Historicon 2014: Thursday's Sink the Tennessee! Game

 This will be the first of several posts discussing Historicon 2014.  As usual, I had a blast and really enjoyed putting on several games with Mike.  Our first game was Thursday night and was a re-run of last year's game "Sink the Tennessee" using Architects of Wars "Uncivil Wars" ruleset.  The first picture shows the table at the start of the game.  The cards in the picture are the unit activation cards - put them in a deck and when pulled the named unit gets to do something.

The game was played on a 16 foot table and had four players per side.  The scenario was a Union raid to destroy the CSS Tennessee.  The Union had two repeater armed calvary forces that were intended to delay the massive confederate reinforcements which would enter the game at the bottom of the table (time was nat a Union ally).  They also had a land based infantry force and a seaborne Marine / Engineer force to take both the town and CSS TN.  Of course, the seaborne force arrived via an Ironclad.  The Confederates had the CSS TN's crewman and Marines, some town militia, a calvary patrol and a never ending amount of infantry regiments.  Unfortunately for the confederates the crew of the TN was in town on shore leave so they needed to get back to the ship before it could escape.

 A few turns into the game with the Union forces entering the town before the confederates could react (it was night so visibility was 12 inches).

 Contact!  The Yankees went for the CSS crewman first and this would prove decisive late on in the game.  The Confederates marines did manage to get on board without many casualties and prepared to "repel boarders".

The Town militia may not have been the best quality troops but they were brave lads and went down to the last man.  The gentlemen playing them was a hoot and did a very good impression of Slim Pickens from Blazing saddles (a hooping and a hollering!)  It was a lot of fun.  At the other end of the table the Union cav did a great job holding off the confederate infantry (and decimating the LA Tigers in the process)

 The decisive movement - The confederate marine manage to throw back the Union marines after their engineers blasted open the top hatch to the TN.  Unfortunately for the confederates, they just didn't have enough troops to hold back the Union infantry - their crewman shipmates  couldn't get on board to support them.  The Union carried the ship and won the game.  We all had a great time playing the game and I was very fortunate to have 8 players who were all in the frame of mind to have a good time.

One surprising aspect of the evening was our game won an award at the con - a "PELA" which I think is given out for the best game in a particular time slot.  I think the real reason we won was the quality of the players I had - they were a lot of fun and would have made playing checkers using unpainted 40k figs seem exciting!

I really enjoy putting games on at a con, but it is a lot of work.  Mike and I have started planning for next year but all we've settled is that it will be something other than ACW - more details to follow.  Our big debate will be do we do one or two games.