POLEMOS - American Civil War - Designers Notes

by Peter Riley

Introduction
In these notes I will try to give some explanation to my approach in presenting the developments and ideas in these Polemos American Civil War rules. I will focus on the various sections in the set and try to explain in some detail the systems, decisions and outcomes that occurred along the way.

Troop Quality
Some rules get bogged down in the area of representing troop quality; I feel that being too complicated in this area forces the player to focus more on picking the right troops in right categories than in playing the game.

Did Armies have limits where only 10% of your Army is allowed to be Veteran Elite and no more? I do not like limits. I happen to think that applying limits and providing structured lists is the wrong approach and is very restrictive and unrealistic.

In the American Civil War, troop quality was very variable. Did the Iron Brigade perform brilliantly all of the time? Even the Stonewall Brigade went backwards a few times. With Polemos we begin to break this down and can give the troops differing levels of experience with a very simple quality framework, and you can play with the whole Division or Corps of Veterans if you want to.

What if you do want to play with a whole Division of Confederate “Veterans” in the later war? You can, but you can also model different levels within the Division. Maybe they have just won a battle at high cost in men; will they all act like Veterans in the next battle? And will they remain unbeatable? Let's take an example of two very different divisions at Gettysburg:

The above is an example of how you can reflect different units and organisations using the Polemos system. We can represent the best or the most mediocre of Divisions. So if you want to represent your favourite units like the Iron Brigade or the Stonewall Brigade as the Veteran Elites they were, then you can.

Berdan’s Sharpshooters really can be the Trained or Veteran - Elite (SK2) unit and not just be lumped in with the other Infantry for convenience. You can even model the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) as Raw Elites who were probably better than they thought they were in action.

Base Scales
With main rules focusing on the “Base” we can be fairly confident, within reason, in handing over the “scale” of the game to the players. This allows you the players to dictate what they want to play based on how may Bases they have.

I personally do not like rules that say how many Bases a regiment, battalion or cavalry unit should have; therefore I need 55 bases to represent this Corps and I only have 25. How frustrating is that!

In Polemos ACW you can change and play around with the parameters somewhat. For example with Infantry Bases representing from 1200 to 2000 men it gives you the control to halve, or double, the amount of Infantry Bases you need to play the game.

So in creating the following two Corps for COA we have shown that depending on your decisions you can scale the game to what you have available in bases.

9 (Round down)
10 (Round Up)

16 (Round down)
17 (Round Up)

32 (Round down)
34 (Round Up)

So in this fictional example:

Army of the Potomac - CinC

1st Corps (Force) - General
2 Infantry Divisions (2 Formations)
1st Division - 4 Brigades (Units)
2nd Divisions - 4 Brigades (Units)
1 Cavalry Division (1 Formation)
1st Division - 2 Brigades (Units)

We now show this using the Wellington example:

1st Army - General Wellington CinC
1st Division, Spencer (Force) - 3 Brigades (Units)
2nd Division, Picton (Force) - 3 Brigades (Units)
3rd Light Division, Craufurd (Force) - 3 Brigades (Units)

The basic premise is to enable the players to use the flexible system to suit the battle they want to play. To enable the players to fulfil the sometimes ad hoc nature of the forces generals had to hand, as well as model the imperfect world battles happened in, and to not restrict and confine the games to set lists and set points a side.

Army Lists
The army lists presented here are not meant to be used to produce an exact representation of the armies from the orders of battle, you can do those yourselves. They are, however, meant to deliver the type of armies that might be expected to meet up in battle as the results of movements during a campaign.

We all know that orders are mislaid, Generals can be bull headed, and that armies are made up of human beings. So use them to produce armies that will challenge one side or the other or use them to produce Forces and then build a scenario around them, rather than using them to try and get balanced forces for a competition game which can be done by the players with a bit of forethought.
Tempo
I will not say too much on Tempo, I think the system is great, however my thoughts and changes here were primarily around Generals and rating them.

I felt that the Generals in the American Civil War were a big influence on the way the battles were fought and how the armies performed; they needed to be included and separated out. This gives the player the ability to use their armies more as they would have been, with the Union and their constant tinkering with CinC’s, and command changes, and the Confederates using their attacking tactics and strategic defence.

I have, I think, placed more importance on winning the Tempo Bidding Phase by streamlining the combat procedure and allowing combats to flow across turns. I think that adding in reserves in the current rounds tends to favour the defence; it should be a function of Tempo and brave Generals.

Bombardment
With the Bombardment Phase and the emerging new technologies available I have taken the view that it would be an ongoing process, a sort of “whole turn” approach to modelling the phase. It would also be the phase where the longer ranged Artillery batteries in a formation would perform attacks, as opposed to the closer ranged support role Artillery has in the Ranged Combat Phase.

There was a huge mixture gun types in any formation and it is assumed that these would be used at the ranges that suited them allowing larger artillery formations to fire through the whole turn. The designation of Field or Reserve is really about the majority of weapons present in the base and the role in which it would be used not necessarily a strict expression of gun type per base.

This approach covers lots of things, the confederate habit of moving Field batteries out of the line to save them from the more numerous Union Reserve batteries engaging in long range counter battery fire as well as batteries moving away from attacking infantry that were getting a little to close for comfort. I also hope that we have modelled the demoralizing effects on batteries engaged in prolonged duals, and the huge effort of firing the guns for long periods of time; they are only human and we gamers can forget that sometimes.

A further example of this is the Shaken result for Bombarding Artillery; this can represent things like fatigue or the morale effect at making such a poor job of bombardment, a slower rate of fire through to not wanting to waste ammunition or possibly a loss of cohesion due to the bombardment not having any effect as well as the nervousness of exposure in the open to the possibility of attracting counter battery fire.

I am sure there are more examples however I am also sure that you get the idea and they are enough to be going on with. I think the table and the results deliver the impressions of these effects on the game.

Ranged Attacks - 'Firing'
Here I have tried to show the inherent and different advantages that some of the weapons had without overpowering the game.

Towards the end 1862 there were still some 75% of Union and 85% of Confederates armed with weapons that were either smoothbores or 2nd rate rifles. These percentages are too huge to ignore, even at the COA scale, and so I have included them. It is up to you as a player to decide if you want to distinguish weapons at this scale.

The designation of weapons being smoothbore or rifled is really about the majority of weapons present in the base and not necessarily a strict expression of a weapon type per base. The smoothbores range is so small there is a plus in the tables to represent close range and buck and ball loads.

Rifles were coming into their own by this stage, troops were forced into trying to close under their own artillery fire and charge over the last few hundred meters to get into contact. I have tried to model the seesaw results of attacks and the stalling of attacks under this approach through the ranged combat outcomes tables and by adding in the Going to Ground results. Going to Ground represents the attack faltering and I think it also highlights the problems that the leaders faced in trying to attack troops in good positions. I think this method gives a good feel to attacks in the game with Officers trying to get troops on the move again.

The attackers were generally shot to pieces; however using cover and artillery could save them from a determined counterattack. This means that the attacking troops must try to use artillery to support infantry attacks into close combat.

Launching Attacks - 'Combat'
I have made a large effort to streamline this phase, in the ACW there was no combined arms approach to tactical combat as there was in the Napoleonic period. Weapons had advanced to such a degree that Cavalry was not as effective in the traditional role and some Artillery had much longer ranges than in the earlier periods.

I was not really comfortable with the idea of piling in more troops in the same Phase to extend the combat to and try to finish it in one turn. I also thought through the process and realised that by not having this element it makes the next Tempo Bidding Phase a more crucial part of the game. You could bring in Supports in the next turn but it would be a conscious decision by the CinC to do this. It does add the ability for the Tempo winner to react first (this can be unpredictable and subject to who thinks it is more important).

So this places more emphasis on Tempo Bidding and command rather than just having troops handy, as you may have more often on defence. I have also combined some of the tables to make it a more streamlined process through to the outcomes.

Summary
I hope players enjoy these rules and the freedoms I think they allow you. Please feel free to change them to suit yourselves and the games you wish to play. I have tried to deliver a game that you will enjoy, planning as well as playing that will give each side advantages and disadvantages, as well as challenges to overcome and situations to plan for. Most importantly for me is that I think the rules “feel” right.