Pimping a Prize Draw; Whoops! No Camera

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Whoops! No Camera

Sorry folks - I forgot to pack my camera yesterday so there are no pics of yesterday's refight of Gettysburg: Day 1 at the club yesterday. You'll just have to make do with a very brief report.

Ian and I got to the club at about 2.30 to get everything set up. It took us about an hour to do the terrain. Following a short drinks break, we then spent the best part of an hour sorting through the troops for the starting deployments before we kicked off the game itself at around 4.30pm. Ian took the Rebs, so I ended up with the Union. Having only played Fire & Fury once before, the first couple of turns took a lot longer to play than they really should have done, but after that I was OK.

The starting deployment had Buford's Division supported by Reynolds facing off against Heth's Division. I opted for the old maxim "the best defense is a strong offense". This saw mixed results - I was winning on my left, but losing on my right where it didn't help that I rolled a natural 10 in one shooting phase causing 2 units to hit "low ammunition" status at a crucial time.

At about 6pm we were joined by some other players. Andy joined Ian on the Reb side; Geoff and Stan joined the Union. This was probably just as well as the union XI Corps were just starting to arrive on table and I didn't fancy handling that many troops all at the same time - 4 Divisions was quite enough for me, although there wasn't much left of Buford's cavalry by that time. A little later I transferred control of one of Reynolds' divisions to Geoff. Andy had taken over Hill's corps with Ian assuming command of Ewell's corps as it came on the table in the North.

We carried on playing until 10pm and had reached 2.30pm in battle-time. At this point in the game, the Union had formed a strong defensive line along Seminary Ridge and Oak Ridge, although a couple of Reb brigades had pushed the Union back off Oak Hill, but then had to fall back as fresh troops from Reynold's and Howards corps advanced. On the Northern flank, the union troops were falling back in good order to present a continuous defensive line with the rest of the army.

We called it at this point as a minor win for the Union. Hills' corps had been heavily delayed by my aggressive defense and there was no chance of the Rebs making it anywhere near their Day 1 objectives of Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill before the Union XII Corps would arrive on the table.

I think everyone would agree that the unit of the game had to be Meredith's Iron Brigade who had driven off two of Heth's brigades early on, then repulsed 3 successive assaults (the last one when they were down to 4 bases [spent] and disordered against a fresh 9 base brigade!) before being retired from the front line having achieved their aim of holding up the Reb advance while the defensive position was formed on Seminary Ridge.