The best tips that can be given by a rules author are those that explain the writer's concepts that went into developing the rules set. In that direction then, I will state the way I play situations, adding whenever possible, the pros and cons of various ideas. This will, perhaps, also then serve as an article that might help clarify the rules (although I have never received any mail that would make me think that people were having trouble interpreting Advance The Colors). We should start by stating that one will do best in this game by following historical strategies. Trying to form square, as in Napoleonics, does not work, nor does going into phalanx as in an Ancients game. Advance The Colors is pure American Civil War gaming and one should understand strategy on the regimental scale. The rating of your commanding officer will, to some extent, dictate the number of possible tactics that will likely work for you in a game. Since officers can be ranked from 0-5, with 5 being the highest rating, and, since such ratings have a significant impact in the initiative and, morale, and melee tables, a higher ranking gives you more options. If you have an officer ranked 3,4, or 5, I would suggest being smartly aggressive. Your odds are better than average of coming out of a firefight or melee in good shape. The idea of being "smart" means that one should not attempt foolish moves against vastly superior numbers. Certainly, having an officer with a low ranking doesn't mean that one should forfeit the game. It simply infers that you should be cautious in your approach and play a more defensive role. Obviously, having Crack troops, even with a poor officer might make you change into an aggressive mode. Being in the correct formation once visibility with an enemy has started is quite important. Being in column while getting shot at is not a good thing to experience. By the time you are in line formation, you may have lost several casualties and in this game, every man counts (after all, this is a 1:1 ratio rules set)! It also helps to have a few skirmishers out front to take the brunt of fire and to give you time to respond to a threat. I would say that one should consider being in line formation throughout a game because the scale is so large. You are likely to encounter an enemy at any time. Coordination between players on the same side usually dictates who wins. I have seen games that involve two or more players per side destroy every hypothesis about who "should" win. In one game, a side was handicapped by having fairly poor officers and Green troops (I'll refer to them as the "A" team), while the opponent (the "B" team) had a numerical advantage with better officer castings and Grizzled Veteran troops. Statistically, the "B" team should have won without breaking much of a sweat. However, through selfish actions and personal glory-seeking, the players on the "B" team managed to find every possible way to push poorly coordinated attacks. One player even ran over a fellow player's troops in his rush to get to the "front". Players on the "A" team maneuvered their companies in unison, covered each other's flanks, and otherwise managed to show that, just as m real warfare, the best commanders are those who are willing to pull for the common good rather than for individual honor.' A key factor in winning or losing in Advance The Colors is placing the opponent in situations where the factors are on your side and against him. An example of this would be continuing to engage the enemy in a firefight when you either have an advantage in numbers or weapons. A specific example would be a unit armed with rifled muskets that is fighting a smoothbore armed opponent. Rifled muskets are an advantage at a distance, but smoothbores will out-duel rifles at close range. A smart commander would keep a good distance away from the smoothbores, managing to continue his weapons distance advantage until he had sufficiently weakened the smoothbore armed enemy. At that point, if the enemy had suffered enough casualties, a charge would be in order. At this point, odds of victory would be heavily on your side. Conversely, the unit armed with smoothbores should do everything possible to close to short range with a rifle armed enemy. Managing to have two companies concentrating flue on a single company is another way of shifting the statistical balance in your favor. In the previously mentioned upset game, team "A" maneuvered several times during a 30 minute firefight so as to concentrate fire against isolated pockets of men, while at the same time protecting their flanks from being pushed in. The heavy fire concentration whittled first one, and then another of the enemy units until all were prone to rout if charged. The "B" team would have been wise to back up, but, of course, the players seemed to feel that such would be "cowardly" (what a crock of ego-bull). To better help you understand the game, I present the following scenario for your learning and enjoyment. It pits a Union provost marshall's unit against a Confederate town, its militia, and small numbers of Confederate soldiers in late 1865. Back to The Zouave Vol V No. 3 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 The American Civil War Society This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com