Gettysburg
Impressions of the first game and tips for new
players. Like, beat the rush and sell your Thuder at the Crossroads on eBay
now.
Carl and I played our first game of Columbia's
newest release, Gettysburg. Hypothetical question: at what point will I not need
any wargames from companies other than Columbia? Sure, there is still a niche
for great, meaty games like Ardennes '44, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, Grant
Takes Command, and Burma. But amongst wargames I actually get to play, Columbia
has been slowly eclipsing everything
else.
First impression: this is a game
with a great feel. I was immediately taken with it for similar reasons as
EastFront - it's a substantial, meaty game, with a lot of blocks and rich
detail, but one with very manageable rules. Far more manageable than EastFront.
Simpler even than Hammer of the Scots I'd say, but you get a quite substantial
game, one with lots of tactical and operational choices, one which always puts
you on the horns of a dilemma, and has a very nice historical feel. Because
there are a lot of units, there is great drama - the hordes of Confederates
massing against Cemetery Ridge, the Union line straining and buckling but not
breaking - the same sort of drama you get from EastFront, but in a more
manageable package. I'd say that this gets basically everything good from The
Gamer's Civil War Brigade series in a fraction of the package size with vastly
great playability. I'll never play Thunder at the Crossroads again. Not that I
would have seriously considered doing so before I got this game, but I have to
think about all the CWB series is good for at this point is a baseline for maps
and OOBs for new games in this series.
Seriously.
To take the high level view,
this seems to be a very nice blend of both strong resource management and
tactical elements. On the one hand, command steps are a scarce commodity, you
never have enough troops, and you have to spend your limited resources wisely in
choosing where and how strongly to attack or defend, and when to hold and when
to retreat. However, the game also give you plenty of interesting tactical
details on how to move your units, deal with terrain, and choose your weapons to
overcome the defenders.
Like most
tactical and operational Civil War games, at the core of Gettysburg is the
command structure. The basic unit is the brigade, which can move on its own but
not attack. A handful of brigades make a division, with divisional leaders
having to spend steps to coordinate fire and press attacks, and each leader's
ability to do this is rather limited (moreso for the Union). Corps leaders
provide support by "refreshing" a divisional leader's steps at critical
junctures, allowing them to continue operating, and Army leaders can add steps
to any unit.
The Confederate and Union
armies have very different command structures, and it means they play very
differently. The Union has more smaller divisions of 2-3 brigades and a
divisional leader, while Corps have 3 or so divisions and maybe one attached
artillery unit. Confederate divisions, on the other hand, are huge, with their
own attached artillery, and Corps are larger still. While the Confederates have
one outstanding Corps leader (Longstreet), in general there isn't a huge
difference between the Union and the Confederates at the Corps level ... where
the Confederates do well is in the Divisional leader department, where their
leaders are dramatically superior to the Union. On the other hand, while the
large Confederate Divisions and Corps make their focussed attacks quite potent,
it also makes them somewhat less flexible. So while the Union will find it hard
to coordinate the 2-3 divisions required for a counterattack, they have decent
defensive flexibility because they can detach small numbers of units to hotspots
and efficiently fight smaller actions while keeping formations together, a
critical issue since brigades out of touch with their divisional leader can't
effectively attack anything but the most feeble opposition. And the Union corps
leaders will almost always be in the right place at the right time to coordinate
multi-divisional attacks, even if they aren't brilliant at it, while the
Confederate Corps leaders can be much more easily caught
out-of-position.
The Gettysburg battle
also has a much more interesting feel than I've generally given it credit for. I
must be about the only wargamer my age to never have played any of the many
incarnations of Avalon Hill's Gettysburg game. Anyway, what you have here is a
tiny battle (starting with just a couple divisions on the map) escalating to a
massive conflagration. The Union is clearly on the defensive here, but still the
tenor of the battle changes each time another big batch of reinforcements
arrive. The first day is a desperate holding action for the Union, with each
reinforcing division providing critical relief, but if they can hold out until
evening things improve.
Anyway,
probably the best I can give you here are some basic tips to avoid my fate in
your first game of the Day 1 scenario as the Union (and some of these can be
turned around for advice to the Confederates, of course). So here you
go:
- Do
not
get any units Buford's cavalry division shattered. These are very good units,
but they are hung out and the penalty for shattered units is extremely high. Do
what you can to inflict some casualties, but these units' capacity to
meaningfully delay III Corps is minimal. In order to make sure they survive more
or less intact, you'll need to ...
-
Play the game very differently when you move second vs. first. Turn flip-flops
(where one player gets two turns in a row) are critical for you and if, for
example, Buford's division is adjacent to a bunch of Confederate units at the
end of your move when you're going first, they'll get outflanked and wiped out
if the Confederates get a double move. While you may not have much choice in the
case of your critical defensive lines, your pickets should be moving out of
threatened positions when facing down a potential double-move. 1VP for a
shattered unit is a lot, and you'll have your share of them when the
Confederates go after Cemetery Ridge. No need to make their job any
easier.
- That all being said, as long
as you are going second, you can maintain forward positions since the
Confederates won't be able to fire at/assault you unless they start adjacent.
These forward positions can slow the enemy down significantly. Just keep an eye
on the risks and get out when they become unpalatable, i.e., are threatening to
severely maul or shatter a unit.
-
Obviously, you'll need to garrison both Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top.
You'll probably need to send two divisions to Little Round Top before you'd like
to. Just be sure to put a unit on that anonymous hill between the two positions,
lest the Confederates slip between the gaps to go after Powers Hill and/our
outflank Cemetery Ridge, both of which are bad, bad, bad. Any interference with
the timely arrival of your reinforcements to Cemetery Ridge is cause for serious
alarm.
- Hills with Trees on them are
good. Hills without Trees are OK, but you are vulnerable to being simply swept
off by fire, which is not penalized by shooting up. And you are desperately
short of the Artillery that can do real damage. Your guys on unprotected hills
are likely going to get pasted. You still have to defend them,
though.
- While it's tempting to simply
plop the Iron Brigade down and make a position like Cemetery Hill impregnable,
if you're not using your best unit to blast stuff, you're not getting very good
mileage out of it. Keep it in the hotspots, or in reserve and throw it into the
inevitable breach or counterattack. While the Confederates have a very nasty
4-step B3 early (Pettigrew), they are very short on A-level units, which have a
big advantage in Melee if the number of units is
small.
- Benner Hill is not very
defensible. If the Confederates want it (and they should), they'll get it. Get
over it.
- Losing (Little) Round Top,
Culp's Hill, or Powers Hill is likely to be decisive. You can afford to lose
Cemetery Hill and still hold out to the second day. Don't get killed by trying
to hold the line on Cemetery Ridge longer than possible in the face of
determined Confederate assault.
- While
you certainly want to stay open to the option of counterattacking, especially if
the Confederates have stripped the Peach Orchard area to go after Cemetery Ridge
with everything they've got, you are seriously outgunned in this confrontation.
Your units are not on a one-for-one basis much inferior, but the Confederates
have a decisive artillery advantage on day 1 and their better command structure
and division leaders means they can press the attack far longer than you can -
once your leaders are tapped out (which will happen disturbingly quickly in most
cases), you become extremely vulnerable. So stick to limited-objective, local
(counter-)attacks. While the Confederates get 25% fewer supply points overnight,
each point they get is worth significantly more than yours due to their vastly
better divisional leaders. Keep this fact firmly in mind when managing
attrition.
I enjoyed Gettysburg quite a
bit, and look forward to our next game. I was very extremely happy with the
complexity to depth ratio here. Another great thing about Columbia, I think, is
that while they often do games with related systems (Hammer and Liberty, say, or
Victory and Pacific Victory or Rommel and EastFront), you can never accuse them
of standing still. Each game they do has a very different flavor, scale, or
feel. It's on a different complexity level, or has a greater or lesser block
density, or a different strategic scope. So while Gettysburg is familiar in the
abstract (the leaders are much like HQs in EastFront, melee is just like Wizard
Kings/Hammer/Liberty, etc.), it still feels quite unique and different in their
line. Hopefully, they'll do a Shiloh game using the same system before moving
on.
Posted: Sunday - March 28, 2004 at 08:51 PM