Rule #1: read the victory conditions!

 

Luke asked for a Franco-Prussian War game, so we wheeled out one of my favourites: Beaumont.

This is a fighting withdrawal, a situation that always makes for a free-wheeling fast and furious game. In our last go at it, I got thoroughly well beaten (report here). It went differently this time. I'll let the pics tell the story. Some reflections at the end.

French chasseurs á cheval detect the approaching Germans. 6mm Baccus figures, nicely painted for me by Reinforcements by Post (a firm that used to operate from Bangladesh and whose painters maybe weren't totally up on European flags).

And there's a lot of Germans - three and a half corps totalling >100,000 men. Each base is 1,500 men or 36 guns in this scenario. Units are large brigades.

Luke and Ben took command of the Germans, so Mark and I were the French.

The French have two widely separated corps falling back on a third behind the River Meuse. Here we have a German-eye view of Douay's French 7th Corps, which starts in the SW corner and has to cross the whole table to escape to the NE. Note how I have deployed those two brigades of its 3rd Division already facing north for their getaway. This will prove to be an error.

In the SE corner, again looking from the German side, Mark has deployed Failly's 5th Corps with a brigade as rear guard in Beaumont itself (the town in the right foreground), another covering its eastern flank against the Saxons' arrival, and three astride the road behind Beaumont ready to race for the bridge along with most of his artillery. Just visible in the top right corner is part of 12th Corps lining the Meuse to receive our fugitives.

I told Mark the victory conditions said we needed to get 5 infantry units and 3 artillery units across the Meuse.

Plan view of the battlefield to show just how far my lads top left have to go to escape, and all the steep hills and woods in the way. Fortunately it's only a 5'x4' table rather than the usual 6-footer.  At least Mark's troops lower left have a road to help them. On the other hand, they will have to contend with the bulk of the German onslaught.

Battle is joined. This is my corner at the end of Turn 1. Remember those two brigades I deployed carelessly facing north? The should have been facing east, because that's where the Bavarians at the top of this pic came from. They piled onto my flank, wiped out both brigades, and exploited into the village of Oches. Now they're in a firefight with what has become my rearguard brigade (1st Bde, 2nd Div, 7th Cps) just south of La Berlière. I've sent the corps cavalry round to bother the Bavarians' flank (top left).

Meanwhile, over to my left, more Bavarians are pouring through the gap between our two corps (top right), while a whole German corps takes on the gallant brigade in Beaumont. Mark's retreating brigades aren't forming column and retreating quite as fast as he'd like.

At least Mark's guns are getting away and about to cross the Meuse and shelter behind 12th Corps's chassepots. (Those artillery are all currently being towed, it's just that some cheapskate couldn't bring himself to pay for a load of limbers. I kinda regret that.)

At La Berlière, my rear guard holds firm. A Bavarian charge has failed, leaving one Bavarian brigade spent. Another German division arrives to reinforce the Bavarians.

Mark's rear guard likewise holds on in Beaumont and causes casualties. The black smoke top centre marks a German brigade as Spent, which explains the brown smoke showing the French are now low on ammo.

The Germans therefore commit the newly arrived Saxons to assault Beaumont from the east (left of pic). This assault is repelled by mitrailleuses on the hill (out of pic lower left). The Bavarians moving through the gap are struggling forward slowly, harassed by fire from some of my guns (out of pic to the right) as well as Mark's retreating infantry (out of pic below centre).

The Germans became 'target fixated' on my defence of La Berlière. There are now three German divisions queueing up to get in, when they might be doing better to work at least some of them past the rear guard's flank to cut off others' retreat. Even the German cavalry (top centre) that surely ought to be chasing retreaters is heading over this way to join the fun.

Similar story around Beaumont, where Mark's solitary brigade continues to detain five times its number (thanks to it fending off a huge assault with an improbable 6:1 die roll). Some Germans are at last filtering past behind it.

While all those Germans are busy at La Berlière, Douay supervises an entire division marching serenely undisturbed towards safety.

Germans are now swarming past Beaumont towards the bridges. Nevertheless, Mark's one beleaguered brigade still holds out. It must be Brigadier Asterix ...

Turn 8 out of 10. The Germans have finally disposed of both rear guards and are chasing across open country. It was around this point I realised I had made a slight booboo. I had to admit to Mark that the numbers I had told him were those we needed to achieve a draw. To win, we actually still needed to get two of Douay's brigades and another artillery unit across the Meuse. With Germans now approaching the bridges and setting up guns to command them, this was going to be tricky!

I did manage to march the infantry off. It looked as though our guns would be the problem.

Douay's artillery was theoretically close enough to escape, but getting guns through woods can be a struggle. Happily, my dice were kind and they made it.

However, as insurance, Mark had actually been obliged to have a brigade of 12th Cps advance across the Meuse so that his batteries could get away. They did so - but the infantry, pinned down by fire, could not! Consequently, we had extracted enough for a draw but were a unit short of what we needed for victory. Oh la vache!

Out of breath but exultant: panting Germans survey the fleeing French from the heights above the Meuse.

Reflections

Target Fixation. In the previous game, the Germans focused on pouring troops through the gap between the French corps, so they managed to interfere enough with the French retreat to earn a victory. This time, they devoted so much effort to wiping out the two rearguard brigades that the rest were able to get away relatively unmolested. This 'target fixation', the need to kill what's immediately in front of us rather than seeing the bigger picture, is a common syndrome among wargamers (and, indeed, in real life commanders).

Read the Victory Conditions! That's a stricture that always applies - that primary principle of war, 'maintain the aim' - and one that both sides neglected in this game. The Germans did so through their target fixation; we French did so through my careless reading at the start, so that I had to hastily correct near the end of the game. Had I not made that error, we could probably have organised our artillery's retreat better and ensured we got enough away to win.

Variables and Replay Value. These historical scenarios seem to have endless replay value. We can roll the same ones out again and again and they are still fresh and fun. That is because there are enough variables for them to be interestingly different each time. Some of those variables are due to the scenario structure, especially the fact that with BBB we can make the time and space large enough to not only provide room for manoeuvre but also provide options for both sides. The other major variable, though, is the players. Different players will approach a tactical challenge in different ways; even the same player will come up with different plans depending on whether they are feeling tired or aggressive or how they judge their opponent on the day ... so I am sure I will fight Beaumont again and I am sure it will be fun and different again.

Variables and Scenario Balance. We playtest BBB scenarios several times before sharing them with the world. The aim is of course to pitch the victory conditions so that both sides have a reasonable chance of victory, with a good chance of a draw as the 'par score'. A wise man (Mark J) once said to me scenario balance isn't that important, so long as the scenario produces a good game. Furthermore, I have come to realise that the margin of error, the engineering tolerance, in my scenario design is probably rather smaller than the variation in players' plans. In other words, players' tactical mistakes are likely to have a bigger impact on the result than any small skewing in the scenario balance.

Beaumont is one of the nine Franco-Prussian War scenarios in the BBB rulebook. These can be played as an episodic campaign in which the result of one battle affects the set-up for the next. There are another eight scenarios freely available in the BBB io group files.

Making Dave's Gettysburg dream come true

I did a good deed last week.

Back in the previous millennium, for a few years I had a great bunch of regular gaming buddies who met at my mate Dave O.'s house. Then I moved away and we lost touch. Earlier this year, I caught up with Dave and visited him for the first time in decades. We had a fine time and made a dent in his whisky cabinet. I also learned about his passion for the American Civil War. This had grown from the few regiments of unpainted plastics I remembered us gaming with back in the day. It extended to him being a serious reenactor for many years (for both sides), in the course of which he got to meet President Clinton. He now has a beautiful collection of 6mm ACW armies, his war room is decorated with ACW prints and paintings, and he is hugely knowledgeable about the war. We watched the Gettysburg movie and Dave confided in me that his dream was to wargame the whole of Gettysburg, something he'd never done.

Well, I thought: how could we do that, I wonder? Is there a ruleset that makes such a thing feasible? How could two of us possibly fight all three days on a 6'x4' table on a Saturday evening and still find time for a whisky-fuelled chinwag and a takeaway? Aha! I thought: yes, there is a way. (Regular readers of this blog will have guessed the answer.)

Hence I conspired to arrange another trip up his way, checked with Dave as to when he had a free weekend, we set a date, the day arrived and so did I. We set the table up for the classic BBB scenario that has been enjoyed by so many over the years. Dave was new to BBB so a short intro was required, but the rules are easy to pick up so he was quickly into the swing.

The famous landscape. Gettysburg upper right, showing what an important junction it was with roads fanning out in nine directions, not to mention a railroad. Seminary Ridge above it. The gates on Cemetery Hill centre of pic, with Cemetery Ridge to its left, the woods on Culp's Hill to its right, Benner's Hill by the right edge. Top left is the Peach Orchard, below it the Wheatfield, and the Round Tops just out of shot to the left of that.

All the terrain is Dave's. The discreetly gridded battlemat helped a lot with the set-up. The MDF road and stream sections are handy. Buildings by Timecast, I believe.

Here are brief summaries of each day's action, followed by a few annotated photos for each. Then some Reflections at the end.

On Day 1, everything went right for Dave's Confederates. Ewell's boys not only swarmed into Gettysburg, sending the Iron Brigade reeling back onto Culp's Hill - they then stormed onto Cemetery Hill as well. To compound my woes, Buford got enveloped and wiped out by Heth and Pender.

Turn 1. Confederate assault against Wadworth and Doubleday is a smashing success and they exploit into Gettysburg itself. Out of shot top of pic is Heth's division. Initially this headed across towards Cemetery Ridge. That made me divert troops to the ridge, which meant they weren't defending Cemetery Hill when the Rebs came swarming through.

6mm figures from Dave's collection. Not sure what make. The big unit bases worked fine and in some ways better than the multiple small 1" bases recommended in the rulebook. The dice are strength counters and we used different colours to identify troop quality. Formation is the other thing to keep track of. The default formation was Line. The two Confederate units in the foreground in this pic are both In Depth, indicated by the bits of MDF behind them. We used bigger pieces to indicate Column of March. The white puffs are Disrupted markers. (Ignore the unit labels, they're left over from one of Dave's previous games with a different ruleset.)

Turn 2. My Union boys have been expelled from Gettysburg and withdrawn to defend Cemetery Hill (left foreground). Top left, the seminary has advanced off its ridge to make way for Heth's division (with the green die) to wheel onto Buford's flank. Buford's movement dice failed me three times, he just stood there and died.

Day 3 - the Confederates have taken Cemetery Hill! Which will prove very inconvenient.

Of course, the Union gets lots of reinforcements overnight for Day 2. Unfortunately, having Rebs on Cemetery Hill messed up my redeployment. Instead of stiffening my defensive line on a nice fishhook, I found myself trying to establish a gun line inside the fishhook so I could clear the enemy off Cemetery Hill. Meanwhile, Bobby Lee had set up a mighty gun line of his own commanding Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill from the north. I detached a division to try to roll that up, but when the Rebs took Culp's Hill as well, I had to call it back to try and retake that. 

Among the Confederate reinforcements for Day 2 are two of Longstreet's divisions. Dave chose to commit these against my left, where I had three divisions: one on Little Round Top (bottom left) overlooking the rocks of Devil's Den; one in the Peach Orchard (top centre); and one more supporting it (right centre).

The scenario stipulates that there is one variable Objective. It may be either the Peach Orchard, Gettysburg itself, or Benner's Hill. That gets determined at the start of Day 2, after both sides have set up their reinforcements. In this game it turned out to be the town of Gettysburg. (Not that it mattered which - at game end Dave held all three!)

More Confederate reinforcements had arrived around Gettysburg, enabling Dave to start trying to push me off Culp's Hill (upper right), where my best unit (Wadsworth's and Doubleday's divs, including the Iron Brigade) is now Spent (blue puff). Meanwhile, I have lots of troops but not enough space to deploy them effectively.

View from my right flank. That potent Confederate gun line top right has been battering the Iron Brigade. I've detached one of Sykes's division to go and bother it (left foreground).

Close-up of Dave's lovely brushwork.

View from behind the Confederate gun line. The Rebs have now wiped out the Iron Brigade and taken Culp's Hill, so Sykes has had to wheel back to deal with that. (Or maybe I should have let him press on?)

Some good news for the Union: Longstreet's repeated assaults on the Peach Orchard have achieved nothing beyond costing him thousands of casualties. (Both those strength dice started at 6; each of those four lost points represents 1,500 men.)

Day 2 had ended with the Confederates controlling both those vital hills, as well as Gettysburg. That would be enough for victory, so I had to counterattack. In my favour, they had suffered heavy losses in their attacks, and I was holding off Longstreet at the Peach Orchard.

The bad news for Day 3 was that, having lost Buford on Day 1, the dice decreed I also lost the off-table cavalry battle in East Field. That meant JEB Stuart's Confederate cavalry showed up on my right flank, instead of Kilpatrick's US cavalry on my left. Oh dear.

Consequently, while I did expel tired rebels from Cemetery Hill and Culp's as well, the cavalry helped a final Confederate attack to hurl us off again. At the other end of the pitch, Longstreet had finally cracked the Peach Orchard and was bumping up against Little Round Top.

Turn 9 (start of Day 3). How could I kick the Rebs off those two hills? You can see a gap in the middle where I want to set up a gun line, while my infantry is poised to attack Cemetery Hill from the left and Culp's Hill from the right. It's a plan of sorts, and both hills will indeed be retaken.

One spanner in the works is JEB Stuart's cavalry arriving behind Sykes. That fight will end with my division Spent and falling back behind its friends. The victorious cavalry will then cover the flank of Culp's Hill.

And now my left is starting to give way as well. Longstreet has been reinforced by Pickett, and Pickett's Charge has taken the Peach Orchard. One of Longstreet's divisions stalls at the foot of Little Round Top, but another has turned to menace my guns on Cemetery Ridge.

On the penultimate Turn 10, I retook Cemetery Hill. On my final Turn 11, I retook Culp's as well. That left Dave holding only one Objective (Gettysburg), which would have made it a draw.

However, on the last Confederate turn of the game, Dave's final assault kicked me off Cemetery Hill again. Victory for the Confederacy! And a classic BBB finish with the result swinging to and fro right to the end.

The battle was over and no doubt Meade's tenure in command as well. The rebels held the field; the Union army had to withdraw towards Washington and regroup (again).

Reflections

The Big Picture. Playing all three days in a single session and at this scale really lets you see the action in context. That first day was pivotal - it really shaped the rest of the battle. Playing it more conventionally as is so often done - as a bigger, longer game, or fighting it in sections, worrying about individual regiments - would create the "wood for the trees" problem and would make it much harder to see the big picture. Several times, after playing this scenario, I've had players tell me "now I get it - now I understand the battle!".

Big Plans. Dave had a definite plan. Of course, he then had to adapt it once it collided with my actions and the dice. Still, at the high level - where he committed his reserves, where he directed his attacks, and what that meant for the force-time-space equation - it worked and earned him his victory. On my side, by contrast, I was always on the back foot. My actions were mainly reactive, desperately responding to whatever Dave did, rather than having a positive plan of my own.

Cramping Deployment. That Confederate success on Day 1 really was important, as I didn't have space to use my numerical advantage effectively. I struggled to find space to set up a gun line; when I did, I then managed to mask it with my infantry. Some of this was my own ineptitude but it was also due to the situation Dave's success had created.

Unit Bases. The big single bases for units worked very nicely. People do occasionally ask about this, so in future I can point them to this report.

More Good Deeds to Come. It was a splendid day (including the post-battle phase that went on until about 3am). We were two happy wargamers. Dave loved the game. He wants to play Gettysburg again! But maybe we can try a different ACW battle next time. And there will definitely be a next time.

The BBB Gettysburg scenario is freely available from the files of the BBB io group (you do have to join the group to get access),

Moby Dick whale hunt

OWS was honored (US spelling is deliberate) by some special visitors this month: my good American friends Tom Ballou and Sean Barnett.

Tom had been wanting for a while to put on a game at a UK show. This year he finally got around to contacting major UK shows such as Salute, Partizan and Colours, but without much luck until four weeks before the event, the Colours organizers got back to confirm they had a table for him. Little did Tom know, this was the one all our OWS team had had to cancel because of real life getting in the way! Clouds and silver linings ...

Anyway, the trip went ahead and, at quite short notice, Tom and Sean flew over to England. As they were going to be in the area, Tom offered to run his Colours game for us at OWS as well. Yes please!

Now, the game in question wasn't exactly a wargame, certainly not a Bloody Big Battle - but there was plenty of blood, and they don't come much bigger than the main protagonist: Moby Dick! Yes, this was a whale-hunting game in which the infamous cetacean was a dice-driven NPC, while each of us players commanded a whaleboat trying to turn him into lamp-oil and dollars. Readers with qualms about the ethics of a game like this may want to look away now.

This was my boat with its green gunwales. Each crew consisted of a harpoonist, four oarsmen and a steersman.

The mighty whale, covered with harpoons and lines trapping an unlucky seaman. Note the attendant sharks frolicking nearby and looking forward to eating the scraps.

The first three boats get into harpoon range. The disc top right has two sides, "Happy Whale" or "Angry Whale", which affects how fast he moves.

MD starts happy. Guess what harpooning him does.

MD surges angrily forward. The boats that harpooned him find themselves dragged along behind on the 'Nantucket Sleigh Ride'. The red counters indicate how much blood is in the water to attract sharks ...

... which could be bad news for sailors who go overboard, like the ones bobbing in the water here.

Meanwhile, MD is about to charge off the edge of the board. A clever game mechanic says at that point he dives out of the game. The boats then circle nervously, wondering where he will breach again. Hovering seabirds provide a clue. Dave T had had no luck all game, I don't think he'd yet hurled a harpoon, so he was hoping MD would show up close -

- but not that close! Turns out MD's favourite flavor is orange. Could Dave pass the necessary skill rolls to avoid MD's immense maw?

Nooooo! The whaleboat is crushed and its crew devoured.

MD is now Happy Whale.

Ishmael floats on Queequeg's coffin on a very uninviting cold grey sea. (This will mean more to you who have read the book or seen the movie than it did to me.)

With the exception of unlucky Dave, we were actually very fortunate and finally managed to slay the fearsome beast. This was partly because his random movement dice failed to make him dive, partly because Nick O made some monstrous damage rolls.

Regardless of the outcome, it was a tremendously entertaining ride along the way. Apart from the game mechanics, the fun was enhanced considerably by our GM, Tom, in his Captain Ahab hat, adding atmosphere with anecdotes and excerpts from the book, and expatiating knowledgeably about 19th-century whaling.

Apparently the game was created by another gentleman whose name I don't know but would love to credit, and who ran it for years at conventions. Tom played it, loved it, and with its creator's permission codified it and now presents it himself. All the models are Tom's work (can't tell you the manufacturers, sorry). We had a splendid time and I can definitely award Tom the HQGE.

The whole Petersburg campaign (twice)

Well, those were two remarkable games! This is a long post but I'd like to think it's worthy of your attention.

I've been wrestling for months with trying to create a scenario for the siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War. I don't mean just the Battle of the Crater - I can't see much fun or edification to be had from that - but the whole dam' siege, all nine months or so of it. I'd done the reading, identified the major outlines, thought about how I'd tackle the particular scenario design challenges of a 9-month operation encompassing multiple actions of various sizes, drawn the map - just couldn't put fingertip to keyboard to turn my ideas into a tightly written scenario.

To force myself to crack it, I promised to host it as a game at my house. I set a date that gave me three weeks to knuckle down and write the thing. I drafted it, sent it out to my players, did a solo dry run, revised it and sent it out again.

The moment of truth arrived and so did old comrades Mark and Mike B plus a new recruit, Mike S. I was a bit apprehensive that Mike S's first game with us was this untested and radically unconventional scenario that might turn out to be a serious dud. I needn't have worried.

Let me expand on 'radically unconventional'. What struck me, having gamed the three major battles from the brief six weeks of Grant's intense and bloody Overland Campaign (the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor), was how much more cautious and measured he was around Petersburg. As he himself acknowledges in his memoirs, after Cold Harbor his army's morale was low and the Confederates' was high. The quality of the Army of the Potomac had been significantly diluted as well. Added to that, once Grant moved to face Petersburg, his line of communications ran through hostile territory and needed a lot of guarding. It is notable that the campaign mostly consisted of operations by just one or two corps, occasionally three; also notable that each US corps typically faced a Confederate division a third of its strength, yet often still came off worst.

I therefore introduced some limits on how many units the US can activate each turn and in the whole game. I also engineered the unit strengths and ratings to reproduce these results. 

I eliminated firing except at or by units assaulting or being assaulted.

I introduced logistics in the form of a US LOC line that is vulnerable to Confederate attack, constrains where US units can move, and gets extended at intervals.

I split it into three Phases with big operational lulls between them, in which fortifications get dug, LOC extended, reinforcements arrive and redeployments happen.

Once the attempt to take Petersburg by storm failed, it became a matter of the US trying to cut each of the major road or rail lines radiating from it in turn. I provided for immediate US victory if Petersburg fell, but of course the fortifications make this difficult. I gave the US victory points for cutting each of these lines by a certain turn and bonus VP for doing so earlier. Letting the Rebs cut the US LOC costs US VP.

This means there are two basic plans available to the US: swarming and storming the fortifications, or focusing on collecting VPs. Meanwhile the Confederates have incentive to launch judicious sorties against US LOC, as well as needing to manoeuvre to block those US line-cutting moves. When the Rebs do either of these things, they may open up opportunities for the US to respond to. Anyway, both sides have plenty of options and decisions.

And, yes, there's a special rule for The Crater!

As there isn't a huge number of units on either side and the number that can move each turn is limited, we were able to rock through the game twice in five hours and try both the possible US plans. There are some 20+ annotated photos below to talk you through the action, followed by reflections as usual. The Crater detonates in #7 ...

Let's start with the traditional plan view for orientation. The town of Petersburg is surrounded by fortifications, stylised as six individual forts. A quarter-circle of US entrenchments faces the east side of town. The wagon train running behind those is the US LOC. US units are limited to within 12" of their LOC in Phase I (which lasts 2-4 turns at US player's discretion). This is just enough to reach the Weldon railroad, marked with two white VP counters in the centre for reaching it by Turn 2 or Turn 4. Subsequent objectives are the Boydton Plank Road (two white counters left centre, T4-T6), White Oak Swamp Road (two white counters near left edge, T6-T8) and Southside Railroad (one white counter upper left, any turn).

Game will end after 9 turns, or total of 30 US corps activations, or fall of Petersburg - whichever comes first.

View from inside Petersburg at set-up. (I actually deleted two of those three CSA artillery units after my solo run.) Nice to have a rare chance to use all those wagons I painted when I was 17.

CSA units are divisions, each of 4 BBB 1"x1" bases. Some are Aggressive Veterans (2 flag bases), most are simple Trained (1 flag). The figures are ones I inherited from a friend who emigrated; I've never got round to rebasing them for BBB, hence the veteran cardboard sabots. Figures are Baccus 6mm. Forts are Peter Pig's 1/600 ACW Coastal Fort.

US units are Trained corps of 6 bases, which is only half their nominal strength, the rest assumed to be on rear area guard duty. Further Raw 6-base "LOC troops" units come into the line in Phases II and III.

 All units always operate In Depth in this scenario, no formation changes - another simplification to make way for more scenario-special complication.

The Union boys try assaulting a fort on Turn 1 just to see if they get lucky. They don't.

(White fluff = Disruption.)

Two US corps step out to the west from the end of their LOC (left of pic). Unfortunately one is a bit slow. The Rebs respond by sallying in force. One moves through a gap and parks on the end of the US LOC. All US units will be Passive while it's there, and they need to kick it off or lose a VP. A second Reb division has driven another US corps out of its entrenchments back behind the LOC. This attacker needs to be confronted as well. Furthermore, the unit forced to retire costs the US another activation against its total.

At this very early stage, the US players gave up on any hope of the left hook line-cutting option working and went all in on storming Petersburg. They quickly managed to take both forts in the first line on the east side (right edge and foreground). Bobby Lee is on his horse looking concerned behind the next fort to the left.

The corps that set out for the Weldon Railroad turned around to drive the Confederates off their LOC. As the CSA division in the foreground was outnumbered, outflanked, and had enemy in its rear, it was wiped out. The one behind it was driven back with loss. A weakened Rebel army was about to find it hard to defend the city against what were now even more superior numbers.

KABOOM! To take the second line fort, the US decided to blow The Crater. They got the best possible result, which helped them to maim another CSA division. Remarkably, this attack still ended up getting repulsed.

End of US Turn 2 (I think), with the Union firmly ensconced in both eastside forts and the defenders seriously depleted. 

A view from inside Petersburg after the CSA has rallied and reorganised its defenders. A lot of Union boys out there!

At this point the US had the option of calling the end of the Phase (in real world terms, a couple of months' lull) but understandably decided to press their advantage to the maximum before the Rebs could replace their losses.

On Turn 3, the US took a third fort on the south of town. Mike B felt he could not afford to let the US keep it. The Confederates sent two divisions in to counterattack, but got a calamitously bad result - both divisions lost a base and routed back through the town to rally in the top left corner of the photo. The door to Petersburg is open!

Grant therefore sends another two-corps attack against the rightmost attack, taking it this time, while a third feeds through the gap into the town - Petersburg has all but fallen! The Confederates must retake it in their half of the turn or lose the game immediately. One brave Rebel division charges, scorning superior numbers of bluebellies holed up in the cover of the buildings. Mike B's dice this time are as improbably good as his previous assault was disastrously bad - Petersburg is saved!

There were now two Confederate units in the town. The US had used a lot of activations in its repeated massed assaults on the fortifications. It had enough gas in the tank for just one attempt to expel both Rebel units, but failed. Grant's Petersburg campaign had come within an ace of victory but ran out of steam. So ended a close and exciting game that could hardly have been tighter.

OK, so US Plan A almost worked but didn't. Would Plan B go any better? We swapped sides, reset, and went at it again to find out.

Whereas Mark had only committed two corps to his left-hook effort in the first game, Mike and I thinned out our troops in the fortifications enough to free up a third. All three duly moved out to extend our line towards the Weldon Railroad objective. Two Confederate divisions responded by storming out against our corps at the hinge, covering the end of our LOC, but were repulsed - twice. So far so good.

A bit hard to see what's going on here (sun streams in at certain times of day to make photography rather difficult) but let me try to explain. The US got onto the Weldon Railroad by Turn 2 for the maximum 2 VP there. We therefore promptly called a new Phase so we could extend our LOC and reach for the next Objective, the Boydton Plank Road. At lower right edge you can just see the end of the extended Confederate fortifications. These didn't stop us beating and bypassing the CSA division beyond the end of that line, which you can see driven back to the upper left by our two corps now ensconced on the road, upper right. (Petersburg and everyone else out of shot to the right.) That's another 2 VP for us on Turn 4.

Audacious! As the Rebs stretched to keep us from the Boydton Plank Road, they left a gap in their line. We were able to launch a corps through it to raid across the Southside Railroad. That Confederate division top centre charged our corps and drove it back towards the Petersburg defences, causing heavy losses but unable to dislodge us from the railroad. Alarm and despondency in Richmond! And another VP to the US. (And then we pulled the raiding corps back in when the Phase ended.)

Meanwhile, mostly quiet around Petersburg itself, where the Confederates have seriously thinned out their defenders, while the US barely has enough men to guard the LOC, not enough to attempt a major assault.

The 5 VPs the US had garnered so far. The nominal target was 6 for a draw or 7 for a win. If we could keep our LOC intact, that would be one more. Victory had to be found on the White Oak Swamp Road!

So we called Phase III so that we could extend our LOC and redeploy in reach of the road Objective. Unfortunately, Confederate reinforcements arrived, including Wade Hampton's cavalry, and made sure to defend it in force (while still keeping Petersburg itself secure). Here's the Confederate view of the nut we had to crack: four whole divisions plus the cavalry ...

... and we didn't really have a big enough hammer to crack it with: three corps (one in centre of pic, two more top right) plus Sheridan's cavalry (bottom left. Still, if fortune favoured us, we had a chance.

All quiet on the eastern front - but we still have to guard that LOC.

No, fortune did not favour us. Our troops must have been exhausted (or unwilling to take any risks when they could see the war was nearly over) - our infantry pretty much failed to move, leaving Sheridan's cavalry to charge alone. They did drive the enemy back but not enough to matter. The cheeky Rebs even counterattacked to try to threaten our LOC! (But failed.)

One more turn's worth of activations left. We still have a chance, but these infantry assaults you see in the picture above will need to be outlandishly lucky - and will need the cavalry to be luckier still, whereas they failed even to rally. It doesn't happen. The US has fallen a bit short with its left hook, but an intact LOC should mean it still has a draw, unless ...

Just as virtually the last act of the campaign historically was Lee's abortive assault on Fort Stedman, so it was in our game, where we see a futile Confederate sortie in that exact spot.

LOC intact, 6 Objectives secured = a draw, but a tense and hard-fought one all the way.

Thus, in less than five hours of game time, we had fought this nine-month campaign to a finish twice. It produced two very different games, both very plausible, and both coming down to the wire.

Reflections

This was such a good day, I could enthuse and enthuse, but I'll discipline myself and just share three main thoughts.

Distilled Decisions. The relatively small number of units, the limit on how many the US could move, the dispensing with firing except in assaults: these all made for fast play as they forced us to focus on the few units that were actually important each move. This was helpful as it left brain room to attend to the scenario special rules and how those affected what was important. It all felt very clean and distilled. Hmm: maybe we should add pip dice for command points to BBB!

Tempo of Operations. In my reading, I was really struck by how the intensity of the six-week Overland Campaign was followed by this much lower-key period: lulls lasting weeks and months, punctuated by operations on limited scale for limited gains until the general advance at the end. I wanted the scenario to capture that. The constraints I put on the US seemed to have the desired effect. Giving the players some latitude over when to call an end to a Phase worked nicely too and it was easy to rationalise what a decision in game terms would have meant in real world terms. These two levels of tempo - constraints within turns, and constraints within Phases - meant we were conscious of it in a way that I don't often encounter in a game.

Resonating with History. Likewise, the elements of the scenario structure - both physical (troops and terrain) and regulatory (phases, LOCs, etc) - combined to produce player decisions and tabletop actions that really resonated with what I'd read. The Confederates sortied just as they did; significant actions happened in roughly the places and at roughly the intervals they did; the fortified lines and the action stretched out across the table as they did. I really couldn't have been happier with how it turned out.

This scenario is available in the files of the BBB io group (you have to join the group to get access).

Recommended reading: the scenario owes a lot to Noah Andre Trudeau's 'The Last Citadel: Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864-April 1865'.