The Lone Cannons

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: This campaign mission has the player in the role of the Southern Commander facing a superior Northern force on Seminary Ridge that has at their disposal cavalry and artillery. The objective is to position your forces in such a manner as to destroy them all in thirty turns or less.

The first time I played this scenario today I lost at the very end to the Northern Soldiers at the bottom right of the hex matrix. The second time around my Southern forces won the day quite handily securing the victory with eighteen turns remaining.

This is another nice mission that mixes in Soldier units with the one hex advantage over the Militia units that only have a two hex range. That and the Cavalry units made for some interesting tactical decisions at the end of the mission given the terrain height advantage the final group of Northern units had and were not budging from (albeit they never fortified).

At the start of the scenario I had at my disposal five Militia units with the two hex engagement range and three Soldier units with the three hex range. I dispatched the forces into two groups - the first three sets attacking to the extreme northeast of the hex matrix in column formation and the remaining five sets moving in column formation against those "Lone Cannons".

It took two turns for my infantry to eliminate the artillery threat which freed me up to engage the Cavalry and infantry units spread over parts of the map. Once these forces were removed from the battlefield, I moved my full group of five elements against the remaining two Northern units (both Soldier units with the three hex range) that were parked at the bottom of the map.

I sacrificed two units to charge the un-fortified positions in column formation while I staged the remaining units to engage from the nearest possible distance. The final battle sequence pitted a Confederate force rated at 1,079 (three Soldier units and two Militia units) against a Northern force of only 500 rating among two Soldier units.

One turn reduced the North to 57 while costing me one unit for a total reduction of 221. The final turn saw the enemy turn and run in white flag surrender but they were cut to pieces with the merciless fire from the determined rifleman.

Other thoughts: Had any of the infantry units in the scenario for the North fortified, this could have taken longer and easily turned out quite differently.