GCACW Tactics: Tricks of the Trade

4. Make Cavalry Useful

Figure 4: USA cavalry get into the rear of the CSA’s Fredericksburg line, threatening various surrounds, in Sedgwick to the Rescue.

Figure 5: The CSA’s 3VA cavalry protects Anderson's rear by making Doubleday, the only unit in the USA’s I Corps that can still activate in the turn, burn one initiative (with no attack allowed) if it moves directly to Salem Church.

Do something useful with seemingly useless cavalry. USA cavs are often seen as Stuart fodder and must be exited from the theater, especially in the scenarios in the earlier years of the war, before the more powerful Sheridan arrives. But even weak USA and CSA cavs can come in very handy. Of course, they can get in the way of the opposing units and slow down their marching through the “cavalry retreat” move, or the cavalry units can maintain a position in a defensive line. But I don’t usually find those uses all that compelling. It typically burns 2 initiatives to slow down an opposing unit (one to get in place and one as a result of the “cavalry retreat”), and it usually doesn’t slow the enemy unit down very much. And those cavs are usually so weak that their contribution to a defensive line is not all that great.

I prefer to keep the cavalry in reserve to aid in other ways. They can provide flank modifiers, or even if they aren’t powerful enough to do that, they can get into the enemy’s rear and can cause losses upon enemy retreats. (Yes, I have to mention retreat losses in almost every point.) For example, in Sedgwick to the Rescue, I was the CSA and my opponent continuously harassed my rear with USA cavs, threatening nasty surrounds and forcing me to use precious resources to combat the threat. I forgot about the usefulness of a solitary USA cav late in the South Mountain scenario, when my opponent, as the USA, marched 6IL way around my lines into my rear, and before I knew it I faced potentially game-changing surround problems (but my unlucky opponent lost the cav to poor extend march rolls).

Cavs can also provide one of my favorite moves, the old “ZOC-ZOC movement, no combat allowed” technique, which forces an enemy unit to burn a fatigue to disengage from a bigger unit it doesn’t want to attack. (The rule is that if a unit moves from one enemy zone of control (ZOC) to another, even if the second ZOC is from a lowly cav, the moving unit cannot attack. Thus, if a unit doesn’t want to attack an adjacent unit, and it moves into the cav’s ZOC, that’s it for the action.) In Sedgwick to the Rescue, for example, the USA was threatening to break out from Fredericksburg, with a unit threatening to either help combine the flanks by attacking an adjacent CSA unit, move and capture an objective hex or two, or, what worried me most, double back and surround my remaining CSA line around Fredericksburg and cause me big combat/retreat losses. I inserted a CSA cav to make the threatening USA unit burn a fatigue if it moved immediately to Salem Church, the direct route to surrounding my CSA line around Fredericksburg, thus more or less encouraging the unit to attack the adjacent CSA unit, and, after it did, I then went to work to break the combined flanks.

Figure 6: It’s pretty crowded around Antietam Creek midway through the last turn of McClellan’s Opportunity. From early in the game, DR Jones mans hex 2513, protecting both the northern and eastern sides of the CSA line. (Leaders’ positions not shown.)

In a pinch, cavalry units can even provide critical command radius so that a leader can transfer or activate a subordinate unit. But cavs can take a loss on the “cavalry retreat” move with 1/6 chance, which is a problem in a tight game. (The rule allows cavalry to retreat from adjacent, active infantry units, before the infantry unit can attack, but if you roll a 1 in cav retreat, the cav loses 1 manpower, which counts as a combat loss for VPs.) And if I’m worried that my cav will be attacked by overwhelming cavalry force, I may march it away, hoping to fail extend march rolls and get eliminated, or even force march it into extinction (those kind of manpower losses don’t count as VPs for the opponent). In both cases, though, that technique could fail, as a force marching unit doesn’t always take a manpower loss, and my unit could pass its extend march rolls, in which case my unit is just weaker and out of fatigues.

5. Have units do “double duty.”

I have to keep my options open for my units. I don’t normally just garrison an objective hex, for example, while enemy units are far away, or set up a defensive line and wait for the enemy units to arrive. One double duty move I did numerous times was shuttling units back and forth between fronts in retreat. In McClellan’s Opportunity (HCR), the CSA is defending across the Antietam creek to the east, and an open, narrow strip of land to the north. As the CSA, I retreated units back and forth between the two fronts. If the USA made me retreat from the one front, I tried to use the now F3 or F4 unit to reinforce the other front. Also in Mac’s Opp, I had the lynchpin between the north and east fronts (sort of a transition point) for the CSA be my strongest unit, DRJones, who thus protected both fronts. (That turned out to be my favorite hex as the CSA, 2513.) And in Sedgwick to the Rescue (SLB), the CSA is trying to hold off the USA in a two-front battle between Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, and I, as the CSA, would use a retreated unit from one front to defend against a USA breakout from the other front.

On offense, a double duty move would be threatening more than one type of nasty upcoming move. So, the USA threat in Sedgwick that I tried to defend against with the cav ZOC defense (see number 4 above), in which the USA unit had multiple ways of inflicting a very unpleasant result, would qualify as a powerful double (triple?) duty move.