Ball's cross roads

The American Civil War series of games we've been playing continues with the Ball's cross roads scenario from the Sharpe Practice The Coming Thunder supplement by Chris Stoesen. This supplement was written for Sharpe Practice 1 but we did the lazy conversion to Sharpe Practice 2 by using the early war stats from the Sharpe Practice 2 rulebook and giving each side 3 points of support.

The scenario covers the encounter on August 27th, 1861 between D company of the 23rd New York volunteers and a Confederate force from Longstreet's brigade at Ball's cross roads, Virginia. It finally allowed me to use the corn fields I built last summer in a game 😃

The Confederate pickets are deployed south of the road (top of the picture). Their reinforcements can only arrive after the shooting has started.

Union forces advance through the orchard and onto the hill.

More Union groups arrive and open fire on the Confederate pickets.

A Confederate group moves to the right to cover the Union attempt to flank them.

Confederate reinforcements arrive to relieve the pressure on the pickets, who have lost their sergeant.

The Yankees have reached the road and are opening up on the reinforced Confederate flank.

The Confederate center breaks.

The Union force commander has exited the woods and joins the line of Yankees pounding the Confederate flank.

Volleys of Union fire strike the Confederates.

At this point the Confederates voluntarily withdraw from the table. Victory for the Yankees!

We added an extra flag to the card deck (per the rulebook) because of the extra troops. This increased the number of random events. Both force commanders managed to get excrement on their shoe, one (the Union commander) was accidentally shot by his own men and one (Confederate) formation couldn't keep their powder dry and were simultaneously slowed down by thirst.

If only we had spent our support points on a water cart....