The Peach Orchard at Shiloh

Friday saw Kevin and I driving down to the Chicago area to meet up with the Chitown Wargamers for a festive gaming session.

First game of the day was a Bag the Hun Battle of Britain game that I ran to give folks a taste of the system, a flight of Spitfires were tangling with two Schwarm of BF109E and things were looking bad for the RAF until the closing stages of the game when a pair of Luftwaffe Johnnies were shot down and a semblance of honour restored.

No good photos, so this will have to give you a taste, I had forgotten to pack my usual altitude markers so the huge dice rather distract from it.

It was then over to Eds for the main event of the day.

We would be playing the area around the Peach Orchard during the Battle of Shiloh April 1862. We were using the Pickett's Charge rules from TooFatLardies a set I had not played before but was looking forwards to giving a try.

Mark, Pete and myself would command the Union forces while Pkil, Kevin and Liam the Confederates. I was in the centre commanding Hurlbut's division.

The game flows really well and is a good representation of some of the staff challenges that would be faced, the planning of the use of your ADSs and the problems troops suddenly going hesitant at the start of a turn are well represented and it's an important part of the game system.

The use of blind movement also adds a great feel to the game, Prentiss's command on our left flank was quite thin, but we were able to reinforce it, and make it look much larger by redeploying several blank blinds to that flank.

At a critical stage in the battle, neither of my ADC were available and both of my brigades went hesitant. Fortunately, I was able to ride it out, mainly due to some rather poor shooting from the Confederates before me.

Although some of Wallace's command was pushed back on our right flank we were able to hold a solid line at the end of the battle so it was a declared a close victory to the Union forces.

I'm enthused by the rules and have just bought a set from TFL.