MINIATURE WARGAMES, No. 88, arrived, and on page 21, a fellow named David Bickley had an article describing the battle of McDowell, one of Stonewall Jackson's early efforts in running up and down the Shenandoah Valley. In the three pages of the Bickley piece, four short paragraphs at the end were devoted to wargaming the battle. I set up the McDowell battle, a fairly small one, with my 30mm figures... 4 stands equal to a regiment... the opposing orders of battle pitted 13 Confederate regiments (4 brigades) against 9 Union regiments (2 brigades). Jackson's intentions were to keep the Yankees off-balance in the Shenandoah, preventing them from transferring units to help McClellan, who was advancing against Richmond up the Peninsula. At the conclusion of the battle at McDowell, the Federals withdrew; Jackson, who had lost, in killed and wounded, over twice the casualties sustained by the Yanks, claimed victory. The map shows the initial positions of the forces, the Yankees advancing east against Jackson's troops. I have to admit that the Bickley article was somewhat less than helpful in describing who was located where... I had to refer to BATTLES AND LEADERS for the complete story. The Bickley map showed no compass directions; its configuration, if you assumed north was "up", showed the Confederates to the north of the Yanks. Not so. The Yanks were to the west, and the battle was fought along an east-west axis. Mr. Bickley also labeled Hall's Ridge as "Hull's Ridge", and Sitlington's Hill as "Sitlington Hill". Bickley's tally of the forces engaged, and those killed, wounded, etc., also disagrees with that given in the BATTLES AND LEADERS summary. What's a wargamer such as Z - one who revels in the nitty-gritty of historical minutia - to do when confronted with a plethora of errata such as this...? In truth, the Bickley article adds fuel to the fires of my argument that wargaming magazines should contain nothing but wargaming articles written by knowledgeable wargaming authors on wargaming topics. The magazines should not publish purportedly historic pieces put together by instant experts who know nothing more than a few facts gathered from the limited sources they're plagiarizing. But enough of my political soap-boxing... back to McDowell. The rules I used incorporated the half-bound sequence of: (a) Active side (Side A) moves and/or fires (b) Side B reacts and fires (c) Side A's units close to contact for melee (d) Both sides rally In Phase (a), Side A was given 4 actions... it could use its actions to move (infantry advanced at the rate of 4 inches per action) or to fire. Thus a unit on the advance, in having to use its allotment of actions to move, couldn't devote as many actions to firing as could a unit on defense, which didn't have to move at all, but could just pour fire on the approaching enemy troops. As I've mentioned before, this is in keeping with the Simon philosophy that, during the horse and musket era, because of the finite time required to load weapons, moving units should have less opportunities to fire than units in a static position. Phase (b) gave the non-active side (Side B) a chance to react and fire on A's troops just prior to A's closing to contact. In the ordinary scheme of things, B was given a single action, a single volley, with which to blast A's advancing troops. But Side B was also given an opportunity to fire additional volleys. At B's headquarters, there were 4 officer figures stationed. When, on B's half bound, i.e., when he became the active player, he was given a number of actions equal to the number of officers, nominally 4, he found at headquarters. But B could also call on these officers during his reaction phase as the non-active player. He could "use up" an officer or officers to obtain more volleys during his reaction phase. If, for example, he "used" one officer, thus enabling him to fire an additional volley (2 in all) in reaction, then, when his half of the bound began, he'd find only 3 officers left at headquarters, and hence he would be entitled to only 3 actions as the active player. Similarly, he could use 2 officers in reaction, fire 2 additional volleys (3 in all), and have only 2 officers left at headquarters for his active phase. In short, by using officers during the reaction phase, a side would find itself shortchanged on its active phase. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul was useful only when a side found itself in deep trouble ...but at least, the opportunity was there. One item of interest in these rules... interesting to those who generate rules sets of their own... pertains to the firing procedures. This particular set had undergone perhaps three different iterations before McDowell was fought. I had, in previous versions, tried all sorts of casualty determination systems. In the first, each unit tossed a 10-sided die, and a 1,2,3,4 was defined as a hit. Reduce the required die toss by 1 if the target was under cover, add +1 for canister, deduct another factor for a range modifier, etc. Lots of modifiers. In another version, I used a percentage calculation. Each stand that fired contributed +10%, all the +10's were summed to get a total Fire Factor (FF), and if a percentage dice toss was below the total FF, a hit was scored. Modifiers to the FF included a "plus" for canister, a "minus" for cover, etc. Despite the apparent simplicity of the calculations, there were still, during the game, lots of inquiries about: "What do you add for canister?", and "What's the cover modifier?" and so on. In the end, I settled for a "handful of dice" game. No modifiers. A unit received a certain number of dice, and if something occurred to enhance its firepower... such as canister being fired... we'd add a die or two; if something occurred to decrease its firepower... such as the target being in cover... we'd take away a die. In short, I incorporated what could be termed "whole die" modifiers. Each unit of 4 stands started out with 1 "intrinsic" die. To this, we'd add a die or so for every volley fired (every action devoted to firing), add yet another die for canister, subtract a die for cover... the essence of simplicity. Hits were scored on tosses of 1's and 2's. It would appear that with only a 20 percent chance to hit, casualties would be rather low, but this was compensated for by the fact that units were, on the average, tossing 5 dice. Statistically, therefore, there'd be a hit almost every time a unit fired. Statistics, of course, don't always go the way you want them to... in our battle, very few casualties were scored from the firing procedures... the majority came in melee. Brian Dewitt took over as Union General Milroy. He was outnumbered, but his orders were to attack, and attack he did. Fred Haub and I were the joint Confederate commanders, and we had one other thing in common... whatever we did, was wrong. For example, the rough terrain rule mandated that a unit moving over such terrain had to toss 70 or under on percentage dice, otherwise it was held up. I had one regiment which, on my left flank, walked into the woods, and thereafter, refused to walk out. Over the span of 7 game turns, this unit stood in the woods, refusing to move on, as I missed roll after roll of 70%. Each turn was defined as a half-hour, and the battle started at 3:00 PM. Seven turns later the encounter ended at 6:30 PM, when darkness was said to have fallen. Dewitt/Milroy's men dashed over the river, attempting to plow through our defending Rebels. As I mentioned before, the active side was given 4 actions, and infantry could move 4 inches per action, hence the Yanks zipped across the river at 16 inches per turn. In the van was the 14th Brigade, composed of 2 regiments, each of 4-stands... the Fighting 44th, and the dreaded Simon's Rifles. Simon's Rifles is a 30mm unit which, when I had originally mounted it, supposedly had great things in its future. Over the years, Simon's Rifles had always proven they could be first... first to fail a morale test, first to lose a melee, first to run off the battlefield, etc. But in the battle at McDowell, the Rifles finally came into their own. Under the guiding hand of Brian Dewitt, the 14th Brigade was virtually unstoppable. Having crossed the river, they simply wouldn't be driven back, winning melee after melee, standing fast under volley after volley. Each brigade had a data sheet. Each time a unit was hit, a box (one "O") would be crossed out. Each regiment has about 15 to 17 boxes. The values at the tops of the columns served two purposes: (a) The basic Morale Level of the regiment was 10 times the current value. Thus if the Rifles had lost 2 boxes, i.e., crossed out both values in the 10's column, and were down to the 9's column, the Morale Level was 10 x 9, or 90%. (b) The combat value of each stand in the 4-stand unit was given by the current value of its column heading. Again, if the Rifles were down to the 9 column, each stand was worth 9 Combat Points. The regiment had, therefore, 36 points in all; each 10-point increment yielded a 10-sided Hit Die, hence the Rifles got, for their 36 points, 3 Hit Dice, plus a 60% chance of a fourth. As in the firing procedures, a toss of 1,2 on the Hit Die produced an impact on the opposition. Note that if, on its data sheet, all stands of a regiment were valued at 10 combat points, the unit was given 4 Hit Dice. Other Hit Dice were thrown in for advantages, for a regiment being in double ranks, and so on. Each such advantage yielded 2 Hit Dice. The largest contributor to the number of Hit Dice, however, stemmed from what might be termed the brigade's status, which was denoted by a number of pennants flying at the brigadier's side. Each brigadier started out with 2 pennants, i.e., 2 flag bearers. These flaggies could be tossed into a melee... each flaggie contributed 2 Hit Dice, and any number of flaggies could participate. Once a flag bearer was "used", he was removed from the table. Additional flaggies came from 2 sources: (a) Every bound, additional flag bearers were assigned to the brigades, and (b) Each time a brigade won a melee, it would receive another flag. Item (b) proved a boon to Simon's Rifles; they kept winning melee after melee, picking up a flag bearer each time. In one or two instances, both sides in a melee had accumulated enough flag bearers at brigade headquarters to contribute to the combat some 4 or 5 flaggies; with each yielding 2 Hit Dice, the melee procedures turned into huge, dice tossing contests. What kept the casualties to an even keel, however, was the fact that only a Hit Die toss of 1 or 2 produced a hit. If the hit percentages had been higher, units would have disintegrated early in the game. Around 6:00 PM, the turn before the last, Dewitt's Union forces, headed by Simon's Rifles, had butted their way down to Southern Headquarters. At this headquarters were gathered the 4 officer figures called upon to give the Rebels their 4 actions when the Confederate active phase began. Capture of the 4 officers meant that we Southerners had no actions to call upon when our active half of the bound began. With no actions, we Rebs couldn't move, we couldn't fire. We became watchers, not participants. As Turn 7 came up, 6:30 PM, and darkness set in, it was unanimously agreed that a Union tactical victory had taken place. Despite outnumbering the Yanks, we Confederates never got our act together. We were outgunned, outmaneuvered and outshot. One interesting note on the battle is the fact that it seemed to be solely an infantry action. There were cavalry and artillery attached to both sides in the historical orders of battle, but neither type of unit played a role in the outcome. In setting up the encounter, I simply omitted both cavalry and artillery units, and pitted Union infantry against Rebel infantry. One of Brian Dewitt's comments concerned the fact that even though he was outnumbered, the profusely wooded and hilly terrain set out on the table helped him immeasurably. The terrain prevented the Confederates from coordinating their assets, and from concentrating their units. Back to PW Review April 1995 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com