Battle of Nashville! (1864)

No, not Dolly Parton vs Tammy Wynette, although there were some formidable breastworks. Apparently this American Civil War action was the only truly decisive battle of the war, in the sense of one army being utterly destroyed. So argues Stanley F. Horn in his book, "The Decisive Battle of Nashville".

The Civil War Trust provides masses of great ACW information, including this map:

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/nashville/maps/nashvillemaps.html

I knew nothing of the battle or the book, but one of our group created a scenario for it. I hadn't played BBB for a month - being diverted by Hastings ("To the Strongest"), a Check Your Six! air battle, a Dead Man's Hand western gunfight, and a bit of X-Wing - so I really needed my fix of 19th-century big battle action. Nashville provided that in spades.

Historically, the Confederates were entrenched south of Nashville overlooking the city. The Union army built up numerical superiority inside the safety of their earthworks, then one morning burst out in a really slickly executed plan. They swung wide round the Confederate west flank, with a small diversionary attack against the east, and overran the main redoubts. Overnight the Confederates retreated to a second position, and the next day the Union stormed that as well. Hood's army was routed and effectively destroyed as a fighting force.

In a first playtest without me, the boys had tried a different plan, going round the Confederate east flank, which produced a Union victory. In our game a couple of weeks ago, we tried a 'horns of the bull' approach, with strong efforts on both flanks. The Confederate defenders didn't help their cause by launching spoiling attacks which only really served to cost them extra casualties outside the safety of their trenches. They were comprehensively crushed, quickly enough for us to reset and play it half through again with some small tweaking. This third effort was bad news for the Confederacy again, but this time mainly because of some outrageously lucky dice on my part. Obviously I'd been saving up my luck for a month. But the Rebs' sacrifices were not in vain: the playtests were very productive and helped us to calibrate the scenario, so that I think it is now at the point where the victory conditions are balanced. Although the Confederate army is still going to suffer - because that's just the way it is, given the balance of forces - in game terms they can win, and there are enough challenges and options for both sides to make it an interesting game.

In particular, planning for the night interval is important. We observed that in this game, as is often the case with BBB scenarios for battles that stretched over two or more days (think Gettysburg, Chickamauga, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania ...), the night intervals really add an extra dimension. They offer an opportunity to rally, recover losses, and redeploy in ways that change the battle situation substantially, and that present players with significant new decisions before and after the night move.

At the time I write this, the scenario map still needs some final editing, but when that's done the scenario will be posted in the BBB Yahoo group files as usual.
[Update per 8 Dec 2016: scenario is now in the group files, and also in a Flickr album.]