Possible bathtub ACW campaign

Does anyone know of a good ACW boardgame, preferably one that's old and the maps are now available online, that has a good hex map of the major theatres?

I'm having this insane idea of doing a "bathtub" ACW campaign, or BACW. The whole war, or a biggish chunk of the war, but scaled down. As far as I'm aware, it was Frank Chadwick who invented the "bathtub" concept (as in "bathtub" navy - toy boats representing whole fleets) for his Command Decision 1941 Barbarossa campaign - the entire Eastern Front of WWII but handled in a manageable scaled down format. I think he used a scale of 25:1

For our purposes the scaling down would work something like this. In SoW games a regiment would represent a brigade(*), a brigade would represent a division (and divisions could be as small as 2 brigades, as big as 6), and divisions would represent corps (again as small as 2 to as big as about 4). Artillery batteries would represent "battalions" with each actual gun representing about 4 real guns. Players would be either theatre commanders or corps commanders. I'm not sure if the game would need Presidents but it might. There would be a troop density rule in place that represents the ability of any region to support a maximum number of troops so that entire armies could not be massed in too tight an area and our SoW battles would remain managable.

(*) I'd also probably try to work out a wargame-soldiers -to- real-soldiers ratio as well, perhaps 1:10 so that a 2000 man brigade would be represented by a 200 man regiment.

A good commercial boardgame or computer game would be great if it gave us the historical starting positions, famous persons, industrial potential, reinforcements potential, etc and the two sides devise their own strategies. Naval warfare would possibly be abstracted into a mechanism that affected national supply and also a troop movement function (riverine and blue water fleets).

My first problem is I do not know of a suitable operational level ACW game on which to base this.

Help!

Are you on the boardgamegeek? That's the best resource for boardgames there is.

I've had a few ACW wargames, but can't think of any ideal for what you're after off-hand.

My only other thought is that your idea seems like it might be rather complicated! Have you thought about how the SoW maps would need to scale? Personally, I'm not a fan of playing out-of-scale so to speak.

However, a grand-strategy kriegsspiel that has nothing to do with SoW, I certainly would be interested in, but then of course, I'm on the wrong thread.

Here, try this list:

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/62452/strategic-american-civil-war

Martin

AGEOD,s ACW PC game might have some strategic and operational maps and info of some use. I'm sure I have a copy which I bought a few years ago but have not played it yet.

http://www.ageod.com/en/ageod-games/6-american-civil-war.html

I have played AGEOD's Napoleon's Campaigns, which was quite good and I expect much better now after several patches.

As I have already said on this forum, If you have a map to which you would like hexes adding, then I have a program which can do this.

Modifying in Photoshop/GIMP etc with the layers technique, maps can be changed graphically to a large extent.

I will look at the AGEOD ACW game (if I can find it) and report back.

Mike

FlashmanKBE wrote:Have you thought about how the SoW maps would need to scale? Personally, I'm not a fan of playing out-of-scale so to speak.

We'd fight the battles exactly as we fight our battles now, thinking in our heads of regts, brigades, divisions and batteries. The armies are just scaled down in order to allow a bigger operational level.

If a regiment in line really represents a brigade in line then that makes it 1/4 to 1/6 the frontage of the unit it represents (say 1/5, its an easy number to work with). Thus our brigade is taking up 1/5 the frontage it should so our maps are really 5x bigger. But in practical terms we just play SoW like we always have.

I accept it may not be to everyone's taste. This thread is as much a feeler for response as anything else.

The issue is that I know a lot of wargamers do enjoy the grand strategy concept, so it should have elements that appeal to many.

Thanks for the links guys, much appreciated.

Per NY Cavalry, recently on GCM forum: AGEOD's American Civil War is $13 at Matrix right now.

I took a look at it, but it woul dbe very clunky to do a PBEM campaign in order to play both sides. There's no way to pay a campaign with both sides controlled by the same player which is the system I usually use when umpiring a campaign based on software. The problem also with using a PC game is the inability to fully mesh it with SoW battles.

Alternatively I've been looking at the Vassal system (they convert card counter boardgames to computer software) of Avalon Hill's "The Civil War". It seems to be agreed by many to be the best ACW boardgame that was made. Using a card counter boardgame as the map rules where there's no calculations forced upon you and you can force the MP battle results from our SoW games onto it makes life much easier. There's also a pdf file fully covering all the rules so no arguments

Vassal's also free, so everyone cam download it.

http://www.vassalengine.org/

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:The_Civil_War

Mr. Digby wrote:I took a look at it, but it woul dbe very clunky to do a PBEM campaign in order to play both sides. There's no way to pay a campaign with both sides controlled by the same player which is the system I usually use when umpiring a campaign based on software. The problem also with using a PC game is the inability to fully mesh it with SoW battles.

Alternatively I've been looking at the Vassal system (they convert card counter boardgames to computer software) of Avalon Hill's "The Civil War". It seems to be agreed by many to be the best ACW boardgame that was made. Using a card counter boardgame as the map rules where there's no calculations forced upon you and you can force the MP battle results from our SoW games onto it makes life much easier. There's also a pdf file fully covering all the rules so no arguments

Vassal's also free, so everyone cam download it.

http://www.vassalengine.org/

http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:The_Civil_War

I'd love to play a Kriegsspiel ACW game using Vassal - but I still think that this may be the wrong forum!

The Vassal system (boardgame map with counters arrayed on it, etc) in this case would only be a tool to aid the umpire because it makes all the troop positions and other record keeping so easy.

I think the use of Vassal to play a kriegspiel is impossible since there needs to be an umpire, or umpire team and then two players, or two player teams. All Vassal does is take a boardgame and make it digital instead of card and paper. All boardgames are intended for solo or 1 vs 1 play and none that I can quickly think of are designed for an umpire and 2 players which is the basic ingredient of a kriegspiel.