While We're Waiting....

 Actually, I planned to start the game later today or tomorrow morning but these days....

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of reviewing past games and thinking.  When circumstances changed and I had to cancel my appearance at Huzzah in Maine, (the first time in 40 yrs of running games at conventions that I cancelled.), I realized that with my 70th birthday looming in 2025, I should really be focusing on enjoying my hobby for its sake. If I find that I can make it to at least 1 convention next year, I am already in a position where I could whip up a couple of decent convention multi-player games in a few hours. In the meantime, I should just get on with amusing/enjoying myself as my primary goal, and design my games for my preferences and what I have, not for their suitability as either multi-player convention games or as short "one hour-ish" solo games. 

2022 Battle of Daniels' Crossing 
(A tribute to a fallen comrade.)

The last time my ACW figures were out, I'd been trying once again to change to Brigade units. The games did go quicker but they lacked ...flavour? narrative? something anyway. So I went through..."a bunch" ... of the nearly 200 ACW posts on my blog. I noted that by 2009, I had already starting to build 1/72nd ACW 'regiments'  to replace my 15mm Fire and Fury brigades. in the 90's, a group of us had used F&F to play Grant scenarios. It finally occurred to me that we just played with minimal worries  about what our "units" theoretically represented. When in 2005, I got back to my existing handful of 20mm plastics which had been painted as 12 or 16 figure "regiments" in the 1980's, I just picked up where I'd left off. Eventually, I increased them all to generic 18 figure units, maybe because they looked good, maybe to be closer to Featherstone's 20 man regiments, Charge!'s 19 figure "companies" or my own 20 figure 40mm battalions. Who knows why now?

A shot from a game...ummh... earlier in this blog.
(I forgot to note the post date and "ain't goin' back search'n".)

Anyway, my conclusion today is that while I like the apparent simplicity of brigades as units, I want the flexiblity of medium sized 2 rank "units" with enough figures to look like "something", even when playing a "small action" with a few battalions while having a small enough foot print to allow me to deploy a score or more of these units on each side which will "feel", to my imagination, like a "Battle", even if the games requires 4 or more hours to finish. 

Even more, important, I like that some of my "regiments" have earned names and histories.

A 2017 game with longtime friends. 

So, Sunday's game will be back to 3 stand regiments, grouped into Brigades with 3-5 regiments + a brigadier, and no grid!  Division and Army (or Corps) commanders as called for.