grant: The western campaign of 1862
Designer Deep Dive
by Jon Southard
the campaign in western Tennessee from February to april, 1862 was remarkable, indeed unique, in the history of the Civil War. It began when U.s. Grant then just a brigadier general, having volunteered for service at the outbreak of rebellion after leaving the army under a cloud years earlier was sent by steamboat up the Tennessee river, with a command of “twentythree regiments in all,” supported by ironclad gunboats, to capture a Confederate post called Fort Henry.
Grant captured Fort Henry and also its much tougher neighbor Fort Donelson (on the nearby Cumberland river) in the process capturing more than twelve thousand Confederate soldiers, the largest bag of prisoners taken in North america to that time. Grant’s reward for this was to be temporarily suspended from command by his envious superior Henry Halleck.
after that was sorted out, Grant moved his army (again by steamboat) far upriver to a place called Pittsburg Landing. There he was to be joined by the army of Don Carlos Buell, who was slowly making his way from Louisville, Kentucky, by way of Nashville, and then across Tennessee. While these operations were ongoing, a separate army under John Pope, likewise supported by naval forces, was maneuvering to capture a strong rebel fortress at a small island called Island Number Ten at a bend in the Mississippi river.
Just one day before Grant and Buell were to join forces (and two days before Island Number Ten fell), the Confederate army under albert sidney Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard hit back, staking everything on a furious battle in the woods near Pittsburg Landing, around a little house of worship called shiloh Church. There have been dozens of games published on the more famous Battle of shiloh. But so far as I know, only two have been devoted specifically to a treatment of the entire campaign of which this battle was the best-known event. One of these is my own first
design, Grant Moves south, published in 1983 by Quarterdeck Games. and the other is my most recent design, Grant: The Western Campaign of 1862, forthcoming from Compass Games. Given that I’ve now done two games dedicated specifically to this topic and all other designers put together have done zero (although there have been scenarios devoted to the campaign, in games of larger scope), the first natural question is, why do I feel this topic was worth visiting not just once but twice? The simple answer is that it’s a brilliant game situation.
In general, some characteristics of a good game situation might include: famous leaders present, an interesting weapons system in play, wide opportunities for maneuver available, multiple strategies and axes of advance possible, chances for both sides to attack, and the prospect of something really decisive happening.
The Tennessee campaign has all these.
The famous leaders were Grant himself who here began his rise from obscurity to become commander of all the Union armies and eventually, President and his opponent albert sidney Johnston, who on the field of shiloh became the highest-ranking general on either side to be killed in action during the entire war.
The riverine fleets (transports and gunboats) are the interesting weapon system in play here; they give this campaign a feel like no other. No other campaign saw such interplay between naval (riverine) forces and armies on land.
Grant used the river fleets to give his armies a movement ability impossible to achieve by marching. The resulting feel is more like a naval campaign than a land campaign. Johnston had much less in the way of naval forces, but he did have rail movement, as well as powerful fortifications guarding the river lines.
The Union thought it had an answer to the forts in the form of gunboats, but when gunboats made frontal attacks against well-
sited fortifications, the forts won and the gunboats suffered heavy losses. so instead, the Union developed what would now be called combined operations, in which fleet and army cooperated to take the objectives of Fort Donelson and Island Number Ten. each general’s problem was complicated by the existence of multiple lines of advance: broadly speaking, on each of the three major rivers, the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee. It was the Tennessee that Grant made the main axis of his campaign, as well as overland from Louisville to Nashville and southward. How much effort to devote to each of these directions is an important strategic choice in the game, especially for the south.
While Grant had the initiative early, the campaign culminated in a walloping counterattack by Johnston, resulting in the great Battle of shiloh, a battle which, had Johnston’s army won, would have reversed the entire course of the war in the West. There was also the possibility of a rebel offensive into Kentucky at the outset (a point to which I’ll return); Johnston never did this, but his second in command P.G.T. Beauregard sketched a “brilliant programme” of a rebel offensive all the way to st. Louis, and in a “what-if” scenario you can try it.
so then, if we grant that this is a game-situation worthy of another game, the next question then becomes, “Why do a brandnew design instead of a “Designer signature edition” of the old?” For make no mistake about it, Grant: The Western Campaign of 1862 is a brand-new game: it has nothing in common with its predecessor except the subject matter, and not entirely even that, since the older game (quite wrongly) omitted the Island Number Ten campaign.
There are a few basic reasons why one might want to do a brandnew design (as opposed to a second edition) on a topic already handled once.
1. One might wish to create an entirely different sort of game, e.g., a simple introductory game instead of a monster, or a solitaire game instead of a two-player one.
2. There might be new source material which led to a different understanding of the situation.
3. Time, experience, or more reflection might illuminate a new and better way to translate the situation to game form.
Of those three, (1) did not really apply; the goal now as then has been to create a playable one-map game that would be both lots of fun and a good simulation of the whole campaign. But (2) did apply to some extent, and (3) very much applied.
One area of new source material concerned the naval side of the campaign, especially the Confederate navy. a glance at the game’s bibliography (included with the rules) will reveal that we used basically the same sources for the land fighting as in 1983 albeit this time, I could order my own copies of the War of the rebellion series from abebooks, instead of going to a library special collections department to read them. But there has been a great deal more published since 1983 on both navies, especially the Confederate navy. This allowed us to present a much more complete picture of each side’s naval efforts, both actual and hypothetical.
Under the “hypothetical” category is the possible appearance of a couple of Confederate ironclads, on which the rebels were working but did not manage to complete in time. One or both of these can now appear as a result of random events, which can change things markedly. and thanks to the efforts of Tom Lee, one of the project’s fine developers, we even managed to include (as an optional “chrome” rule) a provision for the first known instance of aerial direction of naval gunfire from a balloon! Who knew?
a second place my historical understanding has improved concerns the campaign for Island Number Ten, waged by John Pope (later to run afoul of Lee and Jackson). This took place at the same time as Grant’s campaign down the Tennessee, and culminated at almost the same time. (The island fell, in fact, the day after the Battle of shiloh.) I had previously thought this to be an uninteresting campaign in which, to use Bruce Catton’s words, Pope “had not had much besides the river to beat.” Further reading in newer works revealed that such was not the case, and players of the new game will gain some appreciation of Pope’s accomplishment: had he somehow managed to be killed in action on the last day of this campaign, and never had to face Lee and Jackson, he would have gone down in history as a good and capable officer who tragically died before his time, much like Nathaniel Lyon or Phil Kearny.
But the big changes were in the category (3) above: better ideas on how to do it, borne of more experience and changes in game design since 1983. The biggest change has been the decision to replace the hex grid of 1983 with a point-to-point map. This better serves a situation in which all the (strategic) movement was over the fairly sparse road net or along rivers or rails. The point-to-point structure also allows for easier interaction between the river lines (represented by circular spaces connected by rivers) and land (square spaces, connected by arcs).
all that would have been true in 1983 as well, but in those days most wargamers had little acceptance of point-to-point or area games (as I learned to my cost after doing one a few years later), and especially for a first design; I never really considered anything but a hex grid back then. Time brings both new perspectives and more confidence, it seems.
Having decided (after doing one trial map) that the new map would be point to point, some other decisions fell into place. The density of the boxes was dictated by the map size: reasonable fidelity to the road map was wanted, but the boxes could not be overcrowded. That done (at least in first draft), the time-scale had to be such that it gives a reasonable amount of movement per turn but not too much, and also to get the game over in a reasonable number of turns. The choice eventually fell to four turns per month (i.e., approximately weekly), in comparison with the four days per turn of the predecessor game.
One of the principles of the original design was to avoid factor counting, especially with regard to movement. These were amateur armies floundering around in a situation where the weather, and hence the road conditions, were often poor or terrible. This concept was brought into the new game as well: there is a weather die roll at the start of each turn, which affects movement, and units can attempt forced marches their ability to do so being a function of the quality of their commander.
as in the prior game, units represent either divisions or small detachments, with divisional leaders individually rated. But army commanders such as Grant and Johnston take on a new importance, allowing you to move stacks as opposed to one division at a time. In addition, with weekly turns it proved important to have a ‘reaction’ mechanic (again depending on leader quality). reaction can be used either to intercept a moving opponent or to run away from him, thus replacing the original game’s hex-bound rules for Zones of Control and retreat Before Combat respectively.
a most important change in this area, however, was the sequence of play. The 1983 game was i-move-you-move. The new one is a chit-driven, semi-simultaneous sequence, something I wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) have dared attempt as a first-time designer forty years ago. On the Union side, there are three chits for Grant’s army, one for Buell’s, and one for Pope’s. On the Confederate side there is one for the eastern half of the map, one for the western half of the map, and a wildcard for a.s. Johnston, wherever he happens to be. each army gets to actually move only once, when its chit is first drawn. Thus, Grant has a good chance of moving first, but this is not guaranteed, and Johnston improves the chances of whichever force he is located with.
The combat system is also totally different from the predecessor game, being informed by my work in the interim on several Civil War battle games. It is a fire/morale system in which a guiding principle is that units suffer “hits” in combat, but do not take “losses” until afterward; they keep their same combat factor all through the battle, but the number of hits entails die-roll modifiers. a unit which takes six hits is demoralized and must retreat to the rear rank. When all of a side’s units are demoralized, it loses the battle and must retreat. (either player can also admit defeat at any time and voluntarily retreat.) separate rolls are then made to see how the hits suffered translate to strength point losses. The result is that combat outcomes are very uncertain again, no ‘factor counting’ and good leaders are crucial.
In this system, the hits in combat represent mostly organization damage. In re-reading the Official records volume on shiloh, I had been struck by how a unit’s discipline and order seemed to matter much more than how many men actually remained with the colors. The 19th Wisconsin, for example, lost approximately threequarters of its strength, meaning that by the later afternoon it must have been down to fewer than 50 men. Yet it was still being used tactically as a regiment. (The second World War would see the same thing, with German “panzer divisions” that counted only ten serviceable tanks still being used tactically as divisions.) a small number of men can still make a great difference provided they have discipline and order; but when those go, everything goes.
Befitting the nature of this campaign, the rules for naval movement and combat including, crucially, river transport are almost as lengthy as the rules for land. I have come to believe that if I do not substantially redesign at least one important system in the course of testing and development, then I am not trying hard enough. In the case of Grant, it was the naval combat system. The first version was too intricate and too confusing. It was redesigned from the ground up (the playtesters showing remarkable forbearance) and now uses just one basic table and procedure for all types of
combat (both ships and batteries), which has proved both realistic and very playable.
an area which gets a lot of attention in this game and probably not much in most others is the running of batteries by gunboats. This is because the decisive moment in the Island Number Ten campaign was when two gunboats ran past the island in the dark (separately, on the nights of april 4 and 5, 1862) and cut the fort off from the rear. In this case, we had to separate the ability to order the action from the ability to actually do it once ordered. as it turned out, sneaking one gunboat down the river past the fort on a dark night (and the rules do take the phase of the moon into account) was not nearly so hard as everyone thought it would be.
If we allowed players to make use of this hindsight then they would want to run forts starting in February instead of april. This could not be allowed as it would crock the entire game. so, the Union has to first pass a die roll to allow the attempt (reflecting the decision by Flag Officer Foote, naval commander on the river) and then resolve the actual run. The decision to make a run becomes more likely as the game goes on. In the actual event, John Pope seems to have shamed Foote into letting a boat make an attempt, by asking that the navy turn over one of the gunboats to be crewed by army volunteers. (This might have not worked out so badly, since the Western regiments under Pope undoubtedly contained a great many rivermen.)
One seemingly minor but actually important detail the original game left out was Grant’s temporary suspension by Henry Halleck after the capture of Fort Donelson. This was part of an extensive intrigue by Halleck who was good at office politics and paper pushing, and nothing else to get overall command in the West. It was important to the campaign because it delayed the
Union advance for about ten days and gave the Confederates time to start regrouping. In the new game, this appears as a random event. These events add a little more uncertainty to the game, with the possibility of early or additional reinforcements for each side (including Confederate gunboats), and also of a similar “Halleck Interferes” fate befalling either Pope or Buell. The game also has optional advanced rules for Confederate cavalry, representing the actions of small bodies of cavalry commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan, here starting their long and famous careers in Confederate service. (The Confederate officer endorsing one of Morgan’s scouting reports noted that this man seemed very capable and his reports could be trusted.) There is also an optional rule allowing a more precise recreation of what happened at Fort Donelson. and even a rule for the designer’s great-grandfather. (But you’ll need to buy the game to find that one out!)
a fair criticism made of the predecessor game was that it awarded most of its victory points for too few objectives, tending to concentrate action around a couple of important places such as Nashville. The new game spreads the points out more, making it feel more like the conquest of Tennessee and less like the “Battle of Nashville.” Crucially, since Island Number Ten has now been included, the Mississippi river comes into play much more as a possible axis of advance, and the objectives there become important.
The new game also rewards Confederate offensives early on. I reflected that at this time, the position of Kentucky in the Union was far from secure in fact, the Confederates would launch a major invasion of the state in the fall to try to flip it to the secessionist side. a southern army taking and holding points in Kentucky, even temporarily, might have had significant political consequences. so, the southern player gets victory points for each turn he holds various objectives in that state (mostly along the Ohio river), whereas the Northern player gets VPs only for what he holds at the end. even a raid at the start of the game, before the Union effort really gets going, can grab some points that decide things later on. In the later stages of the game, the rebel player is looking for good chances to counterattack.
The counterattack can be crucial, because while there are no VPs for losses as such, there are significant VP awards for winning major battles. This again speaks to the political consequences. The Union lost an average of about a thousand men per week to non-battle causes over the entire war (220,000 non-battle deaths in a four-year war). This did not make any headlines in europe or cause those governments to seriously consider supporting the rebellion, but a single shiloh-size victory would have. and it must have been partly with this hope that albert sidney Johnston saddled up, vowing “I would fight them if they were a million,” and died of a musket shot attempting to “water our horses in the Tennessee.”
anyone who works on Civil War campaign games needs to differentiate his work from the best-known series in this area, which is the Great Campaigns of the Civil War (GCaCW), originally designed by my friend and colleague Joe Balkoski. I think this is a great series, and have enjoyed many of its titles. so why another game system? The simple answer is one of scale. The Western theater is huge compared to the Northern Virginia and Maryland area for which GCaCW was designed.
at the one-mile-per-hex scale of the Great Campaigns series, the maps for this theater would cover a Ping-Pong table, and at one day per turn (the GCaCW time scale) the game would last more than 60 turns. a fun project for teams at a monster-game convention perhaps, but not practical for the rest of us. Practically speaking, GCaCW would need at least three games to cover this campaign, and crucially, not one of those games would be all that interesting by itself. The core idea of Grant is therefore to put it all on one map in a reasonable number of turns and play-time so that players could try out different strategies and appreciate the entire strategic situation.
It is my hope that this new game, like its predecessor, will inspire more gamers to explore and appreciate this fascinating campaign, as well as spark more interest in the Civil War generally. It has been a pleasure working with the team at Compass Games to bring it to fruition.
