American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Gentlemen of both Armies,

The honorable BG John Monroe and I have just finished an exhausting HPS historical Gettysburg game that left both armies a shattered shell of themselves. I will not get into specifics of who won or by how much, but casualties to both sides were a cumulative 86,000+ infantry, 10,000+ cavalry, 120+ guns and 142 leaders. This was through the second day (95 of 156 turns). This was not totally one sided and both armies were bled out when one surrendered.

Has anyone fought a bloodier game of Gettysburg in HPS? What has been your bloodiest game?

Lt. Gen. Mark E. Wolken
Army of the Tennessee
Commanding
"The Army will forage liberally during the march." W.T Sherman

I recently played a two-day scenario in HPS GB too and found the casualties to be high. I hope this is not a trend...I liked the HPS system compared to the BG series where it was not uncommon for entire divisions to be killed to the last man when they really should have been rendered useless due to fatigue.

Lt. General Dirk Gross
XIV Corps/AoC

I'd say it has a lot more to do with player "style" than any real function of the system. Historic leaders wouldn't push their troops nearly as hard as we do.

LGen. Hamilton
II Corps
ANV, CSA

I agree with Rich. As we were playing this we both acknowledged that if this were a campaign either one of us may have broken off before it got this brutal.


Lt. Gen. Mark E. Wolken
Army of the Tennessee
Commanding
"The Army will forage liberally during the march." W.T Sherman

I played a BG Antietam Full Deck and lost 80% of my men before noon.

I lost

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General John Corbin
Commanding officer
Army of The James
USA</center>

This probably doesn't count, but I once played a 3 day BGG game against the A/I and destroyed the Union army to the last man not long after the last of its reinforcements arrived.

The next day, I rode into Wash D.C. with a "small" escort, arrested that dictator Lincoln, tried him for crimes against humanity and within 4 days after the predetermined conviction, hanged him. Pictures were taken to prove to the people that he was dead.

And for fun, we designed a deck of cards with various other criminal pictures. Since Lincoln is already gone, Grant will be the Ace of Spades and his crony Sherman will be the Ace of Clubs.

Capt. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"

I think part of the reason the BG series was especially bloody was the tactic of using zoc kills that wins games, but is not particularly realistic. With the HPS soft zoc, the first games in the series seemed to cut down on the kill ratios and units got fatigued to where they became useless for front-line duty and needed to be withdrawn.

I looked at some parameters of a games to see if later titles have more firepower, but I found that GB is the same as Corinth 1.01. Corinth 1.06 is .5 higher for muskets and rifles at 1 and 2 hex ranges, and Napoleons are down 2 points at point-blank. Interestingly, Shiloh reduces muskets at 1 hex 5 to 3.75) and increases at 2 hex (1 to 2), rifles reduce from 4 to 3.25 at 1 hex, but increase form .25 to .5 at 5 hexes. Napoleons are hugely increased from 14 to 21 at one hex, and 6 from 3 at 5 hexes. I'm sure that has to do with the discussions about artillery ineffectiveness in the past. That ought to make it a very bloody affair, indeed.

It seems to me that the parameters aren't the major reason for bloody battles. Maybe the units are larger in the East than the Western battles so the effects of fire are that much greater. In my GB battles I typically had 800-1000 man stacks firing and getting 100 or so casualties per shot.

Lt. General Dirk Gross
XIV Corps/AoC

Hi, Mark,

I'm curious to know if you were playing single phase or multiphase. I suspect the former due to the large losses in artillery. When I used to play single phase, I would blow a hole in a line with melee and then move the panzers through to take out the artillery. When I played HPS Gettysburg using multiphase, though, I found that I did not have enough ammo to last two days, let alone three.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA

Mike,

It was multi phase (move/fire/melee). I hate single phase due to the poor defensive fire.

The large number of gun losses to both sides were due to aggressive cavalry. Many of the reb gun losses were Heths when he advanced to soon and I Corp jumped him in coordination with Buford's boys. Later on the Union had a force trapped by rebs in a bend of March Creek and that added a bunch of guns as well

Lt. Gen. Mark E. Wolken
Army of the Tennessee
Commanding
"The Army will forage liberally during the march." W.T Sherman

HPS Gettysburg tends to be bloody because of the pressure on the Reb to produce great results before the 5th and 6th Corps show up and the yankees outnumbering him by 20,000 men. Then the reverse killing starts up as the Yankee tries to even up the VP losses he recieved on the first day.

My current game with MG Laabs is into night of the second day, turn 106, and we have combined loses of 65,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry and 144 guns. With all this killing our two armies are still nearly equal in strength so I expect the third day will be equally a great slaughter.

Part of the problem is the fatigue system doesn't really stop combat, it just makes it less efficient. And, usually one side is trying to exploit the other sides fatigue level so it actually encourages fighting beyond reason.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)

That's quite a blood bath!

Don't think I've been involved long enough to amass thos kinds of totals...


General Jeff Laub
Union Chief of the Army
ACWGC Cabinet Member
http://www.geocities.com/laubster22/UnionHQ/