

So, how did I wind up in this rabbit hole of the Thirty Years War?  From what I can remember in my previous life, I was browsing Audible.com for new audio book to listen to when I came across

I don't really remember why I chose this book, other than maybe it was the only pike and shot era book on Audible.  Anyway, I loved the book and it sparked a real and sudden interest in the Thirty Years War, and obviously an interest in games depicting that conflict.

If you've never heard of Won by the Sword by GMT games, one of the first things you'll come across looking at this game on the web is the negative feedback the game has received since it's release in Summer 2014.  Not so much negative feedback of the game itself, but the numerous issues with the rules and components.  This entry is not the place to list these, I'm just stating the obvious.  While I'm stating the obvious, I'll say the game is great.

"The Lion Goes South" is the first campaign scenario listed in the playbook.  It depicts Gustavus Adolphus's invasion of Bavaria in 1632.  At this point the war has already been raging for close to a decade and a half, and has outlasted many of the prominent figures from its early years (Mansfeld, Matthias, Christian of Brunswick, Gabriel Bethlen).  Historically the campaign culminated in the Battle of Lutzen, a major Protestant victory that cost Gustavus his life.  What will happen in my game?