Union Strategy - Dan Cicero

After a couple of playings of Champion Hill, it seemed clear to me that concentration of the Union force was necessary to drive the Confederates off the hill. Grant's force numbered about 32,000 at the battle; Pemberton's only 22,000. To offset the their numerical inferiority, the Confederates have a positional advantage, starting the game at the top of Champion Hill. Heavy woods surround the top of the hill, restricting infantry movement to two hexes per turn. Moving artillery into an attack position is very difficult for the Union, so it tends to be a straight-ahead infantry fight. I took full advantage of CWB series (version 3.0) rule 10.1i: "Pre-Set Orders. These orders represent the commander's initial plan for the battle.... These orders are accepted before the game begins." I ordered the divisions of Osterhaus, Smith and Blair to move to support Hovey and Logan. Those two divisions were ordered south, up Champion Hill. Carr's Division was to continue west, keeping an eye on the Middle Road.

Tom's an aggressive player, and he's not new to this situation. Champion Hill is the key to the game and I expected him to put up the best possible fight for it by moving the divisions of Bowen and Loring north to meet the threat. Two of Bowen's brigades, Cockrell's and Green's, concerned me particularly. Francis Cockrell was one of the most experienced combat officers on the field that day and his Missourians, with their A Morale Rating, are a tough nut to crack.

My goals for the game were to control Champion Hill and send a small force to the bridge west of the hill. At the beginning of the game, I wasn't sure whose troops that might be, but I wanted to avoid Reynolds's brigade entering the game at 4:00 Pm, which would have given the Confederates more firepower on my flank and more victory points.

I also wanted to try to take the victory points by pushing south, over the top of Champion Hill, but I realized that was a long shot, a target of opportunity.

Confederate Strategy - Tom DeFranco

My strategy was simply to get as many people on Champion Hill, the most prominent height in the area, as space will allow. Stevenson, already posted on the hill, has a big division of decent quality troops. Stevenson also has the dubious honor, though, of having several defensive tasks to accomplish simultaneously. His orders state that he "is to defend the crossroads at 28.17 (directly south of the hill) in order to defend Champion Hill, maintain the roadblock, to defend the Confederate left flank by protecting the Jackson Road extension from the crossroads to 29.06." Further, if one or more of the positions fall, he must still attempt to defend the remaining locations. That poor guy needs help. Bowen's people are just the ones to provide that help. There are no Federal troops to his front, he commands the closest Confederate maneuver elements and he is rated "4," just the type of guy to use his initiative (despite Pemberton's -1" anti-initiative rating). If I could get enough people on that hill, or near it, I could create one large dogfight and force the Federal troops to get tunnel vision attacking that hill, forgetting their most important mission--that of completely cutting off the Confederate forces denying him any egress across Jackson Creek. Loring, whose division lies on the southern flank of the field, begins the battle with Union troops to his immediate front, so he's staying put. That's just in case the Union Army decides to make a fight of it down there, too. Plus, directly behind Loring lies the second route of egress across the Jackson Creek. Of course, if the Union player destroys the Confederate Army of Mississippi, he walks into Vicksburg, anyway. Thus, it couldn't hurt to have one intact Confederate division at battle's end.

Something that scares me is the original set up location of the Confederate HQ. They're ripe to be overrun. I know because I felt the sting of having my HQ overrun by Dan in an earlier face-to-face meeting (our first game together, by the way). I therefore determined that the best thing to do would be to move Army HQ to the crossroads just south of the hill. CWB rules version 3.0 don't allow for immediate Army Headquarters movement anymore, so I sweated bullets (well, maybe minie balls) waiting to get them moving to what I thought, at the time, would be safety.

One of the things that makes Dan such a great opponent is his willingness to shake things up a bit, to do the unexpected. This game is one which allows the player (especially the Union player, given his attack stance) to explore a variety of different options to go about destroying the opposition. I felt that I was about to learn another way as the game progressed.

More Two Hard Weeks

Introduction
Champion Hill Set Up
Champion Hill Strategy
The Armies Clash
After the Battle