Brother Against Brother – The AAR, Part 1
Matrix Games just released their new game of the American Civil War, Brother Against Brother. Here’s a play-by-email AAR of the First Battle of Bull Run.
by kwhitehead (of the Matrix Forums), 16 April 2015
I am the Rebel player. Lacresta has the low life Yankees.
The “2-Player” scenario is the wide open do what you want to do scenario particularly for the Union since they start uncommitted to McDowell’s flank attack. The Scenario starts with most of the Union army concentrated along the Warrenton Turnpike between Centreville and the Suspension Bridge over Club Run.
I have used the jump map shown below to illustrate the troop positions. Since the jump map doesn’t show roads and trails very well and is somewhat out of proportion (stretched a bit in the north south axis) I have labeled various important locations in green. I also added the general location of my brigades by adding the names in white. The jump map shows the Rebel unit locations with red and the victory hexes in yellow. Since it is hard to tell what type of victory hexes they are I added a number in purple next to the yellow showing the number of Union VP hexes in that location.
In this scenario the Victory Hexes are rather scattered. I showed the Union ones mostly because they will be the ones the Yankee Player will go for since final victory is based off of who holds the most VP hexes. Victory hexes come in three flavors. They can be for both sides, USA only or CSA only. For example, the CSA player has a victory hex at Poplar Ford at the top of the map but the Union player doesn’t. This doesn’t mean he can ignore the hex since denying Victory hexes to the opponent is important too. It just won’t reward the Union player for sending a unit to occupy it. Some “yellow” areas have multiple Victory Hexes like Centreville which has two. One is for both sides and a second one is only for the Rebel player. The Rebel player has some type of Victory hex in every yellow area but the Suspension Bridge, New Market Crossroad, north of Blackburn Ford, and the one at the bottom representing the road to Manassas Junction.
Looking at the map’s red dots it is obvious that the Rebels only have a small force based around Cocke’s brigade on their far left. The majority of their forces are concentrated around the McLean House on the right with a contingency deployed along Bull Run to their north. The center is a vast empty land with a few cavalry companies covering. The Union player has to decide where to focus the weight of his army based around Centreville. It is about equal distance to Bull Run marching west or south. The problem with a southern drive is their aren’t very many Victory hexes to be taken. Most are Rebel ones. A drive that direction would require destroying the Rebel army to obtain victory. Considering the terrain and the Rebel army already concentrated their it would be difficult.
So like McDowell the Yankee commander will look west. Unlike McDowell he knows the Stone Bridge is weakly held. In addition, he knows that Cocke’s brigade is to spread out and most of Bull Run between Cocke and Bonham is empty. So a drive on the Stone Bridge, Lewis Ford in front Cocke, and Ball’s Ford looks like a sure thing. He could further cover his bets by sending a division around the Rebel flank by way of Sudley Ford which is off the screen shot to the NW.
The Rebel player, in this case me, must guess which way the thrust will be made and the weight of that thrust. The scenario starts at 2 AM so there are two night moves (2 AM and 4 AM) before the first day light move at 6 AM. After that turns are 20 minutes. The bad news for the Rebel is that these are high movement point moves at night. They obviously can’t cover the distance that six 20 minute turns would give but they still can make quite a jump down the road. The Union player obviously knows where he needs to move since he has the initiative. The Rebel must take a leap of faith.
The Rebel does have one advantage, a large number of small cavalry units, usually about 70 men each. These he can throw out as a screen. They will act both as a trip wire for identifying which way the Union is moving and as a speed bump to slow that deployment down buying valuable time for the rest of the Rebel army.
