Stones River

War Eagles once again playtested my Stones River Scenario in preparation for RadCon. I had felt that the initial games using one stand per brigade made artillery too powerful and difficult to simulate. Using two stands per brigade, I reorganized the scenario.

This made McCook way too resilient and the Confederate assault wasn't set up right either. After running the first three turns three times, I think we have something that works again. The photo is the first take, which resulted in Cheatham being decimated and McCown being unable to get around McCook's flank. Cheatham's remnants also kept Cleburne (behind him in the photo) from getting into the fight.

The first adjustment was to break up Davis and Johnson's divisions of McCook's Corps into non-contiguous brigades in hopes of making it harder for them to organize a defense, but timely command rolls by the Union and poor rolls for the Confederacy got them into good order and we stopped it and reset again.

The second adjustment was to move Cheatham all the way to Cleburne's left and put McCown a stand width ahead of Cheatham and all the way outside of McCook's right. That let's the initial turn clash be Cheatham and Cleburne fully engaged, while McCown moves on around. With the broken up deployment of Davis and Johnson, this cost McCook two full brigades in the first two turns and any decent command rolls by Hardee should keep the assault rolling. As it was, John rolled a six for McCook's initial command roll and using all six points managed to get Davis and Johnson into a refused flank with artillery support. Hardee still had the numbers, but poor command rolls meant he couldn't exploit the advantage before Rosecrans could get reinforcements into position.

The command problems posed by the rules set add some really juicy friction that drove both commanders crazy, which is exactly what they are supposed to do.