The scenario was of one of the few night battles of the ACW... part of the 1863 Chattanooga Campaign after the Union debacle at Chicamauga, when a force under Joe Hooker, attempting to secure the "Cracker Line" for Northern supplies to the beleaguered city was attacked by a Confederate force including some Army of Northern Virginia veterans under Longstreet... i.e. Hood's Division. There were four Union and three Rebel players with PJ, who put this excellent scenario together, serving as game master. I got the unenviable assignment to portray Union General Geary. My brittle (an unknown to me number of losses would crack it's morale and cause the entire division to withdraw off the table) two Brigade Division was guarding a key town on the rail line using a hill to anchor its defense. Hood's Division (Jenkin's Brigade), commanded by our host Larry, which had the elite Hampton's Legion (a 16 figure Elite Regiment!), was poised to attack the hill when the game began. I had a small Brigade behind skirmishers with the game's sole 2 section 101b. Parrot rifled artillery, the only artillery stand in the entire game, protected by a veteran 12 figure infantry regiment on either side with a third regiment as reserve in the rear..r just in case a countercharge was necessary. My second Brigade was to the hill's right corking up a gap between the hill and a stream. The long table (10') had three roads coming from its short north edge which converged at a junction on the road parallel to the rail line leading into the town my Division was defending. Hooker's relief force was composed of three Brigades. One Brigade, under a gamer named Dan, took the western road. A second Brigade under Carl took the middle road with a late arriving gamer taking command of a Brigade following up on it's wake. The "wrinkle" with this game was that the action takes place at night. The first two turns were conducted "off table" using paper maps and to scale "cutouts" of the various regiments, (Magnetic) When contact was achieved, both sides forces were fully placed on the table. However, that wasn't the end of it. At the beginning of each turn two dice were rolled and their result was the night time "visibility" allowed (however, no roll less than four could occur). Dan's orders were to march as swiftly as possible to my aid. The other Brigades taking the middle road put out a line a skirmishers to screen a sinister looking ridge and hill which we presumed were loaded with Rebels. They were. The Confederates came charging off the ridge to blow the reinforcing brigade behind Carl's back off the critical supply road. This included killing two Union Generals. Carl's Brigade, although a bit battered, held a key road junction at game's end and forestalled further Rebel advance. It was Dan's five regiment Brigade which proved the heroes of the day. As he marched to my relief, his multiple regiment column in line of road march, with a supply wagon of munitions, was attacked in the rear by a Confederate Brigade coming off the hill commanded by Steve, a good buddy of many years going back to our "Bronx Youth". It seemed the entire Union column would be rolled up and destroyed. Luck, however, intervened BIG time (what else is new with gaming?). In Johnny Reb III, one must roll three dice (open) for charge bonus distance and Steve rolled a paltry 5. This meant he'd only catch the wagon and a single Federal Regiment. Then, in the "dice down" combat where the lower of 2 two dice rolls with modifiers wins... Dan rolls a three and Steve box cars (12)! The Union was forced back, but with only the loss of a single figure from a 12 figure regiment. Union catastrophe averted. (GM note- We use a custom "Charge Impact Results Table" where the modified dice-down difference determines the severity of the result- in this case, even though the charger won, it was by so little that there was no breakthrough and little loss to the defender) In the ensuing battles, Dan's two regiment force routed the larger Rebel Brigade into ignominious retreat (more fantastic die rolling) so that at game's end Steve's force, with several regiments having red rout markers, had to abandon the field and any chance of cutting the supply road or coming to Hood's assistance. Dan was able to send three regiments in support of Geary's beleaguered Division. As to my defensive force, I benefited by very limited visibility die rolls which prevented all effective fire combat save within primary 4" range. (GM noteFire outside of visability is one less D6) This deprived the Rebels of "softening up" my hill defenses with long range rifle fire. Hood did have three stands of sharpshooters who proved devastatingly effective when a seemly paltry hit on a regiment protecting the hill's right flank compelled me to roll two dice for morale. I rolled "snake eyes" which caused the regiment to rout and run to the rear. The reserve regiment behind it, upon seeing the rout, then had to roll for morale itself. I immediately rolled another "snake eyes"!!!! By the time all the morale die rolling was finished, all three of that Brigade's regiments had red rout markers upon them and had moved towards the edge of the table where by game's end I had rallied most of them. Fortunately, Dan's regiments were coming up on the Reb rear and the regiment in best position to exploit the gaping hole left by my panicked troops had to do an about-face and confront the oncoming threat. That left my unsupported Brigade on the hill to face Longstreet's finest. However, being unable to use long-range fire meant the Confederates had to move in close. My close rifle fire forced one regiment of skirmishers to retreat and when Hampton's Legion with another Reb Regiment charged the hill a dose of double canister from the Union artillery stand sent them reeling back. I then moved up a reserve regiment inflict "moving fire" hits on the packed mass of disorganized Rebs. The following turn another Confederate Regiment again charged the Hill to overrun the now "Canisterless" Union guns... however, they were countercharged by a Federal Reserve regiment which lost the "dice down" (GM note- the "Holding" unit failed a BMP roll and charged in disorder)(more cruddy die rolling by yours truly) and was forced back, but left the disordered Reb Regiment alone atop the hill surrounded by several Union regiments. Simultaneous with that charge, I launched a charge of my own which overran and captured what was left of one regiment and then moved on to engage the two disengaging Confederate Regiments in the rear and maul them. (GM- a disengaging unit caught by a charge does not fire in the first round of Melee) By game's end my Division had survived with negligible loss while the original attacking force was reduced to two regiments in danger of being surrounded and annihilated themselves. Being routed is not being dead and it was eliminated Union figures which determined victory. This was all fairly standard Johnny Reb Ill tactics and nothing particularly brilliant on my part. I only took advantage of the opportunities presented... made possible by Dan's Brigade coming up on the Confederate rear. One of the "post mortem" speculations of what "might have been" concerned whether the Rebs made a mistake by not force marching a single regiment of skirmishers to delay Dan's advance towards my support. So although the Rebs held a small section of the supply road near the northern end of the table, Dan's defensive miracle in the Center and my holding the hill with Geary's Division (as they did historically) resulted in a Union victory. A good and entertaining time was had by all. (GM-note- And this was only the South end of the table !) Back to Dispatch January 2003 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com