Why all the hate? Warlord games "Epic Scale" ACW

Warlord Games have sprung a bit of a surprise recently by announcing their new "15mm" American Civil War range for their "Black Powder" game. The fanfare accompanying the announcement was well coordinated, including a free sprue of miniatures on the front of January's Wargame Illustrated - available now in December for reasons which I don't really understand. I grabbed one and I like what I see.

The main bullet points are these are hard plastic, and instead of individual figures the infantry are strips of ten men standing shoulder to shoulder. Each sprue has ten such strips - one Command, then a mix of two other infantry strips. The sprue also includes a gun and crew, and a mounted officer. So each has 100 infantry and a gun and crew. Both sides are getting the same sprue but on release the Union will be coloured blue, the Confederates Grey as I understand it.

The announcement has been followed by a large amount of hostile posts in the online wargaming community. These posts have broken down into a couple of broad themes, mainly "proprietary scale" and "wrong" equipment. 

The scale thing does have some validity from a certain point of view. The nominal size in the press releases is 15mm. 15mm is a traditional and industry size (not scale) and very popular for ACW due to games like the excellent "Fire and Fury". The issue is that these figures are 13.5mm foot to eye, 15mm to top if head \ hat. That puts them distinctly on the small side - they're not compatible with other "15mm" which tend towards 15mm foot to eye, indeed some are stretching to 18mm. I can't work out why Warlord bothered to mention it to be honest, but it does give plenty of ammunition to anyone wanting to call "foul". If they had said "Epic" scale and leave it at that then I'm sure there would be (slightly) less uproar.

The equipment thing is also a bit more valid. The sprue is going to be the same for both sides - i.e. the only difference is going to be paint. The figures are dressed in a mix of headgear - kepi and slouch hat on the same strip. OK this isn't strictly correct according to the manuals, however it isn't a big stretch of the imagination to say they would and could be mixed headgear on campaign. 

All this is missing the point I think. For those of us who are complaining they don't fit with our current collections, IT ISNT MEANT TO! Love them or loath them this is Warlord making a product to fit their Black Powder range and for that game only. It's a bit like complaining that your draughts pieces are the wrong shape to play chess with. 

The real issue here is just how damned good they look. I love Fire and Fury, and similar ACW games, and played them extensively in 15mm. The problem is no matter what basing scheme you use your representation of a Regiment \ Brigade \ Battalion or whatever always broke down to looking like a half dozen bases with three or four figures on each - like those episodes of Sharpe on TV when thirty guys are pretending to be the whole South Essex battalion. The visual effect you get with these with 20 figures on a 60mm base is bloody good. I'm looking hard at Regimental Fire and Fury - and indeed other rules like Sharp Practice where the main bases are elements, and wondering how they will play using these Warlord Epic bases instead. 

It's not just the figure count by the way. The shoulder to shoulder nature of the strips means these do look far more like a close order infantry formation than just about anything we have seen (excluding maybe 2-3mm blocks) because with "traditional" single based figures you struggle to get the impression of ranks and close order no matter how many you stick to your base.

I'm aware this is starting to sound like an advert so I will chuck a couple of criticisms in. The decision to use just one sprue for both sides isn't a good one. I can see why, but an all kepi sprue, or even a sprue with all the troops in a strip in uniform headgear would have been much more preferable. I'm also frowning at the decision to release the supporting models in "Warlord Resin" - the bendy resin that has been used on several Warlord projects now with mixed results. I don't like the idea of trying to clean up figures this small in that material. At all. I'm also unsure how good cavalry will look - I'm looking at the bases and thinking there will only be 5 to a base (assuming the bases are universal - which seems to be the case).

However that said I'm chucking my money at this. The starter set has literally thousands of infantry (2400 to be precise, and 24 guns) in there for an RRP of £90 that's amazing value -  the idea of representing units in 1-1 is do-able if you feel the urge. I've no idea how Black Powder plays, but I'm pretty sure it wont be beyond the wit of man to work out a way of using these for Fire and Fury or whatever, ether as a straight base for base swap or a 2 for 1 with the odd half base chucked in to deal with odd numbered units. Let's be honest, with figures this cheap you can easily justify the wastage that you would incur carving the strips in half if you wanted.

So there is my initial thoughts on this new Warlord "thing". I'm sure that if this works, like with the original 28mm plastic ranges, this will grow and grow, with AWI and Napoleonics being obvious candidates for the "Epic" treatment. 

Muddy River Brown Water Blues Part err, well technically part 2 but there is no part 1.....

You may recall Dear Reader that there was much planning of a Stalingrad campaign for Chain of Command. We had penciled in a start date for April \ May but that slipped to June. Then our lead Russian Andy was advised by work that they needed him to work night shifts to deal with some production issues for a month or so - so Stalingrad has been postponed a little.

To fill the gap I was looking at some rules I picked up on Wargames Vault by the redoubtable Dave Manley - doyen of Naval Wargamers the world over. These were called "Dahlgred & Columbiad" (D&C) and were designed as small scale fast play American Civil War (ACW) naval rules. In addition to the rules I bought the accompanying "By Sea & By River" set which included a fairly comprehensive set of stats for both fleets of the ACW and also a small mini campaign designed to be played solo. As between me and my usual opponent Paul we have a fair selection of boats I thought "Why not?" I'm not a great believer in solo gaming so I decided to rope another person (Dave) into making the command decisions. It will pass the time for both of us.

I'll go into a bit of details on D&C later, but suffice to say the campaign revolves around a small flotilla of Union ships lead by an Ironclad feeling their way up an un-mapped tributary of the Mississippi looking for a Confederate Ironclad Ram rumor has it is being built upstream. Each campaign turn represents a couple of hours and five miles of river. the course of the river and any opposition are randomly generated by the campaign system itself, so no two games will be the same. To cut a long story short I received orders from Dave then played out the first day of the campaign, which saw his flotilla push past some shore batteries and sink two small Confederate Gunboats. It return his lead ship, the Cairo Class River Ironclad Carondelet suffered some light damage. I didnt take any pics as I never really intended to do anything with it. Dave tied up along the bank over night then ordered his ships upriver at dawn.....

Anyway this afternoon I had a cancellation at work. As the weather was beautiful I thought it a shame to waste it cooped up in the office sorting out paperwork so retired to the rear yard and run the next encounter. It turns out that the river in question looks remarkably like the table in my sun drenched back yard - who would have thought it?

The lead ship of the Union flotilla is the Carondelet. The flotilla is under orders not to waste time or risking damage by engaging in a long drawn out fight with any Confederate batteries but to push past them and locate the Ram

Batteries rather like this one "Battery Davison" which they encountered just before noon

Carondelet made all steam ahead and pushed on, followed by the "tinclad" Fort Hindman. The Fort Hindman had shown itself to be rather better at gunnery than the flagship the day before.

 The bottle tops are being used to determine initiative btw - a gold one is the Confederates, a black one Union. You are supposed to use cards but this was all pretty much spare of the moment and I could not be ar$ed to go looking for playing cards when randomly drawing from a stack of beer bottle tops was a viable alternative.

Carondelet opened up the battle - and as per the day before missed. The rules use a system of opposed & modified dice to represent gunnery. In the pics red is the firer. If the modified result is equal the target is harassed and suffers a shooting minus for that turn, if the firer is higher light damage is caused, twice as much heavy etc. As you can see, Carondelet cant hit a bulls arse with a banjo.

But Fort Hindman it seems can, causing some light damage to the battery.

Carondelet keeps up their abysmal shooting - in fact this is such a bad result it triggered a roll on the special effects table, resulting in a small self inflicted fire. Luckily it caused only local inconvenience.

Return fire from Battery Davison was inconclusive, the combination of damage to the battery and long range prevented them from getting any solid hits, and the Yankees steamed past at best speed.

There was a bit of an intake in breath as the battery switched fire to the vulnerable supply ships at the rear of the Union formation, but again the combination of range and not great shooting meant they escaped with only near misses.

The last transport moves out of range.

A victory of sorts to the Union as they have moved closer to their ultimate goal without taking further damage. They have however left another battery mostly intact in their wake that will continue to threaten any ships that pass.

Final shot of the cast and crew. Not sure when the USN went "dry" but in deference I had a non alcoholic beer. That was really the only blot on an otherwise excellent afternoon :-)

Captain Lakey and his flotilla are now heading further upstream. More action later....