Getting Started in Warlord Games Epic Battles American Civil War

 

By Howard West

Background

When Warlord Games brought out the Epic American Civil War line, several of the people in our group wanted to purchase some of the starter sets and add-on box sets.  I was up for playing a Civil Wars miniatures game again. Since the late 70s our group has played the following Civil War Miniatures rule sets: Rally Around the Flag, Stars and Bars, Blue Light Manual, Fire and Fury, Johnny Reb, and Onto Richmond. I probably have forgotten others.

The problem for me getting into any new rules set was remounting the figures to the required basing and in my case that is a lot of figures. I have eight boxes of figures like the picture below that will need to be remounted, I painted these figures in the late 70s thru the 80s and ’90s.

 

Getting started at remounting.

Before I started remounting I purchased a large number of 60mm x 20mm and 60 x 30mm Masonite bases from Gale Force-9 at their trade show booth at a Convention. I have used these bases before and I like how they look. After that, I got out my old trusty Xacto knife and rubber cutting mat and started building a few example bases.

My first attempt was to carve or shave some of the balsa wood bases that I had some of the figures mounted on. I thought I could get them to look like the Epic American Civil War mounting approach. I did not like the result and the other problem was that about half of the figures were mounted on plexiglass. So carving and shaving them was not an option.

My second attempt was to dismount the figures and try mounting them like the Epic American Civil War mounting approach.

With the second attempt, I was getting a lot closer to the Epic American Civil War mounting approach. With this approach, I would need to trim a lot of the figure’s bases. I also had to deal with the multiple poses of the various figures and not all of the figure poses would work in getting two rows of figures on a 20mm base depth.

My third and final attempt was to just mount them in a single line and the pic below is my first Confederate Infantry Regiment remounted. I liked how these turn out and then went into mass conversion.

The pic below is about the halfway point of remounting the eight boxes. Mounting seven infantry and five Cavalry figures to a stand uses up a lot of figs fast. The artillery is mounted on 40mm x 30mm bases and the higher level Commanders are mounted on 40mm x 40mm bases and the Brigade Commanders are mounted on 40mm x 20mm bases.

First games using my remounted figures.

So while the group was painting and acquiring figures, I mounted up enough for us to start playing games. One of our friends used to say when learning a new set of rules the first 4-5 games you play the rules play you, and after 6+ games you start playing the game. We found this to be the case with the Warlord Games Black Powder Civil War. The first four games consisted of putting a bunch of brigades on a table and moving around the units and working our way thru the rules. Enclosed are some pics from our first games.

As we worked thru our first several games some of the folks started bringing their newly painted Epic Civil War units.

One of the things we learned fast as you need lots of different colors of dice or other markers to be used as markers for unit causalities, disorder, shaken, artillery fire, etc.

After four games we started to get an understanding of the rules and the going back and forth between the Black Powder Rules, Glory Hallelujah!, and the Epic Civil War books.

Game#5

For game #5 since we are starting to get a sizable amount of painted units, we decided to try one of the Scenarios Gettysburg Day One that Warlord Games has provided. Now do not think we were crazy to do all of Day one at Gettysburg while we are still learning the rules. The Scenario provided is part of Reynolds 1st Corp defending McPherson’s ridge.

One of the reasons we picked this scenario was that it is easy to add in the additional units that fought in this part of Day 1 at Gettysburg.  2nd it is a battle that we can visit the battlefield after about a 2:45-minute drive from where we live.

After playing this scenario we felt that we are now starting to understand the rules and how the various phases interact. Overall the fifth game went well and was the first game in which we used some of the unit-specific rules.

Comparing my legacy Civil War figs to the new Warlord Epic Civil War Figs

One of the concerns we had in getting started with Epic Civil War was how would the various legacy 15mm figs look compared to the new Warlord American Civil War Figures.

Enclosed are two pics comparing my legacy 15mm to the new Warlord Epic Civil War Figs. I think they look pretty nice mixed together. The 3rd pic below shows a large number of them on a battlefield together.

 

Rules Used

We used the following books from Warlord Games: Black Powder V2 Rules, Glory Hallelujah!, and the Epic Civil War Starter Set. The Black Powder book provides the core rules for all of the various timer periods covered. The Glory Hallelujah! book covers all of the American Civil War-specific rules and an extensive set of unit information for both sides. The Epic Civil War book comes with the Starter Set and is lacking all of the information that you need to play the game.

Wrap Up

After five games we have found that the Black Powder Civil War rules are fairly easy to play. The hard part was getting used to jumping between the Black Powder Rules and the Glory Hallelujah! to make sure you are using the correct rules modifications for the American Civil War. So far my impression is that they are fairly easy to use and in most cases don’t have the complexity of some of the other rules sets that cover the American Civil War. As you can see from the pics that I enclosed is that my legacy figures fit in nicely with the Epic Civil War game approach.

So give the rules a chance and enjoy the period.