Black Powder Epic: Gettysburg 160

Two 12' tables - Gettysburg on the background table

 Two years ago, I was asked to once again organize a Gettysburg mega-game to mark the 160^th anniversary of the battle this July. I have organized several mega-games in the past: Borodino 200 in 2012, Gettysburg 150 in 2013, Waterloo 200 in 2015. So, what do I mean by a ‘mega-game’? Well, everything on a mega scale: Time? – a weekend; space? – massive table or tables around 144 sq. feet; players? – dozens; numbers of model troops – tens of thousands!

Looking NW over Culp's Hill towards Gettysburg

Taking advantage of the mass scale opportunities now available thanks to the Warlord Game Epic ACW range, my initial vision of the project saw us taking a weekend to play at least two days of that three-day battle, with all troops represented down to regiment and battery. For various reasons this became abbreviated to concentrating on the second day of battle. An overview of the outcome of the game is available on the Warlord Community pages, so I won’t rehash that here. Instead, I would like to share my experiences as the game organizer. This may be useful if you also organize big games on an Epic scale, or at least it may leave you with a fresh sense of gratitude to those who do! We’ll finish with an assessment of how well our game reflected history, or at least may have released historical insights.

This project in many senses was organized virtually, since whilst our goal was a weekend’s play at our traditional venue of the Hall of Heroes, a FLGS in South Western Sydney, we had interested parties from all-over south-eastern Australia, who would need to be fully involved in the preparation and planning. 

One of many, many briefing slides sent out to the group!

In the final few weeks prior to the game, players received a daily set of slides addressing one or other aspect of the game, right down to what to pack!

Part of the 'what to pack' slide...

My overall vision for this game, unlocking the true potential of this innovative epic scale, was for a grand sweeping strategic game, with players acting as Brigade commanders at minimum, ideally Division commanders. To facilitate this, the already fairly fast play Black Powder rules, and the invaluable Glory Hallelujah! ACW supplement would be ruthlessly stripped down to allow super-fast play, ideally still retaining period flavour.  I would ask interested parties to paint up sufficient numbers of models to represent each regiment and battery present at Gettysburg, using 3 bases (60 figures) per regiment. At inception there were no plastic cavalry models available so my assumption was that we would run Day Two and Three. Given the small scale of the figures, the table itself, whilst being reasonably photogenic, would not bear professionally modelled terrain to the standard of the 28mm games I had organized – the impact would come from the mass effect of over a million figures! In fact, in my mind’s eye I was thinking of two-dimensional terrain, with high and low ground represented by different colours of felt on the terrain mat. This had worked really well for the Shenandoah 1862 campaign I had run at my club in this Epic scale.

Looking over Little Round Top over the Wheatfield to the Peach Orchard

Before I recount the path that we followed to lay on this game, please allow me to introduce you to my cast of characters – the gentlemen and players. No project of this scale is possible without a team, so the first task was to persuade, recruit and motivate a big bunch of wargamers from all over the region! 

To protect the innocent, and better tell the tale, names have been changed and character traits simplified and exaggerated, but I am sure you will recognize some of these archetypal wargaming types!

Looking south west from Little Round Top

First, we have Joe, who just wants a game! Joe is always keen to join in anything that’s on, but really only wants to roll dice and join in the craic – he’s not really a history buff and certainly isn’t invested in the planning and preparation side of the project. In fact, though he can be relied upon to turn up on time, he won’t necessarily remember or care which side he’s playing on. I should add at this point that Joe is a much respected and popular player and I and others admired his application and effort over the two gruelling days of play! I mention Joe because he was the player I kept in my mind’s eye whenever I had to think how best to get information out to the team, and solicit advice and opinion from them to keep it ‘our’ project.

Hill's Corps have Cemetery Hill in a vice from the west and north...

Then there’s Jock. Jock the 28mm man. Jock is the respected elder statesman and mainstay of his wargaming group and indeed the client base of our FLGS. Jock knows where all the terrain in the shop is kept, how all the terrain boards fit together, and is also something of a rules guru, and as a result is a strong and confident player. But here’s the thing – Jock has a huge 28mm collection and can’t really see why we need to go to a new scale! But, being the buddy that he is, he commits to the painting plan big time. However, deep down, he wants to keep all the period rules chrome that he enjoys while playing brigade level games. He gets that we need to jettison much of that, but can’t help suggesting just one more rules tweak or unit trait to add flavour…

Then we have Luke, the second-guesser. Luke joined the project late so missed the period when the outline and shape of the weekend were being agreed, and upon joining promptly questioned and readdressed all the decisions previously agreed - no harm in that, there is always room for improvement! Luke has complete mastery of Black Powder rules, so much so that he is innately suspicious of any attempt to short cut them, fearing unintended consequences. He is totally committed to ensuring that the project delivers – to his standard!  Luke never really bought into my vision of a vast game played with stripped down rules on simple terrain. His persistent questioning of my approach and presentation of ready-made solutions to problems I’m not certain existed, led me to ask him to take over the project. But no, that’s not his way, he just wants to help out! And he goes to great efforts to help out – but without letting me know what’s going on until I get presented with a fait-accompli! Despite his hard work and even higher standards, Luke got into my head so much that, if it wasn’t for the fact that our out of staters had already booked travel and accommodation, I would gladly have walked away from the project!

Initially, the Reb push into Rose Woods and the Wheatfield was but a feint...

Gus is a complete reverse to Luke, although another latecomer to the project. He completely understands what I’m trying to achieve, runs everything by me and is always positive and upbeat about any issues we face. His natural leadership and bright personality is a major contribution to the project.

Culp's Hill from the north east - coordinated Reb attacks!

Then there’s cheerful Jim! This whole concept was originally his idea, but I’ve since forgiven him! He’s our walking encyclopaedia, possessed of deep understanding and love of the period, but doesn’t parade that knowledge, instead issues a continuous stream of good-natured banter! But behind the scenes he commits and delivers to painting a massive number of beautiful figures. Actually, we had a lot of Gus’s and Jim's, and together with Jock and Luke, the whole team made the project happen…

A narrow focus of attack between the Codori (near) and Roger's houses

The point I’m trying to make is that organizing a big event like this relies upon teamwork, and trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your team. And most of the team just keep you uplifted all the time with their commitment and positivity. Overall, herding cats really is child’s play compared to keeping a big bunch of wargamers all pulling in the same direction!

Sussing the feint, the Union redeploys..

I mentioned the team first because without them you have nothing, but of course the reason for the two-year timescale was the fundamental need to get everyone painting lots & lots of figures in a relatively new and unknown scale. As part of the Facebook recruiting drive, I invited interested parties to bid for whichever units they wanted to paint. I posted up detailed orders of battle (OOB) for both sides, and invited bids for the 218 infantry regiments and 120 guns we would have to paint between us. There was no minimum commitment of providing models, and folk were allowed to specify individual regiments from different brigades, and sides, if they wanted. 

The Rebels are so close to the objective on Culp's Hill!

With hindsight, this was a mistake. Frankly, at this scale, there’s not a lot of difference between the 20th Maine and the 21st Wisconsin, particularly by the summer of 1863. I should have just asked how many units an individual was prepared to paint for each side and then slotted these into the OOB to suit myself for the easiest set up on table. There were no plastic Zouaves available at the time, and, frankly, if we had ended up with a couple more Zouaves, or Berdan’s Sharpshooters, or the 111th Mess Tin Repair Battalion than were there on the day, would that really matter? Many players didn’t provide any models at all. But this piecemeal approach, taken at a time when interest in the project was minimal, left me with a nightmare of organizing each player’s force from all the other players providing models at the time. I call this process of getting the figures from the player providing them, to their approximate start point on the table and allocated to the player commanding them, ‘force-marshalling’. 

Force Marshalling with the aid of numbered (Union) or lettered (Rebel) markers

I should have done more to check up on progress of painting. I had regularly asked on the group page if anyone was behind schedule while we had time to address issues, and some people put their hand up and we were able to rebalance. So I was shocked to discover folk still appending flags to flag poles, or gluing strips to bases, on the morning of the game! But I guess human nature means that we all prevaricate and assume we’ll get to it at the last minute, then life intervenes! With hindsight, and a procedure I intend to adopt for my Waterloo 210/2025 project, is to hold online ‘reviews of the troops’ about every six months, in the form of players being asked to post photos of their completed figures, to encourage everyone to keep up to the march and encourage the laggards!

Longstreet focuses on Cemetery Ridge

So, once we had a team, and painting was underway, the next task was to agree the rules. The Epic supplement to Black Powder suggests either keeping distances and ranges the same as for 28mm, or halving them all, or converting to centimetres. Obviously, the last option is completely out of the question for a Christian gentleman, and keeping 28mm distances doesn’t really help achieve the grand sweep of action we wanted. But I have always felt that artillery ranges were too short, so I insisted that whilst halving small arms ranges, we kept artillery ranges as they were. This was generally accepted, as was the supplement’s suggestion that units are only allowed to fire if they only move once, and disallowing charges on initiative. Rebel Yell was also popular. Jock wanted a little more period chrome, such as the Pour it on trait, which might have speeded up play, but would have introduced too much record keeping in a game with over 218 infantry regiments in play. But moving the needle a little further into what I think of as ‘Epic territory’ took a good deal of argument, wheedling, not to say blackmail, threats and tantrums - the last only by me! I liked the -2 charge orders modifier, but wanted it not to apply to disordered or shaken units, but I had to let this one go in the interests of consensus... 

On the left, Emmitsburg Road leads to Gettysburg in the background, Culp's Hill in the foreground, Taneytown Rd and Baltimore Pike lead to camera

In the midst of this heated debate, a couple of players offered to umpire each table if we returned to the rules as written. I gratefully agreed this solution, at the cost of my sweeping vision, just to keep some sort of game on track, only for the players later to say that actually they intended playing after all – so around we went again! At the end of the day, I think we achieved a workable compromise, particularly as every single experienced player had the sportsmanship to help less experienced players with the rules, sometimes surrendering the advantage in doing so – not least Luke and Jock! Of all the organization required for this project, agreeing the rules caused me the most grief…

An equally protracted, but far less heated, debate was over the actual scope of the weekend – would we play Day 2 (July 2^nd 1863) on the Saturday and Day 3 on the Sunday, or just concentrate on the one day over the whole weekend? In the end, understandably, there was no appetite from the Confederate team to revisit Pickett’s Charge, so we would concentrate on Day 2 in its entirety from Culp’s Hill right down to Little Round Top.

The incredibly fast marching Pickett's Division arrives!

In one sense I had it easy – the venue. Matt, the genial proprietor of the south west Sydney FLGS The Hall of Heroes was fully behind the project from the start, and promised us full run of half the shop’s playing space – enough for two 12 x 12 foot tables, and full use of the shop’s impressive collection of terrain. This our two perfectionists Luke and Jock had planned out to the nth degree resulting in the amazing terrain you see in these photos.

Pickett's Division reinvigorates the 'aggressive'!

Were there any last-minute hiccups – of course there were! At the eleventh hour two major figure contributors, one of whom was a key driver of the project, had to drop out for pressing reasons (major operations and overseas deployments) no arguing with these! After my initial panic I redrew the OOBs to eliminate an entire Union Corps which arrived late on the actual day anyway, and left out of battle two Confederate Divisions whose Brigades had been badly mauled in the first day’s fighting. Another rejig of the painting plan and we were good to go!

Hood's Division take the Trostle house objective! 

So did our battle reflect the history of Gettysburg’s Second Day? We had agreed to starting the game in more or less historical positions, but then allow free play. This inevitably meant that we would split from the historical time line right away, as Longstreet’s Corps attacked along the Emmitsburg road from about 4.00pm, whilst Hill and Ewell attacked several hours later. However our Rebel team captains were much too canny to not go in together! Similarly, Gus, our Longstreet, decided to merely feint through the difficult terrain from Little Round Top to the Peach Orchard, and instead directed most of his Corps to attack along the Emmitsburg road. 

With thanks to Zel Zelus.

The historical insight here is that this was exactly what Lee had wanted Longstreet to do originally! However, like Longstreet before him, Gus discovered that attacking the centre, rather than the flank, of the Union line anchored on a ridge was a slow and bloody business! Coming full circle, his team’s main success was actually winning an objective from the feint attack further south, albeit receiving reinforcements from an unhistorical fast marching Gen’l Pickett and his division! But of all the many kind compliments I received after the weekend, the one that meant the most was from a historically very knowledgeable player who said that he had gained yet more insight into the battle after this weekend.