The US Civil War Turn 6

Played turn 6 of The US Civil War by GMT games today.  For some reason this single turn took us 4 hours of game time to play out.  Being the Summer of 1862 it makes sense that it would take longer to play these turns but those four hours flew by.

The Situation at the end of turn 5.  In the East The Army of Northern Virginia is near the north end of the Valley.  In the West both sides have beaten each other up pretty well.  In the Trans(far west)  the union forces are beating up the confederates in the area.

Now on to the results of Turn 6

First in the West.  The blue lines are the campaign of 3 Star General Grant.  He first moves south down the Mississippi to take the confederate fort (bottom star - other one was an oops).  He lost the first battle and had to give it a second try where victory was his.  Bad rolls for my opponent.  This opens up the Mississippi to Northern Aggression and gives him 3 Victory Points.  Grant then moves East (I was afraid he would go south and take Memphis and the 4 juicy VPs there but he was worried about what Bragg would do.  (coming to that last).  In the Far West Curtis goes from Victory to Victory (or at least one draw but no losses).  In the process moving onward to Little Rock - but he runs out of time).   Finally Confederate General Bragg, starting from Nashville he attacks and destroys Sherman's forces Northwest of him then continues on to Bowling Green and destroys the Militia defending there.  He then had a choice to send cavalry up north to take some Union Victory spaces (they were open, no defenders nearby but they would have needed to cross the river - doable but the Union might have been able to ship reinforcements in to take the spaces back).  Bragg then moves south to block Grant and gets stomped in a battle and falls back to just outside Decatur.

 

Next up in the deep south.  The strategy of holding the ports is not working so Jeff Davis asks Lee to send Jackson down to take care of the problem, along with 30 thousand troops (railed in from outposts through the south, a couple from Richmond's newly raised troops and one poached from the far west).  Beast Butler is the first to feel Jackson's wrath when he is attacked and routed (2 losses to 1 for Jackson - leaving Butler with only 1sp left).  Since the battle started at 2 to 1 Jackson continues on and finished Butler's force off.  Next Jackson goes after the garrison at Charleston easily destroying it.  He then starts a march down to Florida to deal with the Northern Aggressors there - time will run out before he gets there.

Finally we come to the North where the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia scares McClellan into total immobility.  First Activation goes to the North who attack a CSA outpost just outside of DC (battle not shown, just southwest of the one shown outside DC).  This ends up a draw but satisfies Lincoln's On to Richmond call.  Robert E Lee then moves the CANV out, heading north in the valley to engage a union force there (battle marker forgotten), after destroying them he moves to Baltimore and attacks - routing the Union forces there as well.  General Stuart moves cavalry from Richmond up to just outside DC (using a special action card to allow him to get there).  Nobody reacted to stop him so he was able to act as a supply source for the CANV in Baltimore.  Next activation the CANV takes Annapolis and moves toward Wilmington to defeat the remains of the Baltimore force that retreated earlier.  The Next Activation Lee takes Wilmington and parks the army in Lancaster.  The DC forces move to retake Baltimore and Annapolis then skedaddle back to DC.  Final activation roll, TIE - so both sides get a special action card, then the US rolls a 6 and the CSA a 1 On To Richmond and 5 activations but the south gets to go last...  The USA takes out Stuart's cavalry (Stuart failed to retreat, tis sad but oh well), the other activations were used for Grant, a naval move and an attack on New Orleans.  The CANV then gets to move.  First a single SP is activated and moves to Philadelphia, Lee then sends Grouchy old Longstreet to Dover and then finally moves the rest of the CANV to Baltimore and then Annapolis (using the Special Action East card the CSA drew from the previous Tie).  Little Mac tried to intercept twice - needing a seven or higher on 2d6 each time but failed both times.  Being out of supply the SPs on their own have to roll for forage and all three make it (anything but a 6).  This give the CSA 12 VPs for holding the 6 vp hexes in the north at turn end and thus a sudden death victory - the victory point mark for turn 6 is 15, the USA had 14 VPs from other spots they had taken, minus the 12 the CSA gets it leaves them with 2vp and they needed at least 4 in order to avoid the Sudden Death Victory).  Abe Lincoln is forced to Sue for peace with the CSA.

Both Lawrence and I like this game a lot.  Despite the blowout at the end of the turn it would have gone much differently if the tie had not occurred (giving Lee the Special Action card that allowed the run to Annapolis), the US had LOST initiative (and thus would have gone last and been able to respond to Lee's VP grab run) or the CSA had rolled a 6 for any of the units that could have died for being OOS.  The Union has to start attacking from the start by amphibious assault and driving down the Mississippi while defending DC.  The CSA has to threaten DC and the cities around it and keep the US from taking other spots in the meantime.  A real balancing act - quite different from For The People where it is pretty much ALL about DC till Grant arrives.

We like it enough that we are going to start it right up again, perhaps playing with the advanced Naval rules or maybe using the basic rules but allowing naval assaults on regular actions playing the basic game.