Inaugural Challenge FoF AAR

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Turn 8 onwards cont.

Meant to mention re ‘Out west’, that although I had captured a state capital (Jefferson City) I received no NW points, don’t know for sure but I would hazard a guess it’s because the game see Missouri as a Reb state.

Right on to the Eastern & central theatres. I am going to try and capture fed forces in Franklin, it’s a long shot and with winter fast approaching I need to be careful, and if pos not leave my forces trapped away from a Railway line. To capture enemy div/corps/armies entire you must defeat them in battle and not let them have anywhere to retreat to so for eg they cannot retreat into a province with an occupied fort or into Reb Red provinces that contain a military unit.

So, "The Plan", to try and trap Fed 13th div & Dept of Ohio in Franklin.



In Cumberland FT Hill has a garrison so I detach Magruders Peninsular div from ANV, then march the rest of the 50,000 strong ANV to Grafton to close the gate to the west. Prices 2nd Corps leaves a Bgd in Shenandoah and moves to Abingdon, I bring up a Garrison Bgd form Lynchburg to Abingdon to act as the military unit in Reb territory there and detach 1st Bgd Cherokee from Prices corps, these then play Kamikaze by advancing into Kenawha. The idea here is that as Kenawha is Reb Red if the 4 Fed independent Bgds there move out then 1st Bgd becomes the Military unit there, if they don’t shift 1st Bgd gets thumped, hence the Kamikaze bit. If all goes as hoped for, the fed units in Franklin will be surrounded (Grafton will go Reb through ANV capturing it). The final moves in the operation are for 2nd corps to attack into Franklin, Magruder in Cumberland I Shift S so he won’t move into Franklin before 2nd Corps arrives, that will give me c42,000 v Feds c17,000 that should be enough (Franklin as Fed Blue will have a high Terrain defensive bonus coz of the mountains). Well there it is a “Plan”, but as we all know plans can go wrong.

True to form it did go wrong, the key element in fact, 2nd Corps failed to advance into Franklin!

But we did have a battle, in Grafton, unfortunately from my point of view not a major one, battles with over 10,000 casualties for one side are normally considered major and they affect National Will (NE) and can have an effect on Diplomacy.

The Battle of Grafton

What happened with ‘the Plan’ was feds didn’t move out of Kenawha, so 1st Bgd duly got thumped. Feds pulled dept of Ohio out of Franklin to join up with Butlers US 1st corps coming down from Monongahela + some independent Bgd in Grafton giving Feds c41,000 to face up to the advancing c52,000 ANV. As Grafton was fed blue they had a terrain def bonus of +2 (from the Quick battle [QB] screen, unfortunately I haven’t managed a screenshot of QB as its animated and I haven’t caught it without movement yet) so the fact that it was a Confederate victory just goes to emphasis the superiority early in the war of both Reb troops and their commanders etc. will have to show the Battle details in 3 links





Note in the groups 9th Div Norfolk was the only Reb container to take more casualties than it inflicted.



In the Generals report we see Reb gens are better at rallying their men, Moral & Special abilities of gens will start to kick in as the war progresses.

Below is a screenshot of the Army report for turn 9



Well it was quite an eventful turn all round as there was also a small battle in the Cumberland Gap again a confederate victory with 2 fed Bgds surrendering. That battle highlights one of the things to be aware of, in that the battle was brought about because I had a garrison in Nashville which came out to fight when feds moved into the province and Ft Donelsons Garrison automatically joined in, it is sometimes better to not garrison cities that are protected by a Ft as the City grs will always cause a battle to ensue, not always what is wanted, if there had been no grs in Nashville then feds would have just had to settle down to a siege, of course if there is no army/corps nearby you run the risk of the Ft being destroyed and nothing to stop the enemy subsequently capturing the City! “Decisions, decisions”

To round off this turn as its November we have Elections



A rarity occurred here in that Gov Joseph E Brown of Georgia who is always very anti was defeated, normally the bugger stays the whole game refusing to let Georgia cities Muster and often demanding builds for Georgia that are better suited elsewhere.

To be continued, just had some battle files come in.

All the Best
Peter