From: Chuck Lietz <lietzc@TELEPORT.COM>
Subject:      Bloodiest Day

        While on vacation last weekend, I had a chance to play
Antietam-Bloodiest Day by Spearhead with my brother.  The first game
involved some getting used to the system and by the time we figured things
out, Jackson was dead and Hooker and Mansfield had crushed the Rebel left.
We decided to play a second time and this time it went a little better but
some strange things came up that maybe I'm doing wrong:

1)  It seems that the +2 modifier for each additional unit is too high for
assault combats.  This led to some killer stacks being formed of as many
units as you could pile into an area.  To combat this, I as the rebel tried
a using a thin line of one INF unit in an area with a large stack as a
"mobile reserve" to immediately counter-attack a killer stack's incursion.
This seems quite ahistorical and I'm wondering if anyone else experienced this.

2)  The turn ending roll can be devastating for the Rebels and seems a
little too "gamey" for my tastes.  In the second game, I was getting hit
hard on the Rebel left but had just moved Jackson up to take out Hooker.  I
caused about 13 CP's or so which left most of his units spent and retreated
on about Impulse 4.  Mansfield moves in with his killer stack and causes
only about 5-6 CP's due to the Rebel "8" strength unit being a little more
likely to withstand a killer stack's attack.  I then assaulted Mansfield
back and caused some serious CP's again leaving most of units spent and
retreated.  I was just ready to start finishing off the spent units when my
brother rolls a "3" on the impulse roll.  ALL of those units then bounce
back to fresh and then proceed to dismantle my killer stack due to a bad
roll/good roll.  It just seemed too strange to have every unit immediately
come back to optimum fighting strength all at the same time.  This seems to
make things tough on the Rebels as an early end to a turn will not allow
them to finish off spent units which is bad news.

3)  Rules question:  If during an assault you have some spent units retreat
but other units remain and have a leader present, can you retreat the leader
with the spent units?  I looked in the 2nd edition rulebook and couldn't
find anything one way or another but I could have missed something.

4)  Rules question:  Do the unattached Rebel units such as Evans and ANV
ARTY count as units of different divisions for purposes of the OT modifiers
for Assault and Volley combat?  Again, I checked the rulebook but may have
missed it.

        All in all, while the game was kind of interesting and sort of fun,
the way we were playing it failed so far on the historical accuracy side
that I found myself with a mild dislike of the game at this point.  The
problem quite frankly is that the concentration of a force of 10 units
attacking power on one defending unit just doesn't seem possible.  Couple
that with the "Kreskin's Mass Spell of Heroism" that rallies all units on
the board when the turn ends and it made for a disconcerting gaming
experience.  However, I will try again and probably see if They Met at
Gettysburg has corrected some of this.  Oh, for the record I lost again as
the Rebels in the second game but it was fairly close as Burnside never got
going but L'il Mac got the center rolling just in time to attack when Hooker
and Mansfield were weakened to the breaking point.  I had to deal with the
threat to my center and wasn't able to deal with my left in time to kill
enough units to turn the tide.

Thanks for reading!
Chuck