Sharpeville - Initial Deployment

Those of you who follow my other blog Brother Against Brother will know that I am currently engaged in a series of American Civil War games with my brother Dave. We are just about to embark on a mini campaign and Dave has come up with a cunning plan that allows us to use concealed movement on a Microsoft Word map document we will be emailing back and forth.

 Pope's HQ is currently with V Corps 'Army of the Potomac' at Horsehead Creek.

Now, because both of us will be posting battle reports on Brother Against Brother we’ll be recording our individual map moves on our own blogs safe from prying enemy eyes. I’ll be posting my moves here whilst Dave will be posting his on his new blog Wilderness Tavern. For those of you who want to follow the campaign and action, with full insight into our brilliant strategic and tactical thinking, you will need to follow all three blogs.

 The full Union deployment - nothing too surprising. To be sure of winning I need to keep control of the towns of Freemont and Sharpeville (currently designated with a Union flag).

For now I have started the ball rolling by deploying my troops along the top edge of the map. I’ve then used the ‘transparency’ option in Word to turn the unit graphics invisible and emailed the map back to Dave who will now deploy his troops along the bottom edge. We have some basic rules for moving and scouting and when one of us finds an enemy occupied square he turns up the transparency again to reveal the enemy units there. Of course the other player won’t ever know he’s been scouted unless a battle results – it's really an updated 21st century version of the old Featherstone matchbox system!

I have a plan – of sorts – more on that next time…