Another title in the Blind Swords system, Thunder at Dawn. It has a few pages of  special rules for some unique terrain and the surprise attack that caught the rebels flatfooted….or barefooted.

I’ve dropped some vide on this system previously and discussed the game play mechanics etc so I wont bore you with a rehashing here.

 

In the North West corner of the map Sturgis and Andrews move to capture a hilltop location and emplace arty to rain fire down on the rebel encampment in a field and a along a stream as the opening actions of the battle.

With the turns being 20 minutes long and the chit pull system this ‘chaos’ really tugs at both sides. So for turn 1 & 2 [ 0500 & 0520 ] the Union pretty much have a free hand with chit pull to demonstrate the surprises.

Despite that in Turn 3 the Rebs [I’m going to use this or CSA going forwards as its 3 letters versus typing Confederate…dont get all pissy about it ok!! 🙂 ]. place a Fog of War chit on Sturgis and his men are bogged down. This is great for me as each of the flag locations generates a VP per turn. The goal for the Union is to strike hard, capture and hold VPs, then retrograde out off map. a tough ask against a larger slightly better morale based force.

One additional rule at the open is some units who are fired upon take an auto panic check…Both my dudes fail. Off they run. Sigel capitalizes upon this and closes in for combat in turn 3. So we are frittering away a few good units here. We made an error allowing my cav to retreat as the were unmounted! doah. I think this though cleared the way quicker for the Union so they could stay in manoeuvre mode…or maybe it was worse as they could not close and kill the weaker cav? One other rule I know I was getting wrong previously solo was an incremental -1 to unit morale when checking if they are not adjacent to a friendly.

We got 3 full turns done in 2 hours! really nice pace of play, despite my constant rule checking questions.

At the top of turn 4 we can see the primary moves in black for the Union. In purple for Rebs. They need to retake the hill on the NW, its called bloody hill… I’m sending some forces there and then going the long way around to attempt to protect a Eastern VP location and flank the approaching forces. On the Southern Side of the map we are falling back on the camp and putting Arty and Cav on the ridge line to attempt to hit the Union from two sides. If I can knock them out quickly we can pivot and attend to that force accruing points every turn. Fully 4 formations of the rebels have yet to move, so we need to boogie!

Dave was a patient player with me.

We will pick up after Thanksgiving.