Brawner's Farm, Fields of Honor, and remote gaming

 I had the opportunity today to play a remote ACW game, representing the action of Brawner's Farm, August 28, 1862. It was against Ivan Edwards, and presented by Jon Freitag of the Palouse Wargaming Journal. 

I was particularly eager to try this for two reasons. 1) As a librarian, I want to learn about remote gaming, as live programming is off-limits at my workplace for the foreseeable future. 2) I got to play the Iron Brigade, which I am building in paper for a try at Glory: 1861. (They'll represent a US Regular battalion, being in the same uniform.) In between rolls, I was cutting out more strips; I seem to like doing something with my hands while conversing on Zoom.

In both cases, I was fully satisfied.

The American Civil War was the genesis of my interest in history; I visited Gettysburg at the age of six and bought my first copy (of three!) of the Golden Book History of the Civil War, which had these awesome maps in it:

I agree with another blogger that this is the most influential
book on the Civil War, and for the same reason.

But while I became an amateur authority on the Civil War in first grade, Brawner's Farm, a sort of prequel to Second Bull Run, was never on my radar. The first I learned about it was from A Brotherhood of Valor by Jeffry D. Wert, which I read last year and is a parallel history of the Stonewall and Iron Brigades. Brawner's Farm was the latter's baptism of fire.

It was also my baptism of fire into wargaming online, and the ruleset Fields of Honor, as ably gamemastered by Jon Freitag. I've been following Jon both on his own blog and on Wargaming for Grownups, where he also participates in remote games as well as running his own. He was concerned about this particular game because the figures are only 10mm, so this was a bit of an experiment for him as well as for us.

The field of battle.

I played the Union, which is why this view has them at the "bottom." The Iron Brigade (Gibbon's) is to the right, Doubleday's to the left, one battery in the center and three more to the right off-camera. It took a while before I got used to taking screenshots, and I'm sure Jon's own report will have much better pictures. He was taking closeups, and while he had a "floating" webcam for closeups we never actually used it. Which suggests that the overhead system worked well. Even at the small figure scale, the Union units are easily identifiable.

Union right flank, first turn,

Here the Iron Brigade has moved off the road (but still sheltered by the woods, which turned out to have the same light-cover designation as the fence lines). Artillery is also visible, and exchanging fire as the Rebels started with only artillery on the board. The small base behind an infantry regiment represents the brigade commander, while the guns have limbers. Each gun base represents a section of two cannon, with three making a battery with appropriate bonuses to rolls. The Rebels got bonuses for having two batteries in the same hex, as their standard size was four guns rather than six.

Doubleday's brigade on the left also moves off the road.

After turn two, the flank Rebel guns are eliminated,
but infantry reinforcements are coming on table.

Units are rated by weapon type (muskets, rifles, smoothbore or rifled guns, howitzers) and morale rating. This last provides bonuses to D10 rolls and saves. I had a Union-blue sparkly ten-sider (picked up at Supercon a couple weeks ago) which I ended up rolling for most everything and was remarkably lucky at shooting and saving throws, to the point that I wouldn't have blamed my opponent or the GM for being suspicious. It should be noted, however, that the "standard" throw in these rules is 5+, and the Iron Brigade all got +1.

"Rebels, Sir! Thousands of 'em!"

By turn three, I'd moved the Iron Brigade into the defensible position of the trees, and advanced Gibbons up the table, but my left-hand artillery were still out of position. I am easily torn by dilemmas, which can be frustrating for my opponents as I take forever to choose. Here I could leave my guns in the open, but masked by Gibbon's infantry. Or I could move them slowly into the woods, where they would be in cover but even less able to contribute.

The center holds, as an attack on Brawner's Farm develops.

As it turned out, it was possible for them to move through the woods and unlimber in a turn, so I moved them that way. It also turned out they were howitzers and could fire on the now-occupied farm, even though it was beyond the "military crest." Negatives to the roll, of course. As the two farms were the game objectives, and my guns held the one on the right, my intent was to bombard Brawner's, take it with infantry, and hold it against all comers.

Unfortunately, the Rebels had more troops, and they were closer to the farm than I was.

"Up and onward o'er the slope
Comrades lie around me slain"
-- Alasdair MacDonald

I also tried sending a regiment after the last guns on my right:

If it weren't for my lucky Union die, this would have been suicidal.

This turned out to be the Second Wisconsin, about to write a fictional page in history no less incredible than the one they actually wrote on the day.

They charged down the guns, and on the way took a charge of canister and the shared volleys of no less than five Confederate regiments. With their commander, they had a good saving throw - but they had to make around fifteen saves.

It helped that, in these rules, the firing side must effectively be behind its target to enfilade it. (Jon will change this for the next go-around.) The Second didn't make every save - but they didn't fail any either until the very last volley.

Gibbon's Brigade at this time was trying desperately to take Brawner's farm in the center-left. Both combats went on for another two phases, and still failed to dislodge the Rebels. In the end, I was driven back.

Charges on both flanks ultimately failed.

My Union-blue die was lucky only so long as I was rolling for firing and saves from firing. In melee, it choked every time.

I can't really blame the dice. I really did overextend myself. The end result:

My center is okay, but I hold nothing else save the farm.
And what's that to the upper right?...

We gave up at this point. The Rebs can be seen sweeping around my left. My right is still free, but the fresh Rebel brigade in the corner is in marching column. They will probably reach their second, winning, objective (my guns in the right-hand farm) before my battered Iron Brigade can get there. My gambles had failed.

I was way outnumbered, of course!

The game was a fine test of the rules, and of remotely playing a game on this scale. I certainly learned a bit. From my own perspective, hoping to GM games like this myself, I have greater understanding of what it takes to present the game to the players. By the end even my slow mind was internalizing the rules, but Jon's GMing practically made that unnecessary. He provided options and provided the targets for rolling. He also did some of the rolling himself; I might use something like rolldicewithfriends.com for a game like this. In an educational sense, this game worked because the players didn't need to think about the mechanisms, and could focus on our maneuvers.

Ivan commented that it felt more like a boardgame than a wargame, and I'm inclined to agree. This is mostly, I think, because of the top-down view and the fact we rarely used closeups; the units (each of three elements) look more like blocks than like groups of figures. Gamewise this is not a bad thing, but it's a bit cautionary for me; if I try something like this it will be with Paperboys, which I suspect from overhead will be virtually unidentifiable. A lower angle, something like my earlier FKR game may be better, especially because the figures are what I hope will most interest and attract my newbie players.

Closeups:

Iron Brigade at the fence.

The Confederate view.

It also felt like the divisional game it was, because from the player's view we couldn't identify our regiments - their names and stats were visible to Jon but not us. We saw them as brigades, and the simple game mechanisms supported this. At this scale, the commander cares less about his units' formation, range, cover, etc and more about the overall effect - Did I win or lose? How well or badly? (This is the same way I run simple roleplaying games - it works just as well on a small scale!) Paddy Griffith discusses this in his book Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun, which notably uses the same four elements to represent a regiment, brigade or division, and decreases the battle resolution as games grow "larger."

A good, fun game that wound up in around three hours. Well done to Jon, and congratulations to my opponent, Ivan! Jon gave the impression he will run this again with some modifications; maybe I'll try it again and see if I can do better. See you then.