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.

 

Looking north over the Wilderness, criss-crossed by Jim's fine set of TimeCast roads.

In the distance Union wagon trains rumble across the Rapidan, while Warren's corps forms up around the Wilderness Tavern, preparing to receive Ewell's assault down the Orange Turnpike from top left of picture.

Folks on TMP were kicking around various ideas for hidden enemy movement, semi-random movement of friendly units, disinformation. But having read Rhea's magisterial book, I felt these didn't quite capture it. Yes, the terrain should make maneuvering difficult, but The Wilderness is hardly unique in having difficult terrain, and the armies weren't just blundering around blindly, they often had a reasonable grasp of who was where. My interest has always been in command and control issues, and I think it is at the command level that you find the key.

My reading of the battle is that although they knew they were heavily outnumbered, the Confederates - officers and men - remained confident to the point of arrogance. Thus they maneuvered actively and aggressively.

The Union forces, by contrast, were wracked by doubt. They were surprised when the first grey coats appeared, they worried where the Confederates would turn up next, they were apprehensive because they had suffered from Lee's miraculous maneuvering before, and they were anxious about Stuart's cavalry threatening their line of supply. Consequently they were tentative in the advance and precipitate in the retreat. Only Grant's iron will and fighting spirit held them together.

How to reflect this in a "Bloody Big Battles!" scenario? Vincent Tsao and I talked about it and came up with this approach:
- No special funky terrain rules for the woods, they were just Difficult Terrain imposing the usual -1 on movement rolls;
- Each turn representing 3 hours (the "slow time" effect)
- All the Union army rated as Passive, therefore suffering another -1;
- All the Confederates rated Aggressive in combat, with half the US units rated Fragile;
- A special rule for Grant, requiring the US to attempt at least one close assault every turn, otherwise Meade's caution is deemed to trump Grant's aggression, and Grant is removed from the game.

After much eager anticipation, we got to playtest the scenario this week. It was a riot. The game had a very distinctive character - artillery less of a help than a hindrance, the bayonet more use than the bullet - and really seemed to give the right feel. With four players we fought the entire two-day battle in two hours, with action all over the pitch, ebb and flow, and the issue in doubt to the last turn. Planning to fight it again in a couple of weeks - can't wait!

Current draft of the scenario is in the BBB Yahoo group files as usual.