In the AH game of Bull Run, many Confederate Units begin the game ‘masked’ such that the Union player cannot
see their particulars. In the AH version, these units remain masked until a Union player moves within 4 hexes and
then the unit is revealed, allowing the Union player to the decide where to place his moving unit… In the Vassal version
this could necessitate several exchanges of email if doing PBEM, so I’m wondering if anyone has figured out a
scheme that would allow us to play as close as possible to the game’s original intent…
If you find the [Global Options] in the module (in the Editor window), it has a place where you can set a preference “Allow non-owners to unmask pieces”. If you adjust that so that this is possible (or you can set it to use player preference), then it will become possible for e.g. the Union player to unmask the pieces. Of course this requires a certain amount of trust between the players (so that would be an example of why you could make it a preference – some people may be happier just doing the multiple email exchanges). But anyway that hopefully gives you some useful information.