The Battle of Olustee,1864

On 14 November, a friend and I refought the ACW Battle of Olustee, using a scenario from the Longstreet Scenario bucket on the Honour Games Forum. It was written by Pete, aka Captain Darling, in Australia. There were about 75 stands a side, on a pretty open battlefield, give or take a pond, woods and fenced farmland. It was an escalating engagement, with reinforcements coming on at two entry points per army.

The Confederates made a tidy deployment of four regiments and a battery on table at the start.  These formed a coherent front and started advancing while Federal reinforcements were still trying to reach the firing line.  The Confederates called the tune for the rest of the game and the Federals had mainly to conform to Rebel movements. The game was tense as all Longstreet games tend to be. The Federals had some local successes but were outplayed and ultimately they crumbled, mainly because at key points on the field, there were more Rebel bases firing on fewer Federals. The Federals were also distracted by trying to man a long stretch of fencing in the centre of the line, but much closer to the Rebel entry points than Federal ones.  With hindsight, the Federals would have done better to hold back and wait for their line to be reinforced, rather than gallop across the table hoping to hold a position where they were soon outnumbered.

It was gratifying, reading an account of the real battle afterwards, to learn that our game followed a similar course to the real thing, with the same outcome. That's a measure of a good scenario so hats off to Captain Darling