From: "Jens Hoppe, EUV" <jho@EUV.POST.DKPOST.DK400.DK>
Subject:      They met at Gettysburg

I played the first day scenario of this game yesterday against a friend.
I played the Union, and I was beat pretty badly... Of course one playthrough
(of only the first day!) is no basis for a balance discussion, so I won't do
that.

For all I know I might have played the Union in a completely stupid way, but
the Confederates had so many more units, I simply couldn't make a stand
against them.

What I do want to comment on is that the game seemed to model the battle
in a strange way: I tried to spread out my units to get something resembling
an unbroken line, but I quickly discovered that small stacks were easily
slaughtered - because of the way Offensive and Defensive Totals are
calculated, it is never very difficult to make an assault that will be
succesful for the attacker (= having OT > DT), but if the defender has many
units in an area, they can absorb an incredible number of Casualty Points
without any units actually being eliminated. In the end we both had huge
stacks of units (meaning something like 9-12 units per stack) stalking the
map trying to grab victory areas.

Actually the system of absorbing casualty points bears some resemblance to
the system from Breakout: Normandy, EXCEPT than in B:N you have to use
ressource points to return units to fresh status, whereas in TMAG all spent
units automatically become fresh at the end of every game turn. In this
game, a stack of for instance 10 units is almost invulnerable: Attacking
with a stack of 12 units (the maximum allowed) will probably inflict lots
of CPs; let's say 20. In that case, the defender can simply turn over all
his units (making them spent), absorbing all 20 CP. Furthermore the attacker
can't followup on his attack; the stacking limit in the area has been met,
he can't bombard or volley the area (because of the presence of friendly
units), he can't even move his spent attackers out of the area to make
room for new ones. At the end of the turn, all units are returned to fresh
status, and the attacker is back to square one... The attacker might improve
his chances by making two separate 6-unit assault on an area, but still...
The bombardment/assault rules in B:N seem to work more smoothly.

Another strange thing was the victory conditions for the 1st day scenario
(and I believe the same can be said for the campaign scenario): Different
conditions are listed, defining Confederate & Union Tactical and Major
victories. The thing is; the Union and the Confederate victory conditions
do not exclude the others:

Both sides can end with a Tactical Victory for instance... How is that
handled?

We had a few rules questions as well (mostly concerning leaders). They might
be in the rules, but we simply couldn't find them, so maybe they aren't...

1. What happens if a leader is alone in an area, and the area is entered by
    enemy troops?
2. When all units in a leader's area are eliminated in combat, the leader is
    placed in another area containing units under his command. What happens
    if no units under his command are on the board at the moment? (Happened
    to Buford in our game).
3. When a leader in an area activates units in another, adjacent area, the
   leader is also allowed to move (even though he's not in the activated area).
   If the activated units assault enemy units, can the leader join in the
   assault? (It seems reasonable to me, but it would be an exception to the
   rule that units assaulting an area must move together).

Cheers,

    Jens "Hopsie" Hoppe