From: "David S. Bieksza" <bieksza@APLCOMM.JHUAPL.EDU>
Subject:      Re: AH Gettysburg '77

I played the Advanced Game solo many years ago.  The battle lasted to the
morning of the third day, so from start to finish the game was set up for
ten months -- the longest I've ever played a single game.  Clearly the AG
had a powerful appeal to motivate me to hang on for so long, but I'll
agree with Markus:  once was enough.

I don't have my solitaire notes at hand (the after action report for this
game was at least 15 pages long), so here's what I remember of the game.
In the first day the South successfully used its manpower advantage to
capture most of the geographical objectives, including Culp's Hill and
Cemetery Hill.  Primarily this was due to a vigorous attack on the XI
Corps on the Union right -- the AG rated the XI Corps as a bunch of
incompetents and it had to keep backing away from Rodes' and Early's
Divisions.

In the second day, with both sides forming solid battlelines from board
edge to board edge, the South tried to finish off the Yankees with an
offensive first thing in the morning.  But attacks between the Peach
Orchard and Cemetery Hill barely dented the defensive line.  That
persuaded the South to call off offensive operations and simply sit on
its lead in victory points.  The North advanced later in the day with two
major thrusts.  The one near Cemetery Hill made some progress but soon
petered out.  The other, near the Peach Orchard, came ever so close to
breaking the line, but Hood's Division ultimately repulsed the attackers.

Still, the Army of Northern Virginia was so battered that it refused its
right flank from the south board edge to the west board edge.  To the
North the most promising avenue of attack was vs. the high-VP objectives
of Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill.  The offensive began at dawn led by the
VI Corps (rather a novelty to see these boys in action).  At the climax
of the attack the Union advanced to within two hexes of Cemetery Hill,
but were eventually repulsed.  At this point I judged the Army of the
Potomac to be incapable of further offensive action (save for a handful of
brigades) and decided to end the game.  The South won, but by a
surprisingly narrow margin for such a long game.

To evaluate the experience, I would judge that the AG could well be
unmatched in three areas:

1) The battleline counters (which give a brigade a frontage roughly
equivalent to its manpower) provide an excellent feel for the difficulties
of coordinating large bodies of troops in linear warfare.  In both
regimental and brigade level Gettysburg games Heth's Division can whiz
down the Chambersburg Pike and jump right into battle.  In the AG the
division has to pause in order to properly deploy.

(Unfortunately the battleline counters seem out of scale to the mapboard.
Rodes' Division deployed just three out of its five brigades in a single
line, and that line stretched across half the mapboard!)

2) The AG has a superb system for measuring fatigue.  Brigades gradually
accumulate disorganization for combat and (extended) movement, which in
turn gradually degrades their performance.  This gives good insight into
the importance of having "fresh" troops available.

3) I also recall dimly there was also an interesting spin on leadership,
though I don't have the game at hand to mention particulars.

Similarly the AG has three major drawbacks:

1) ISTR that the fire combat procedure was overwrought while the melee
procedure was oversimplified.

2) It requires maintaining mountains of paperwork.

3) It has a truly execrable rulebook.  THE A.H. GENERAL had to publish
several pages of errata in tiny print, nearly all of it devoted to the
AG.  While the errata clarified some obscure points it obscured some
clear points, and some errata even contradicted other errata.  My
"personal errata sheet" went on for page after page after page ...

Bottom line:  struggling with the AG is worthwhile only for true
grognards who revel in complexity and have a fondness for Gettysburg
games.  But I always felt it was a shame that no one ever cleaned up the
design in subsequent titles -- it had the potential to be a landmark in
the same league as the GBACW and CWBS designs.

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Dave Bieksza                 bieksza@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu
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"Comet Hale-Bopp" is an anagram for "HTML be poop, Ace."
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