Cemetery Ridge

 Tim put on two sessions of Table Battles this week , this time covering the Confederate assault on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. As usual, we played it once on each night, swapping sides, as the scenarios are quite short.

I could only stay for a while on Tuesday so ducked out after half an hour or so. John and I took the Confederates, with Russell and and Simon as the Union. It was all going swimmingly well when I left, but I gather the Confederates were eventually defeated after a hard struggle.

I was OK for the whole evening on Wednesday so I'll focus on that instead. We swapped sides so John and I took the Union along with Pete, while Russell and Simon were the wicked Rebs.

These games aren't hugely photogenic I'm afraid. Each card is a Division with SPs and various restrictions on what they can and can't do with their command dice. Each side has six command dice, but only certain numbers can be allocated to certain cards.

Cemetary Ridge was quite a complex battle. The CSA had four divisions, the main strike force being Wilcox, supported by Lang (they could combine attack dice). There were two other divisions (Wright and Posey) but they were subordinate, although Posey had the interesting capability of being able to attack the Union reserves directly. 

The Union setup was layered. They had five Divisions, 1st Minnesota (a Regiment I guess as it only had 2SP) and massed artillery. They were deployed in two lines, the three divisions in reserve could absorb some hits, counterattack and if we timed it right, swap places with the front line divisions to take the pressure off. The Union units were generally weaker than the CSA ones.   

Carr was the initial target for Wilcox and the Rebs launched assault after assault. The Union artillery could stop them, but took a lot of command dice reload. Wilcox battered Carr. 

Carrs support division (Brewster) eventually routed, leaving a gap.

Carr lunched a counterattack, chipping ways some hits from Wilcox, but it was the time to retire.

Carr fell back and 1st Minnesota and Hay moved into the line.

1st Minnesota had some special bonuses against Wilcox, but only 2SP(!). I assume in the real battle it carried out some sort of counterattack. In went the Minnesota boys, losing half their strength but chipping 2SP off Wilcox.

Wilcox saw the game was up and attacked again, forcing the Minnesota to counterattack. Both sides were lost, but the CSA lost Lang too (as it was supporting Wilcox). Two morale chips to us, which put us back level with the CSA.

Now Hall started attacking Posey, and a well prepared assault managed to reduce them to 1SP. All the units left were seriously restricted as to which command dice they could take, which impeded the build up.

Hay counterattacked and managed to rout Posey. Another morale chip to us. The CSA only had one left now.

But down went Hay to Wright, oh dear!

Now it was a race between Wright and Webb. Wright could only take sixes as commands but the Rebs threw high...

Wrights attack resulted in mutual annihilation, so no morale chips changed hands. We were now in the interesting situation where none of the units left could attack each other. The Union claimed victory, but apparently if you start your turn unable to attack anything, you lose, so perhaps the Rebs won. Who knows. A hard fought battle in any case.

Another great Table Battles game. I still cannot begin to imagine designing scenarios for this system, but the published ones are excellent and always nail biting.