RTG#1: Aftermath

Victory Point Summary
Reason VP
Levies +20
Harper's Ferry RR destroyed +2
One Division at Falling Waters +1
Union losses +37
Confederate losses -54
Total +6

Part of Lee's army is destroyed and the Union wins a Substantive Victory. Looking at the tale of the tape (or should I say dice) shows that the Union had some help. On several key attacks over the final few turns, the Union won the combat die rolls by 4. This gave the Union the advantage in pips won and combat rolls won overall.

Combat Die Results
Differential Union Wins Confederate Wins
1 4 4
2 3 1
3 3 5
4 6 3
5 1 0
Total Wins 17 13
Total Ties 8
Total Pips 48 33

RTG and the Standard Series Rules

The Standard Series rules have a noticeable impact on how the campaign plays out. Ewell's troops can move three times a day and if they pass their extended march rolls or take a chance on attrition, they can cover a lot of ground. The Union can also march three times a day but since they are more likely to fail their extend rolls and can't afford to take losses on already understrengthed divisions, it doesn't help them as much.

The second big impact is the Union cavalry leaders. Though these are optional, I can't imagine not playing without them. The Union cavalry is able to stand-up to Stuart since you can move multiple brigades at once and thus keep your forces in supporting/defensive range of each other. Stuart has to be wary of a Union initiative streak but since the Union can only attack with the first unit that moves in a leader activation, the Union cavalry isn't overpowering.

Artillery is the final big change I noticed. I kept the Union divisions stacked with each other when the Confederates were nearby so the Rebs were unable to get any positive artillery modifiers. In the clear or rolling terrain, the Union artillery reserve units can provide enough of a defensive benefit to deter Confederate attacks. Once the Rebs started running out of ammo, the Union was able to get positive modifiers when attacking for artillery.

Overall, I liked how the campaign unfolded with the Standard Series rules. The Rebs can move faster but the artillery rules (especially with all the clear terrain) and cavalry leaders favor the Union.

Confederate Strategy

In terms of this specific game, the Confederates never seemed to be able to control the tempo of the campaign. The AoP arrival, which occurred on the historical date, caught Lee's army spread out from Harper's Ferry to Gettysburg. The Rebs stuck with their strategy of holding the Naval Battery and in retrospect, an entire division should have been left behind. However, sending Hill's corps south to take the Naval Battery in the first place seems like a dubious strategy at best. It drew the attention of Reynolds’s wing and once the Union troops were at the South Mountain passes, there was no reason not to keep them there to get Washington County VPs. To counter, Anderson's division (10 manpower, 5 artillery) had to be left behind. Sickles' corps eventually made an impact on the battle of York, but Anderson spent the entire game at Falling Waters.

A better strategy might be to send Hill and Longstreet north as soon as they are released. This should put pressure on the Union to move north quickly as well. If the Union detaches a corps to control Washington County, then the AoP will be understrengthed. You'll have to use your numeric and tactical advantage to force a battle and/or swing south towards the southeast corner of the map for a big VP county.

Attachment Gaminess in RTG

Unfortunately, the game system encourages several gamey tactics related to attaching and detaching units.

None of these are game breakers, but the fact that these loopholes exist is mildly annoying.

GCACW Combat Model

RTG and this particular play out in particular, illustrate the one shortcoming in the series: the simulation of major combats. The system does a great job of simulating the "campaigning" that lead up to battles (i.e., marching) and in small battles, the combat system works fine. Casualties are low and the combatants recover quickly (after a day). However, when a major fight takes place, the battle usually lasts several days (often a week or more). Sometimes the casualties are equal to what a 2 or 3 day ACW battle would produce, sometimes they are less, rarely are they more. In this playout, the fighting started on July 2nd and continued until July 9 and covered a lot of ground geographically (though there were "breaks" in which both sides rested and broke contact). At the end Lee's army was definitely spent and not a fighting force (due to lack of Ammo) but the Union army was not equally spent. While the Ammo rules do a good job modeling the effects of being out of supply, they don't capture the effect of prolonged combat (which admittedly, they aren't supposed to simulate).

Historically, the battle of Gettysburg was fought over a three day period and resulted in about 23,000 casualties for each side or 46 Manpower. (Note: Estimates of Confederate casualties vary from 20,000 to 28,000 but for the sake of the discussion, I assume 23,000.). At first blush, it would seem that this playout of RTG replicated this historical event at least in terms of total casualties (92 historically vs. 91 here). However, 21 of the Confederate manpower losses came on the final battle when several Confederate divisions were forced to retreat through Union forces. Had the map extended farther east or the battle taken place farther west, the Confederates likely would have had a viable retreat path. Thus, the actual losses are about 70 or about 75% of the historical total. Of course one game does not make a study and the Gettysburg campaign was not destined to result in a battle with 46,000 casualties. However, my playouts of RTG consistently result in lower "body counts" which leads me to conclude that the CRT is not quite bloody enough to replicate the major battles.

One could argue that because my results are based on a solitare playout they are not valid or at a minimum missing some tactical nuances that will result in more plausible (shorter) battles. While this is not easy to refute, I will say that tactically, both sides made all kinds of attacks this game--flank attacks, head-on assaults; low-odds (+0, +1) and overwhelming attacks; grand assaults and single division assaults, etc. That being said, multiple playouts with different opponents would provide a richer source of data from which to draw conclusions. (Note also that I'm not basing my conclusion on this particular playout alone--I've probably soloed the RTG campaign 15-20 times and this result happens to be fairly typical.)

The fix, if there is a problem, is to make casualties greater for assaults/grand assaults but to also figure out a way to expend the units after a couple of days fighting. The Ammo rules come close to modeling this "combat fatigue." To improve them, however, the effects of being out of ammo needs to be asymmetrical. Right now a units ability to attack and defend is degraded equally. If both sides' ammo is depleted, there is no incentive to stop attacking. However, if out of ammo impacted attacking more than defending, then losing ammo would deter attacking. For the ammo rules to work in most games though, units need to lose ammo more frequently. Except for the Confederates in RTG, it is difficult for a unit to be out of ammo.

Though I see this issue as a shortcoming of the system, it in no way deterrs me from continuing to play and enjoy the series. The playability of the system more than makes up for these anomalies in the long run. As such, I'd be reluctant to accept any "fix" which disrupted the system playability and "fun" factors.