A welcome return to Jonathan's games attic for an American Civil War game. Jonathan had painted around six hundred (yes, six hundred!) 28mm figures to accompany the hundred he painted for the Texas-Mexico scenario, so there was a lot of lead on the table. The Union army were in blue uniform, the Confederates less formal in a mixture of greys and browns. We used the excellent Black Powder rules again and the figures, although individually based, sat in trays of six to aid movement.
The scenario covered the southern flank at the Battle of Gettysburg. The larger Union army were holding Seminary Ridge and defending the Emmitsburg Road running Northeast towards Gettysburg. The Rebs had to take the ridge, and break the units supporting the Union flank, thus putting Meade's victory at Gettysburg in doubt.
Above shows the initial Union position (North being the far short table edge) as commanded by Kieron and James. The Blues occupy the ridge in the foreground and across the road in the background. The Rebs, commanded by Jonathan and David, are about to deploy from the Western edge. The Union have a single artillery piece at the edge of the wood...
...and their commander is ready for action.
The Union line along the southern part of the ridge...
After a couple of rounds, all the Confederates had entered the table and started firing on the Union troops on the ridge line. The Confederates started to do some serious damage with their group of three artillery pieces.
The view from the Confederate lines...
Jonathan's Texans charged out to attack the Union artillery piece. They didn't quite reach but survived to inflict enough damage that it broke anyway (see below and note the casualty markers, with figures dropped back from the tray to signify a disrupted unit).
David's Alabama units advanced and took cover behind a hedgerow and started shooting up the opposing units. Jonathan started inflicting damage on the Pennsylvanian troops in the northern part of the ridge, although they proved pretty hardy, with Kieron keeping them going for far longer than expected with a series of good morale rolls.
Perhaps frustrated by the lack of Light Horse to manoeuvre, David ordered a unit into skirmish formation...
...and they starting sneaking through the woods around the southern flank of James' mixed Union brigade...
...eventually popping out behind the Union lines...
Fortunately, Union reinforcements were on their way. Kieron and James delayed the first reinforcing Brigade so that it come on further south at the same time as their second reinforcement entered at the north.
In the middle right of the above picture, the reinforcements have arrived and starting to march south to support the depleted troops on the ridge. In the left of centre, Jonathan's troops have pushed on and taken the edge of the northern ridge and hold the central ground. In the far distance...
...Kieron's reinforcements have crossed the bridge and started to deploy, but a failed command roll and disrupting fire from Jonathan meant they got no further.
We were now getting into hand-to-hand combat and both sides were taking casualties. A Pennsylvanian unit broke and Jonathan started to occupy the northern part of the ridge (in the background of the picture below, and in the foreground are the other type of casualty marker Jonathan uses - shell cases).
The two original defending Union brigades were now broken and falling back, and the Confederates moved into positions holding the ridges.
But the Union still held the northeast and the road to Gettysburg, and had a fresh brigade threatening the southern part of the ridge. So they had probably just scraped a minor victory. The final layout...
After we left, Jonathan played through another couple of turns (we had played eight) and the Union army did indeed push the Confederates back off the southern ridge.
But the whole game felt in balance throughout the day. The Black Powder mechanisms worked really well, and were fairly straightforward to use without feeling like they were over-simplifying things. And of course, the table covered in little men and scenery looked fantastic. A great game.
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