Last night the Corlears Hook Fencibles played a scenario of the 1863 battle of Champion's Hill using Bloody Big Battles rules. Bill (back after a lengthy furlough) commanded the Confederates assisted by Rick as Bowen and Loring. I played Grant and McPherson while Ken had the unenviable task of playing McClernand.
Hovey promptly charged up the hill against Cummings' green brigade. They charged through the light defensive fire and unloaded heavy fire into Cummings. An anemic assault die roll saw Cummings driven back but not thrashed as badly as in the actual battle. Too bad.
Logan shifted to his right to threaten the bridge over Baker Creek and Hovey shot most of his ammo into Confederate artillery revealed by Cummings retreat. Meanwhile Ken brought a division on each of the Raymond and Middle roads. He was bedeviled by passive units and no general – as intended in the scenario design to represent McClernand's performance on the day. Loring was also passive.
After shot-up Rebel artillery pulled out, McGinness' brigade charged a large Confederate unit in the flank and managed to drive them back. After a couple turns I remembered my own rules for hasty works and removed the overrun works.
Bowen's larger brigade moved to bolster the Confederate left, while the brigade that had been covering the retreat of the supply train came back over Baker Creek. Logan's right was under pressure.
Loring and McClernand started trading artillery fire.
Osterhaus began having an affect on the fight around Champion's Hill.
SD Lees' brigade was driven from their works atop Champion's Hill.
At the end of the 5th turn, the sky fell on the Union. A major counterattack by Bowen and Stevenson knocked Logan's right back and exploited on into the flank of another one of Logan's brigades. This one had been roughly handled in the previous fighting and was dispersed with heavy losses. On the east slope of the hill, McGinnis' brigade was hit in flank and front by savage fire (the Rebs rolled box cars) and lost 50%. Ouch. We'd been playing slowly, since Bill was relearning the rules and we had the usual amount of joking and such, along with the photo op pauses.
We knocked off around 8:21, having played 5 turns in under 3 hours, about 34 minutes per turn. We'll decide in a day or two if we want to play this one out or have another game altogether next week – a Crimean War dust up between Russians and Turks perhaps. No, we don't have any of those painted up. It would be whatever figures look kind of close.
Mostly as a result of the lethal Confederate turn 5, Union losses were some 4,000, more than the actual battle. Confederate losses were 3,500, just under their actual losses. Of course if we play another 6 turns the casualty lists will grow.
Everyone had a good time. As usual, with BBB, folks felt they had learned something about the actual battle. I'm not finished with this scenario yet. I have another book to buy. I'm not sold on my OB research yet and want this right. I may tinker with the troop scale and number of turns. And if this has replay value, I may order the Champion Hill mat from Cigar Box Battle Mats.
completes his initial Union force in 1:72nd scale.
