GCACW: The Battle for Washington

Played the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War scenario The Battle for Washington last week.  I'm not doing detailed writeups for a while so just one picture.

The Rebs have three days to capture and hold the circled Ovals and to burn the RR stations in the little red stars.  The majority of the fighting took place in the Big Blue star.  Lee's path across the map is the blue line.

Things I remember. Lee hauled ass the first activation (rolled a 6 to go eight hexes).  My plan to hold him in the swampy are (to the right of the battle zone) went down the crapper and the fallback plan to fight along the stream was looking iffy.  Lee won the second activation (first was a gimme) but did not roll nearly as well for movement.  Next up was my units and they managed to get to the Stream in time to hold it - but I had to force march one unit to make it into position.  The First Days' fighting was a knock down dragout even though I had BOTH of my attempts at an assault by Burnside fail (each a 1 in 6 chance of failing).  On the other hand the CSA assaults went in my favor.  Finally Jackson was a acting like he did at the seven days, poking along...

The SECOND day.  Burnside got the initiative and surrounds Lee!  Tries an Assault and makes it!  Tries the Grand Assault and FAILS!  OK - a  33% chance of not getting at least one other hex but combined with a 1 in 36 chance of two failed assaults in a row yesterday we are down to a 1/72 (roughly) odds of such bad luck.  The North wins initiative again!  And fails another assault roll (1 in 6, odds of this streak of luck is now roughly 1 in 432).

Still up to this point

Burnside

Was Kicking

Lee's

Ahem

Right then somebody

Lit a Fire

Under Stonewall's

Ahem...

The CSA gets the initiative and Stonewall rolls max move.  His first two divisions surround my flanker on Lee and his last smashes into the unit leaving it demoralized 2 and basically out for the rest of the game.  He then wins initiative again and does the same to another USA division. 

At this point I conceded (with some disgust I must admit).  I find the flanking rules a bit screwy when combined with a single enemy adjacent as long as the other enemies have the other hexes in ZOC but friendly units do nothing to keep that from happening - and only adjacent friendlies can help mitigate the effects of being flanked.  Combined with high movement speeds it is possible to (often) surround an opponent and flank him without any way to mitigate it and being flanked can be worth having a 5-1 numbers advantage.

After a couple days I thought about it some more and have ideas for next time...