Battle Cry - Antietam

Having fought the American Civil War twice using 'A House Divided' to give me the bigger picture, I went back to a more focused approach and played some more Battle Cry during the week. 

I set up the Antietam scenario, partially because it's a battle I'd just got to in my reread of Shelby Foote, but mostly because it's a favourite battle of mine. Many, many years ago I spent a ton of time reading up on it in order to put together a Fire & Fury scenario for it (this was before Great Eastern Battles was published), and I still find it one of the more fascinating larger battles.

The game sets it up as you'd expect, as three fights, one in each sector. The numbers of units are actually fairly similar, but this kind of gives the right effect; the Union have enough troops to push the Confederates facing them to the edge but maybe not quite enough oomph to finish them. The Union have fewer command cards than the Confederates. The Confederates start with terrain advantages too. It's a tough one for the Union.

Here's the start. As you can see I added a few bits of terrain.

The Union attack on the cornfield went as well as you'd expect.

Burnside got his troops together to cross the stone bridge. This is an odd part of the scenario, since Burnside acts as the same time as the rest of the Union army, but in fact this flank is so isolated from the rest of the fight that it's almost a game on its own, so could (in theory) be assumed to be happening later.

A.P. Hill's troops came up and stopped the advance over the creek fairly quickly. In the centre the Union went for the sunken road. 

They even occupied the road.

Burnside was shot trying to escape back across the bridge.

And the Confederates turned the sunken road into a killing-ground, in a reversal of history.

That ended the battle; the Confederates won 7-3.

I set it up and played it again. The Union put in a pretty good attack on the cornfield this time, although Stuart's cavalry hit them hard.

Burnside got his troops over the bridge again. The Union were doing OK so far.

The Union troops in the cornfield were decimated by shooting from the Confederates around the church and supporting artillery from near the sunken road.

And, omce again, Hill's troops came up quickly to threaten the Union position by the bridge.

Burnside escaped being shot this time, though.

And Hooker got lucky too. His troops? Less so.

And that was it. The scenario is unforgiving when it comes to casualties and the destruction on the flanks was enough for another Confederate win: 6-2 this time.

I've played the Belmont scenario through a few times since I took these pictures as well, but didn't photograph it. It gives a surprisingly fun and frustrating game, featuring as it does infantry that retreat two spaces instead of one. The Confederates have numbers, but also have terrible command cards, so struggle to bring them to bear. Honours are about even so far.