Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Gettysburg - the Avalon Hill boardgame

Having been invited to help run a 54mm Gettysburg game later this month I’ve been doing a little reading up.  I have long been a fan of board games as a source of maps and research, even if I don’t often play such things.  However, I chanced upon a temptingly priced copy of this old AH game which has the right sort of complexity for me - not much!  


Last weekend I set the thing up to play through the Day Two (2 July) scenario. The board is undeniably pretty and the counters clearly printed.  I mostly took photos at the end of each pair of turns (CS then US) and shared them as I went along on a couple of WhatsApp groups. 

0600-0800.  The Rebs take Cemetery Hill….
…and fend off Yankee counterattacks. 

0800-1000.  More carnage on the hills, with the Rebs trying to maintain their foothold and fragment the US line. 

1000-1200.  The Feds looking a bit shaky but there are loads of the sods. 
1200-1400.  More carnage and a possible US comeback. 
1400-1600.  The font lines fragment. The white stripes on some units indicate that they’ve been flipped to their weaker side. 
1600-1800.  This is now a real slogging match with US reinforcements still arriving. 

1800-2000.  As night finally falls, some Confederate units go under. 
The final result was - on points at least - a clear win for Lee and his chums but it felt a lot closer during play. Really quite a nice game.  I particularly like the combat system where if you lose you retreat.  If you lose by quite a margin you take a step loss and by a large margin two step losses. 
And yes, I know I got some rules wrong (this is me remember!). 
My thanks to all those who gave virtual shouts of encouragement on WhatsApp - Paul, Mike, Diego and Russell. 
And finally, I’d be remiss in failing to mention Tim C’s impressive 6mm Gettysburg game he ran at the Joy Of Six show on the same day:




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6 comments:

  1. David Crook6 July 2022 at 11:14

    Hi Tim,

    You might find it a challenge fitting 54mm figures on that board…. :-)

    It is a great version of the battle with the usual AH production values and a very ‘occasional board gamer friendly’ set of rules.

    And yes, there is a lot of Union!

    All the best,

    DC

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  2. Brad DeSantis6 July 2022 at 13:00

    A great warm-up for your 54mm game Tim. Tim C's 6mm Gettysburg looks awesome!

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  3. John Y6 July 2022 at 15:21

    I have heard much about this game, but never seen it before. The map does look rather nice.

    As far as getting rules wrong, I do that all the time, too. I've come to believe that as long as you get the same rule wrong for both sides, and you had fun, then it's a wash.

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  4. Tim Gow11 July 2022 at 20:46

    David Crook
    I’m really rather taken with it.

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  5. Tim Gow11 July 2022 at 20:47

    Brad DeSantis
    It’s certainly helping me think about reinforcement rates.

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  6. Tim Gow11 July 2022 at 20:48

    John Y
    As a fellow fan of simple games I think you’d enjoy this.

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