The short scenario for Stonewall’s Sword concludes, with a Moderate Victory for the Confederates.
By the end of the game, the Union had lost all attack capability right across their battlefront and needed to reorganise to recover some strength and fall back onto better defensive positions.
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| Furthest part of Confederate advance |
The Confederates still had some attack capability, notably on the far right, where Pender was about to turn the Union left and 38th North Carolina were just one hex away from Robert Hudson House, a Victory location that would yield 10 VP’s and if taken, would have raised the level of Confederate victory to ‘Major Victory’ had they captured it.
In the end, a few of the chits drawn mattered. Fatigue was played against Pender, which was enough to dampen his final attack and if only there had been a Rebel Yell chit remaining in the Confederate arsenal, perhaps 38th NC could have taken Robert Hudson House. I love the way this system makes these small things matter.
I think the victory level scores and result accord well with what I am seeing on the map and interestingly the victory outcome was totally casualty based, rather than coming from location VP’s.
I like the way in this system that in the last turn, rather than units flinging themselves into dubious attacks that they might not normally do if another turn existed or if loss was likely, they instead either hold back to prevent loss or look to the ‘Available box’ on the Broken Track to see whether they can recover any units back to the board, so that they don’t contribute to the enemy VP total.
In this game, Garnett (Confederate) was able to recover 1 unit, while Prince (Union) failed to recover their 3 regiments that were in that box and that ultimately really mattered.
This is not a game term, but for the purposes of this report, I have judged brigades to be ‘spent’ that have the majority of their units flipped and under Shaken / Disrupt counters.
The Following brigades were so spent;
Union, Crawford and Prince.
Confederate, Garnett, Taliaferro, Early, Thomas and Branch.
An interesting moment in the game was when the hard to activate Taliaferro got a full activation and went over onto the attack. They went into a relatively vulnerable part of the Union line, but managed to smash themselves in the process at no gain. Another saw Pender activate to Manoeuvre with the Quick March chit added and then Jackson activated them again for Manoeuvre, allowing this formation to really make progress against the Union left flank, while the Union didn’t really have anything (other than the two artillery batteries) to counter this.
I am really taken by this system and want to play much, much more of it.
To offer some statistic on this game, at the close of play;
Artillery
Union - Robinson LOST, Knap and Roemer BATTLE WORN
Confederate - Dement (b) BATTLE WORN
General activity
DISRUPTED - Union none, Confederate 1
SHAKEN - Union 5, Confederate 5
BATTLE WORN - Union 6, Confederate 18
TOTAL STILL IN PLAY - Union 22, Confederate 40
The statistics reflect that the larger Confederate army had worked hard to get their victory as half their army was Battle worn, while only around a quarter of the Union force was Battle worn
