Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
Gettysburg - end of day one fighting.
I have been playing the rest of day 1 (see previous posts). The 1800 hours turn has just been completed and there are just a couple of daylight turns left.
The Confederates have been successfully pushing the Union back and two important events have happened.
Jenkins’ cavalry (Confederate) won the race to reach Culps Hill, but now Cobham and Candy from Geary’s division (Union) are assaulting the slopes …. Can the cavalry hold out until Early’s division reaches them?
Perrin from Pender’s division (Confederate) has taken Cemetery Hill, but is being assaulted from all sides by a couple of Union divisions. the first assault was repulsed, but now Birney’s division is moving up and about to enter the fray.
It is difficult to see how Perrin and the rest of Pender’s division can hang on as any meaningful help is more than two hours away …… but, who knows, they have resisted one assault already, perhaps this is their day!
In some ways the game is a slow burn, with units maybe taking 1 loss in a turn, passing their morale and so staying in place. But the accumulation of hits does start to grind units down and once they hit 50% loss and become ‘shattered’, you get this swing point when increasingly the dynamic of fresh Vs tired units starts to make its presence felt in the game.
EDIT
The day is over. This became a very intense and enjoyable action, with the two victory locations mentioned above seeing much holding of breath every time the dice were rolled.
Jenkin’s cavalry dismounted and held the top of Culps hill, in each round of fire, they managed to cause enough enemy troops to recoil that the Union found it difficult to get a concerted assault going against the cavalrymen.
Plus the steep slope and woods gave heavy modifiers to the die rolls and then each time the Calvary men had to test morale - they passed! In the end a couple of brigades from Early’s division did manage to get to Culps hill and support them, so that position looks pretty secure.
In terms of lucky dice, it was a similar story over at Cemetery Ridge, but there, it was more the case that Perrin (Confederate) has high morale, so despite repeated losses, they were passing their morale tests and staying put. For them, it has been much harder to get support up to the ridge.
The rest of their division (Pender's) has been pretty chewed up and Johnson’s Division is struggling to get through ….. however, Union losses have been very high and a goodly number of their units are under rout status, it feels like a rotten door waiting to be kicked in!
Treating this as the 1st Day scenario, the Victory point were counted up. Possession of both Culps Hill and Cemetery Ridge (albeit a small part of it now), offers the Confederates a Minor Victory, however, when this is adjusted for casualties, it is upgraded to a Major Confederate Victory - a good bit of gaming.
Black Friday treat.
These arrived today from Anschluss Wargames. They are resin (3D print I think) 1/144 (12mm) WWII models. I occassionally order just a few at a time to fill out various gaps in my collection, hence the eclectic mix here.
You are looking at a platoon of 5 x T34/76 early, 1 x Panther G, 1 x StuG III, 1 x JSII and 2 x Universal Carriers.
Anschluss are doing a 15% Black Friday discount at the moment, which on a small order of this size, basically covers the postage charge (internally within the UK).
The detail on the models is nicely done and those with a turret come in two parts, the body and turret. The Stug and Bren carriers are single prints.
I never know whether this kind of material needs priming, but I do it anyway with vallejo poly primer, brushed on.
Just something else to add to the painting queue :-)
In the background the Gettysburg 'Day One' battle rumbles on, with some nice moments making for compelling play.
First morning of Gettysburg
Gettysburg game from Worthing Publishing sits on my table.
I am going for the three day battle and yesterday I managed to play the morning of the first day, which is 6 one hourly turns.
It has opened in much the same way that Gettysburg games generally do. Heth has been pressing in what becomes the centre, but a whole series of really low die rolls (equals poor firepower) by both sides has allowed the Union cavalry to avoid being crushed by the advancing Confederates by repeatingly withdrawing.
The photo on the left shows first contact with the Confederates defending Herr Ridge. Archer (green square means below average morale) will be sent reeling back after facing canister fire from Tidball's guns. However, Davis does put Gambles cavalry to flight and he gets a foothold on the ridge. This unhinging of the Union defence will see Bufords cavalry and guns voluntarily fall back towards Willoughby Run.
By noon, the result of the cavalry repeatedly falling back is that the cavalry are now pretty much intact, apart from Tidball's artillery, which has not fared well in the repeat withdrawals. In my last game, the Cavalry had fought a harder battle and were largely exhausted by this point. It is also true that Heth's brigades remain relatively fresh!
Now, Rhodes is arriving to reinforce the Confederate left and of more urgent concern to the Union is the fact that Pender’s division (Confederate) is moving out to the right …. Stretching the Union defence along the flank position of Seminary Ridge.
It is turning into something of an ACW week as I ‘up’ the painting session to try and make my end of month goal for painting the Epic Confederate figures. I might just do it, but we are in the last three days of this shorter month …… serves me right for having the middle of the month off :-)
Epic Hannibal
Whilst my own Epic Hannibal box is in a long painting queue, I enjoy the blogs / videos that other people are showing regarding their collections.
7th Son has just put up a YouTube video of an AAR from a scratch built scenario that has some interesting elements. I particularly like that the game only starts with two divisions (Hail Caesar) per side and that reinforcements then bring the game to standard army size.
The mix of force types between Roman and Carthaginian make for some dynamic games.
My own stuff has been temporarily based to accord with the style use by ‘Scotty’ in his series of Hannibal videos. This is a variation on the Warlord Games' system, so perhaps I should just get that to the table and start testing the basing style in play before I commit.
Her is a link to 7th Son video
Old School Tactical - ANZIO
I put Scenario 5 up on the table yesterday from the 5 scenario Anzio bonus booklet just released.
'Wet & Wild' covers an attack on American units hunkered in and around a church on 27th March 1944.
I know that I have read about this somewhere, but my Google Fu and checking my reference books have failed me so far!
This is essentially a German battalion level attack (3rd Panzer Grenadiers) across open farmland to prise the Americans out of some local buildings, one of which is a church, with a graveyard attached.
One of the notable aspects of the campaign was the dire weather and heavy rains which turned everything to mud. This has the effect of slowing the Germans down as they moved across farmland to engage. The essence of the scenario seems to be that the Americans must inflict as many casualties as they can on the slow moving German infantry before they become overwhelmed.
At first I thought the game was tough on the German player .... by game end, I changed that opinion to this being tough on the American side, though I think some of my initial placements did not help them.
Warriors of England
We played our second face-to-face game of Warriors of England (Published by Multi-Man publishing) and Mike's fourth face-to-face game last night.
The subject covers the late medieval Wars of the Roses. Each of the three previous playings have gone in different directions, but with the Lancastrians losing. Mike was keen to explore a Lancastrian victory and chose to attack strongly at the first opportunity.
This caused the Yorkists significant harm in terms of early loss of both territory and military strength, an important matter with the two fledgling forces. This then had a dominoe effect over the first four turns as the victory point gap widened with the Yorkists struggling to gain enough territory to keep the VP's in closer balance.
By the end of turn four (less than halfway through the game) the Lancastrians scored a Sudden Death victory based upon their victory point score.
This leads to the interesting speculation as to whether there is a way to crack the game, discovered by repeat play. The question will be whether a Lancastrian strategy of opening with an aggressive attack will always swing the game in an inevitable direction? Only further plays will see.
The opening attack is of course dice dependent, so a failed initial Lancastrian attack on poor dice rolls would negate such an opening advantage, but the opening attack has leader benefits that offer a +1 on attacks, so in terms of balance, the attacks will more often than not go the Lancastrian way.
In terms of how the board looked on Turn 4, I think the Yorkist player could have fought on with the possibility that by Turn 5 and the capture of Yorkshire, the Victory Point track might have dipped below the 'Sudden Death' point ...... but, that doesn't take into account the Lancastrians doing well in other parts of the board. Regardless, I doubt that over the course of the game, the Yorkists could have ever brought the VP marker back into Yorkist favour.
No doubt the 'Sudden Death' rule is there to reconise that a tipping point of no return has been reached.
A further interesting point is that on each turn, who goes first is subject to a pair of die rolls. If the Yorkists win this, then having regard for this particular Lancastrian strategy, what would be the best Yorkist move to counter that.
So there is still a bit to explore here. Overall I think the game and system is enjoyable, we just need to see whether 'a certain opening move' becomes too decisive.
