American Civil War – in 25mm

After years of debating what to do with all those 25mm American Civil War I picked up for better or worse I have finalized a plan.

I have decided to mount 3 figures on a 1 ½ inch square base with five bases to a typical battalion/regiment, thus one stand represents about 100 men. Putting 4 or 5 of these battalions together with a mounted colonel and a stand of artillery will than represent a brigade.

Due to the fact I have so many figures I gave Jim a bag of the Union's Irish Brigade (II Corps, 1^st Division, 2^nd Brigade), Keith a bag of VI Union Corps, and Joe Knight a bag with figures from the XI Corps. They will need to add a second bag to complete their brigades, but it should be fairly cheap ($30 to get everything they need). I then handed Tom Zwirn a pack of like 100 Confederate Figures and told him to paint up whatever he want and hand me back the rest of the figures, which is semi organized for Early's Division of Second Corps.

I personally have painted up the First Division (Both the Iron Brigade and Cutler's 2^nd Brigade) from 1^st Corps and a couple of Brigades of Heth's Division (Pettigrew and Brockenbrough) as my commands. Or rather I had them painted up.

The plan is to use Crusader Games "Rank and File" with their upcoming ACW Supplement. The decision to start out with "Rank and File" is more about getting nice easy simple rules (Beer and Pretzels) that minimizes the need of multiple people buying the rules and HOPEFULLY minimizes the need arguing over the intent of the rules vs. what they actually say. Of course with so many rules I wanted to avoid (cough Johnny Reb III cough) this was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated when I bought the figures. The fact that Crusaders rules aren't going to cost me big dollars and have a decent print quality to them didn't hurt either. I should add I don't think these rules are perfect, rather I think these rules will allow us to get started and really debate what we want to do as a group.

My goal is to get a couple of games run in 25mm later this summer and decide upon the level of interest and how much effort people want to put into the period. For me, since I already own the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in 15mm at 1 stand = 100 men I really um undecided upon how much effort I want to put into it. I am thinking about re-organizing the ANV as 1:150 per base for Fire and Fury and selling off the extras, IE Basic Fire and Fury using the proceeds to finish off the Union which I currently have about 1/3 of the Army of the Potomac. Since I am short Artillery for the ANV it actually might workout okay.