McPherson’s Ridge via The Devil to Pay

Saturday last week we played Brad Butkovich’s scenario for McPherson’s Ridge, July 1, 1863. It is part of his Summer Storm, Regimental Wargame Scenarios For the Battle of Gettysburg, available from Wargames Vault as a PDF. Excellent, well researched regimental ACW scenarios are his stock in trade. 

Previously we played a smaller scenario based on Davis’s attack on Cutler’s brigade, from a scenario found on the internet. Brad's scenario includes all 4 brigades that met at the early Gettysburg clash. Davis’s brigade started much closer in this and his regiments were much larger than in the internet scenario. The original plan was to have two brigade commanders and I would try to run a pair of brigades. But Andrew was recovering from a bug and didn’t want to share it with us. Thank you, Andrew. I'm a old coot and eschew contagion. Jay and I each ran a pair of brigades, CSA for him and USA for me.

Brad’s scenario suggested that the open woods should cost a minimal penalty. I should have listened. Meredith’s Iron Brigade moved very slowly into contact, what with the various woods and fences. On with the game: 

Errors in photo text are always obvious after hitting save. See next photo.

We only played three turns. As you can see, a lot can happen each turn. The game is designed for each player to run a brigade. Before each chit pull, there is the option to skedaddle, to run away in disorder without needing to use a precious order. Both Jay and I forgot to use this at critical times, I think due to the confusion involved in running two brigades. My crack 6^th Wisconsin was trashing a disordered pair of Confederate regiments, probably started when Jay failed to skedaddle. After thoroughly dusting those two regiments, I forgot to have the 6^th skedaddle and they were soundly beaten by a flank bayonet charge.

 

Archer was slowly being pushed back by Meredith. Davis beat up two Union regiments and was then thumped by the 6th Wisconsin, which was whipped in turn.

 

We had reached a point where both sides were not capable of much further effort without a lot of rallying and reorganizing. Jay had a single regiment in good order. I had three small ones. Each of us had their right flank mauled.

I lost about 480 infantry and a section (2 guns) of artillery. Jay lost about 320 infantry. We thought it was a tie, with any advantage going to Jay.

 

The scenario calls for both forces to fight it out until both sides think the game is over. That’s what we did. We talked about perhaps putting in geographical objectives, but the ones we considered would have made a tie also, since each had their flank beaten back. 3 turns took us 3 hours. I think it would have gone in almost half the time with two more players. As usual, The Devil to Pay was a hoot. I’d like to try the scenario again sometime, hopefully with 4 players. That seems to be a big ask these days, between family obligations of various Fencibles and the amount of time I spend out of town.

 

I would use Brad’s suggestions next time: increase all movement by 2 inches and only penalize woods and fences 1 inch each, get the game moving. This is because Brad has so much terrain. I ran out of fences and had to use stone walls as fences. I also realize that treating Meredith as a 1 order leader was a bit much. While he was no live wire, he wasn’t a real dunce either. That’s it for the AARs for a while, since we head north Friday for a while.

 

I owe book reports on 3 books, one about the Petersburg campaign, one about Benedict Arnold’s navy, and one about the Chinese Civil War 1946-1949. We’ll see if I manage to get those done. Holding your breath might well be fatal.