My Silliness: Antietam

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John Thomas8
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My Silliness: Antietam

Post by John Thomas8 »

Ok, I'm a glutton for punishment. The local group is fading, I lost my primary public gaming location when the comic shop closed, so naturally my thoughts turn to solo playing Antietam with TCHAE.

While I'm assembling the figures (a bit over 7,000 using Scott Mingus' research), I'm trying to decide what to do about the annoyingly small regiments prevalent on both sides. Far too many come in at 1-2 bases....but since I'm doing this solo I don't have to worry about "entertaining" players, just myself. So I'm weighing playing them straight up or using the brigade as the smallest maneuver unit.

Any input/thoughts would be appreciated.

TIA
Archdukek
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by Archdukek »

Been a long time since I played TCHAE, but I would definitely merge your very small regiments into units of a reasonable size for the game. That was done historically when regiments got too small to be effective on their own.

Taking it up a step so that you are fielding brigades rather than regiments may make the whole battle more manageable both in terms of time and the number of figures you need.

John
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John Thomas8
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by John Thomas8 »

Using brigades at listed strength makes units of 8 to 16 bases (1 base = 100 troops) seems a bit steep to me. Doubling (1 base = 200 troops) might fix that, but then ya gotta alter combat "to hit" numbers and such.

Something to keep pondering.

BTW, time isn't a factor, it'll be me, ~7,500 figures and a bunch of dice in my garage.
Archdukek
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by Archdukek »

As I said it's been a while since I played, but any reason why you can't simply amalgamate units when needed to give you game units of say 5-8 bases each? In some cases that might represent a single brigade at 1:100 or 2-3 regiments in a larger brigade. That way you wouldn't have to change anything. Just a thought.

John
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John Thomas8
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by John Thomas8 »

It's a balance, "playability" vs replicating the problems presented by controlling that many regiments.

Fortunately for me, my tolerance for a 6 hour single run through the card deck is quite high. Something that absolutely wouldn't fly in a participation game.
Archdukek
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by Archdukek »

I suppose my argument is that the historical commanders wouldn't attempt to control that many small regiments. Instead it was common practice for the smaller regiments to be merged into a combined unit led by the senior colonel to create a viable battlefield unit even if the original regimental names still appear on the OOB.

John
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John Thomas8
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Re: My Silliness: Antietam

Post by John Thomas8 »

The consolidation of regiments is already on Scott's OOB.
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