Inaugural Challenge FoF AAR

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

I showed last turn an eg of how Disease can be pretty devastating, well here is a screenshot of how it can turn out if the Medical attribute has been used.



The corps I ordered in Richmond 2 turns ago has arrived in the James River province; below is a screenshot of it after flaging up (all Corps have the ‘Stainless banner’, divs the ‘Stars & bars) & renaming 2nd Corps Dixie.



In the Corps info box you will see that it’s disposition is Rebellious, this is because it has no commander (3 or 4 star Gen) or troops in, that will soon be rectified. While we are here note the ‘Logistical & Command Staff’ ratings both Normal (not at all bad), it is the improvement of these ratings that you build Academies for. Every so often a message will appear in the Event reports that for eg that the academy in Norfolk had raised 1s Corps Shenandoah logistics to good, command to excellent.

Along the bar where ‘Rebellious’ is printed are little boxes with symbols in that denote the state of or actions the Corps can do, eg the 1st one (with a minus sign in it ) shows that 2nd corps is on Low priority for supply, the X is for disbanding the container, the explosion (the symbols colour up when activated) is for setting the Corps to plunder a city during sieges, white one with crossed sword is the Units History (obviously nothing in there yet), the piece of paper is to look at past ‘Unit orders’, the crossed Swords toggles between ‘Seek battle/Avoid battle, then the line of arrow heads is a toggle between normal/forced marches, and finally ‘Engineering orders’ is a dropdown menu for Siege orders or repairing forts. Phew, hope you are remembering all this, questions will be asked Later!



The ‘Political report’ from the start of the turn shows that Twiggs div did succeed in reducing Unrest but no mention of Bobby Lee doing so in Norfolk, although he was busy raising the quality of Richmond def 2nd Grs. Amongst the other ‘Bits & bobs’ it shows what happened with my Runners in the previous turn, the damaged one I will run into New Orleans to effect repairs (the unrest should have cleared by then.

Right let’s get on with our actual game.

Movement

In line with my ‘Movement to confuse’ gambit, this turn I am pulling 1st Corps out of Shenandoah to Lynchburg, where Lorings Franklin div will detach (by doing that in Lynchburg I’m hoping that ‘Fog of War’ will prevent him seeing where it goes etc.), 1st corps will then continue to Fredericksburg to rejoin ANV. Loring meanwhile will move towards Chattanooga with the idea of joining up with 2nd Corps when it arrives, it will, while waiting 2nd corps arrival bolster the defence of the Knoxville/Chattanooga region. ANV will stay put in Fredericksburg.

From the newly available 1 star Generals in James River I assign McLaws, Hodge & Buckner to 2nd corps which I then move by rail to Greensborough, there, Johnston (4 star gen previously with 1st Corps) joins as Corps commander, the Ft Caswell Grs is also added so the container is not empty. I set 2nd corps to avoid battle in the unlikely event of it bumping into Feds, I also send it via the southern rail network to add to that unlikelihood, I aim it for Rome (the province below Chattanooga), which uses up all but 1 of my 10 RR movement points for this turn.

Out West, I send Van Dorns small Texas div to the Arkansas River to beef up Little Rock defence and also assign 15th inf to his div, this is in case Feds push further south and into Arkansas. With Baton Rouge Unrest down to 1 I’ll gamble and move Twiggs north again towards Memphis, and McCulloch, I order from Ozarks to Westport to create some mischief.



Hope this can be seen on the Screenshot (shown after the move).

Prices Missouri State Guard (MSG) in Paducah has the opportunity of a raid against the city of Louisville (Ohio river); as that city has no garrison (no little green dot/s below it) I’ll take a risk on driving MSG between Fed forces and hopefully capture his undefended city, they will move via the Lower Tennessee river to the West Ohio river and if all goes well I’ll take the city ... if not I’ll just have egg all over my face! There is no guarantee the move will succeed as weather may intervene, I may fail my initiative roll & I’m driving through enemy territory where he may be moving his forces, we’ll see.

The newly promoted Thomas Jackson (2 star) was set to auto join Lee with the 11th James River div

That wraps up moves I think so on to

Builds

Quite a busy turn topping up Medical attributes, 8th inf in Texas div, 26th inf James River Div and Ft Hatteras grs, who were also armed with Mini rifles as were the Stonewall bgd. Ft Donelson grs in the Cumberland Gap were given Mississippi Rifles as they may have visitors soon + the medical attribute lest disease strikes and we are unable to give our visitors a proper welcome.

Finally before it left Paducah (you can’t arm/rearm or give attribute in enemy territory or if enemy units are in the same province) 2nd Cav was given state of the art Breech loading Carbines for the Louisville raid.

Continuing my strategic aims for the rail network a RR was ordered built in Atlanta.

Apologies to the armchair tourists but something went wrong with the Shreveport shot :( , our tour of the Confederacy will continue at a later date.

Please note these reports may slow up or not turn up at all the next few days as I’m back at work for 4 nights and have a fair few other games to deal with as well, we’ll see.

That’s it for now, catch you later.

All the Best
Peter