Tuesday 14 July 2015

The Wilderness (1864) - a wild, wild ACW wargame!

Prompted in part by this discussion on The Miniatures Page, I got interested in the question of how to wargame the Battle of The Wilderness. This was a large, long and confused American Civil War battle. 100,000 US troops struck out through rough country to outflank Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and threaten Richmond. Despite being outnumbered 2:1, Lee responded by aggressively attacking the US force in the flank as it marched south. The battle was fought over the course of two days in an extensive wooded area, making it even harder than usual for commanders to know what was going on, and when they did issue orders, the difficult terrain meant the moving and fighting all happened in slow time.