Olustee 1864 at the Uni

At this year's University of Wollongong's Gamer's Guild annual convention, 'GongCon', we decided that our showcase game would be the 150th anniversary of the ACW Battle of Olustee.

The scenery is fairly easy to do as the terrain was dead flat, and we ignored the railroad line that ran through the battlefield as it had no tactical significance to the action.

Each side started with an infantry brigade, the Union plus an artillery battery, the Confederates with an additional skirmish unit. Command and control proved difficult, which meant that the undeployed Union battery found it hard to move forward into the action, whereas the on-scene Reb skirmishers gave the Confederates the edge in the musketry firefight in the large clearing that formed the centre of the field. Accordingly, the first Union Brigade fell back into the cover of the woods....Marco, our first, and only, participating member of the public, rubbed his hands with glee....

However as the dice Gods allowed the second Union brigade on very soon, Connor commanding the Confederate right flank looks a little concerned...However as a Regular Officer in the Australian Army Air Corps he took it all in his stride!

Particularly as a bold charge destroyed the first Brigade's artillery battery before it even had a chance to deploy...

The second Union brigade soldiered on however, manoeuvring to outflank the outnumbered rebels...

We had originally designed the scenario to play up and down the table, as perhaps is traditional for encounter battles, to signify the advance to contact of follow on units, but playing across a 12 foot table gave ample scope for outflanking moves...

 

Below we see 2 units of US Coloured Troops in such a move, the 35th USCT piling into a Reb unit's flank, with the fabled 54th Massachusetts providing support:

However I don't wish to give the impression the Yankees had the monopoly on flanking moves, far from it - I was just too busy to take snaps on these occasions!

 

Above, Bryan, the Confederate commander, looks relieved as the second Rebel Brigade finally makes it onto the table - this was a large one its presence swung the initiative back to the Southrons...

 

Alan, on the hitherto quiet Union left flank was forced to give up the advance and form his units into a line to hold his gains - including, uncharacteristically for him, dismounting his cavaliers...

 

Above, having seized the initiative, the Rebel team plot to maintain it - their cavalry brigade finally arriving will help! They can just be made out above arriving on the road in the centre...

 

 

I did say the Rebs had their fair share of outflanking moves - above, this attack was to split the Union army in two...

 

 

So that whilst Alan's hard pressed flank was starting to buckle, the Union army dropped below its break point in terms of units lost, and we conceded victory to the Confederates, who had done well to recover from a shaky start to produce a convincing win.

 

It was an enjoyable game, a classic encounter battle which saw the initiative see-saw as successive units game on the field. We employed very few 'house rules' and kept the unit stats fairly generic, only making raw units have a morale value of 5. After losing not one but two artillery batteries before they even had a chance to fire meant that this game was not my personal best, but I did enjoy the rare opportunity in 28mm game to really have to worry about my flanks and linking up with my team-mates forces. A memorable game!