The central position in attack: Gettysburg Day 1

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"I was playing as the Confederate player and had a Union opponent who defended about a ridge to the west of Herr Ridge and he seemed bent upon sacrificing his cavalry. Which, I should add that I was happy to cooperate with."

Your opponent has misread the situation. As we know there is no need to defend that far west. The situation is really delicate for the Union cavalry as you don't want to get the 1st Division chewed up but you can't allow the rebels to easily take McPhereson's ridge. "Fire & fall back" is very well for Herr's Ridge but at McPhereson's you need to make a stand. Jonny

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Yes, I'd agree with that assessment. He was also content enough to stay in a forward line from McPherson's Ridge up and around the north end of Gettysburg town. I was able to establish that this was going to be the main defensive line (I have no idea why -- but as Rod Stieger as Napoleon in Waterloo said: "never interrupt your opponent when he's making a mistake." (As an aside - I rarely get interrupted :eek1: -which probably says something ). At any rate I let him have this extended line and chose to stay mostly out of sight, and take my reinforcements with the idea of fighting against what I figured had to be an overextended line, and one that used the XI Corps for a significant portion of his defensive frontage. I suppose, in short, I chose not to launch the II Corps on day one against the north flank- but took the high ground as it was vacated (vantage points).

I launched a dawn attack with elements of the the III and II Corps most of which were fresh and was able to get to a victory level by attrition without needing to take any of the traditional VP hexes ( Little Round Top, Cemetary Hill, Culp's Hill), which put my opponent in to the position of having to attack me in order to not lose the game.

Mind you that was the one time I played the 3 day scenario as the CSA (I played it as Union with a similar result - but a different way of getting there).

The point I am trying to make, is that it seems that when on the attack, you may not need to push right in to things, and your opponent can put you in a position by their own play.

Anyways... I never get tired of talking about Gettysburg gaming.