How do you do justice to J.E.B. Stuart in a war game?

Civil War cavalry was a very important force that often determined the outcome of battles and that helped greatly in determining the final outcome of the war itself. Cavalry's great usefullness was not based on its ability to fight in the great battles of the time. These battles were dominated by the large masses of infantry and the ranks of artillery that could mass enough killing power to tear apart an enemy army. Cavalry had no great killing power to stand up in frontal combat against these forces, and as a result cavalry was not used as a combat force in most of the big battles. In fact cavalry tended to get slaughtered whenever it tried to frontally attack. A rider on a horse, galloping up in the open, just makes too good a target to be able to face up to massed volleys of fire.

The Federals tried it at Gettysburg: a beigade under Farnsworth made a frontal attack on the left. Farnsworth was killed and 350 of his men were shot ... and the Confederate infantry didn't lose a man--anotner result was that the general who ordered the charge was nicknamed "Kill-Cavalry" Kilpatrick.

Civil War cavalry then were not combat units in the same way that infantry and artilery were. They could not effectively charge infantry. Their value lay in other capabilities. The problem is: how can we accurately simulate both the weaknesses and strengths of cavalry as it was used during the ACW.

We can start by looking a what cavalry was actually used for during the war. In fact, cavalry was used for different tasks at different times. Bedford Forrest fought his cavalry very differently from the way Stuart fought his, and by the end of the war, new weapons (Spencers) and new tactics had drastically chaged what cavalry was capable of doing.

Functions

From first to last there were eight important things that cavalry units were able to do (ignoring such sideshows as guard duty, courier duty, morale-raising raids and raids to capture a few prisoners):

1) Strategic raids against the enemy's supplies.
2) Strategic raids against the enemy's communications systems.
3) Reconnaissance of the enemy army's position and strength.
4) Fighting dismounted in defense, delaying (or stopping) an enemy advance (nr retreat).
5) Mounted charges against the flanks and rear of infantry formations (as contrasted to suicidal frontal assaults).
6) Mounted charges cutting un an enemy retreat (or any disorganized enemy force).
7) Fighting dismounted in attack and defense, like mobile infantry carried to the scene of action on horseback.
8) Clashing with enemy cavalry who also were trying to do one of the above.

Now, how can we simulate these abilities in a war game?

In. 1 and no. 2 are functions that can be simulated in a strategic or campaign game but not in the limited confines of a game built around a single battle. In such a game, any raids would naturally occur off the board, in some lightly guarded, vulnerable rear area; an Army in the field had enough guards to adequately protect the area around the army. Any raids that might happen should have already had their effect by the time the armies have chosen their battlefield and marched to it. Full scale battles take place in a relatively short space of time, after all.

A possible exception to this is a raid that's carried out in the vicinity of the battle during the battle itself. Such raids would have to be started just before the battle in order for the troopers to strike while the battle was going on. A few cases like this did occur in the war; when they happened they could force an army to retreat, or to send back some of its troops, or the whole meaning of the battle could be changed (the victory conditions would change).

In these cases the game should make allowance for the raid's possible effects. The raid could be fought on a separate board, or the raid's results could be rolled for on a special table of results, or the final results can be assumed to turn out a certain way.

Function no. 3, reconnaissance, can only be simulated by tackling the problem of hidden movement. There are four ways of handling this problem, each offering its own degree of realism. All of them first demand that some criteria for "sighting" be defined (within a scale mile, not behind any obstructions, etc.).

The four methods are:

• replace unit counters with substitute counters that do not reveal the combat factor of the unit (inverted counters fall into this category) until the mysterious units are sighted; or,
• stack the units and do not let the other player see the strength of the ones underneath the topmost unit; or
• have each player remove his units from the board and leave the room while his opponent replaces his units on the board and moves them - have a third person act as umpire, to keep track of where the units are and which ones can see each other; or
• you can simply declare one side's cavalry to be dominant, so that that side's units move in secret (with the player writing down his units' positions and placing the units on the board when they are sighted), while the other player is forced to leave his units out on the board for all to see.

Actually, one side or the other usually had cavalry domination in the big battles of the time. In Virginia the Confederates dominated all Dattles up until Chancellorsville, where they had superiority only because the Union horse was sent off on a raid. At Gettysburg Stuart was off raiding, and the Federals had domination. After that both sides were about equal.

In the west the Confederates dominated in Tennessee until Sherman took over, and in Mississippi Grant had dominance.

Cavalry Fighting

Now we come to fighting, and with a few special rules we can accurately simulate the cavalry's ability to fight.

A) Cavalry fight cavalry in the usual manner. Since cavalry clashes tended to be light in casualties, ignore die rolls of 1 or 6 in cavalry vs. cavalry clashes. If a 1 or 6 comes up, the defeated unit is forced to retreat.

B) When attacked by infantry or artillery, cavalry has the choice of fighting in the normal fashion, or retreating one square before combat. The retreat cannot be into an enemy ZOC, and the movement is countea against the unit's movement factor for next turn. The units that were attacking may move into the evacuated square, if they have any movement factors left from their last move; there units may attack from this new square.

C) When attacked by a mixed force of cavalry and other forces, defending cavalry must stand and fight in the usual manner.

D) In a simple frontal assault by cavalry against infantry, odds better than 1-3 are rolled for on the 1-3 column.

E) A "flank attack" against infantry is resolved according to the standard procedure: all attacking factors are totalled to get combat odds, even frontal attacks, and rule "D" does not apply to flank attacks.

F) The flanks/rear of Gettysburg-type units are obvious. a flank attack is an attack on the flanks or rear. In a hex-type game, a "flank attack" is defined as an attack in which there are at least two attacking units that have no common ZOC squares except for the square being attacked.

G) When a "flank attack" is composed entirely of cavalry, the combat factor of one entire stack is doubled for the attack. The defender chooses which stack is doubled. Ignore this whole rule if the defending unit(s) include cavalry.

H) Cavalry can dismount and fight like infantry. To do this the cavalry must move at the infantry movement speed on the turn of attack. Cavalry attacking in this fashion fights like infantry; iL may ignore rule "D" when attacking infantry. Not all cavalry units may attack In this fashion, however See below.

The above comprise a set of rules that reflect the nature of cavalry fighting. Cavalry capability no. 5 is represented by rule "G." A disorganized army is assumed to be one that cannot guard the flanks of its units and vice versa. It is fairly obvious how the other rules correlate with the rest of cavalry's uses.

Some cavalry units should not be allowed to attack using rule "H"; not all Civil War cavalry were trained to fight effectively while dismounted. J.E.B. Stuart's troopers in Virginia preferred splendid mounted charges with the sabre. Federal cavalry in Virginia were largely ineffective until 1863, and even then only John Buford and James Wilson ever showed a real penchant for fighting dismounted (they both commanded cavalry divisions at one time or another).

In the west, Bedford Forrest was an expert at fighting dismounted; his units could always use the tactic effectively. The Federals did as well once Wilson took over the horse in 1864.

This completes the discussion about how to simulate cavalry actions in a war game. As a final note, to show how these observations can be applied to a specific war game, I will show how these rules might be inserted into the Avalon Hill war game Chancellorsville. This makes an unusually good example because a cavalry raid is involved.

Chancellorsville Cavalry Variant