Wheat's Louisiana Tigers

I fancied doing a slightly unusual unit for the ACW skirmishing.

I wanted to do a reasonable sized unit as well so for $400, Wheat's Tigers.

Most of the time these guys get represented on the table as Zouaves, but only 1 of the five companies were equipped as Zouaves -- and then only at the beginning of the war. The other companies were outfitted in "salt-and-pepper" weave trousers, red firemen's shirts and both fezzes (which they apparently left in camp) and straw hats. I really liked the idea of the straw hats, so that's what I did them with.

The figures are Redoubt with 'bare' heads and the straw hats are a mix of plastic and metal parts from Warlord's ECW range.

There's a bunch of riflemen, a sergeant, lieutenant, drummer and flag-bearer. All the riflemen are Zouaves (higher pluck than regulars); it turns out that in larger LotOW games, it simply gets too annoying trying to have different skill/pluck ratings within the units, so the recent additions are units with all the figures the same. It makes it a little more tricky to juggle the unit to fit the cost, but I think it's worth it for the better playability.

A few weeks back we had another decent size ACW skirmish game and Dan grabbed some pictures. So here I am shamelessly stealing them for the blog...

So this is a decent way through the game -- the objective is to take and hold the crossroads which is in the centre of this image hidden by the trees.

The union main body -- a few sharpshooters and some line infantry commanded by a major -- have taken the walls around the crossroads. The yellow dots are marking figures eligible to shoot. In games this size it starts getting hard to remember who moved, who's unloaded etc without some markers.

The confederate main advance is moving down the road towards them while more infantry shelter in the woods.

Meanwhile, once gain on the right flank, the Zouaves are engaged in another slog against more line infantry across another cornfield. (I swear I really have bought the flags for these guys now... they just arrived after this game).

The game ended with the main confederate body having reach the crossroads, but both flanks dissolving under fire -- on the right from some Feds armed with repeating rifles (which it turns out are dead handy for this sort of thing) and on the left by simply being outnumbered. Another couple of turns and they'd have been surrounded, so it was a pretty much a weak victory for the Union (because they took a lot of casualties to get there).

ACW Painting

Painting ACW seems to be a topic that gets asked about a lot on various boards. I'm kind of pragmatic about this, so I have a fairly standard recipe book to use;

Part	Shade	Main	Highlight
Union Coats	VJ807 Oxford Blue	+white	+more white
Union Trousers	VJ844 Deep Sky Blue	VJ961 Sky Blue	+white
Berdan Coats	CDA155 Angel Green	CDA111 Dark Elf Green	CDA521 Army Green
Berdan Trousers	VJ893 US dark green	+white	+more white
Bright Red (Zouave Trousers)	VJ982 Cavalry Brown	VJ957 Flat Red	+VJ911 Bright Orange
Musket Wood	CDA216 Negro	CDA235 Horse Tone Brown	CDA529 Beige Brown
Musket Metal	-	CDA142 Gun Metal	Miniature Paints Silver
Confederate Grey	P3 IronHull Grey	VJ992 Neutral Grey	VJ836 London Grey (+some amount of white for variation)
Confederate Brown	CDA116 Barbarian Leather	CDA519 Midstone	CDA221 Horse Tone Dun

LotACW First Game.

We finally got started with our ACW skirmish gaming. Rules used are LotOW; various extracts from Frontier and LotOW and a couple of bits from Alamo. The posses are a bit larger than normal, but they generally only consist of fairly similarly armed soldiers, recruits, sergeants and lieutenants, so there's less record keeping than a characterful western posse.

So the mission for both sides is to secure the town. The Union forces consist of $400 of regular infantry, plus $200 of sharpshooters. The Confederates have $400 of infantry and a $200 Zouave detachment.

The Union forces advance through cornfields towards the centre of town.

A main body of Confederates has an easier job, deploying out from one of the roads.

A couple of turns later, the sharpshooters are still making their way through a thick woodland

towards the road on one edge of the battlefield.

A second body of Confederates approaches, trying to flank the Union forces on their left.

Meanwhile Zouaves filter through the buildings and take the main road through the town

The rebels reach the cornfield fenceline first and begin to inflict casualties on

the union infantry marching towards them.

The Union infantry heads for cover behind buildings and fences and gets pinned down. Unbelievably,

the lieutenant fell off the fence while trying to climb it...

Several turns later the Sharpshooters are charged by the Zouaves, but bravely

fight them down; forcing their rout without a single casualty.

Sadly the sharpshooters efforts were in vain. Several turns later they came under heavy fire from the Confederate main body and, being outnumbered, were quickly felled.

Once the flank action was over, the Confederates made to surround the Union infantry survivors, but before they could the casualties were too many and the boys in blue fled the field, abandoning the town to the Confederate Army.