Pickett's Charge

This is a bit of a late report on last Sunday at Gauntlet.

Steve from the Deeside club brought along a large collection of, now out of production, Gordon and Hague 10mm plastic ACW figures and we played under the benevolent eye of Will McNally.

Now I've no interest at all in the American Civil War.  Pretty much by accident I've amassed a significant collection of 20mm plastic ACW figures but every time I look at them entirely zero enthusiasm for the period ignites in my brain.  However, even I have heard of the Battle of Gettysburg.  I know that Pickett's charge was part of the action and that it represented "the high watermark of the Confederacy".  And there my knowledge ends.

I was struggling to get to grips with how things were supposed to work, particularly as Will was using the recently published ACW supplement to the Black Powder  rules.  However, as a Union commander (no way was I, as a definite leftie, going to play a representative of the slave-holding South) all a had to do was stand there and wait.

And wait I did, on the extreme right of the Union line, with Jamie on my left and Gary to the left of him. We had lots of soldiers, but then so did the enemy.

Apparently "the angle" was an important landmark on the battlefield.  The two walls, below, are it.

Large numbers of Rebels approached...

And eventually crashed into our line...

At first we held them off...

But eventually they pushed us back.  I think the High water mark of the Confederacy might have been a bit higher in our case but because the Confederate attack off on my left had been so definitively defeated, the general view was that the Gauntlet version of history wasn't going to be so different from the real thing.

Overall I enjoyed the game - it was great to get to know some more of the Deeside lads.  I'd like to have a better idea of what was going on, though.