Guns of Gettysburg

You might not know it if you haven't been a regular in the board game thread within the Something Awful forums, but I love reading history. My main focus of study is the 19th century and, more precisely, the American Civil War: this is one of the large reasons why I have an avatar of General Burnside with the caption "So dreamy..." (well, that and a personal joke about me having a fetish for people with sideburns, don't ask). Having been born in Italy and living in England, it might be difficult to understand why I would have an interest in the ACW, but reaching back into the furthest reaches of my memory, I think it had something to do with playing an old Amiga game called North &  South, which had delightful cartoon Northern and Southern armies, along with having a boat-load of ACW playmobil toys. I don't understand how those toys had any kind of market within northern Italy, but there you go.

I was a teenager by the time I got a chance to watch such old war classics such as Waterloo and Gettysburg: I don't really want to discuss the merits of those particular films but they did strike a chord with me. By now, I've read countless books: although I don't really dip my toes in the Napoleonic era too much, the exploits of 19th Century America are still of a great interest to me.

Guns of Gettysburg is a game that I've been waiting for ever since I heard and began playing Napoleon's Triumph. Napoleon's Triumph, as you might know, is probably one of my favourite games ever, combining some of the elements of Euros and wargames in quite a unique mixture. The levels of bluffing, maneuvering, attacking and counter-attacking make NT one of the all-time great games for me and the only that annoys me about it is that I just can't seem to play it enough. So, quite naturally, when I first heard that Bowen Simmons was making a game similar to Napoleon's Triumph but based on the battle of Gettysburg, I couldn't help but feel excited.

Unfortunately, Guns of Gettysburg was a long time coming. The game got delayed and although I was disappointed at the prospect of never playing it, there was always a part of me that hoped it would finally come out. At the start of 2013, as the Something Awful thread posted about which games they eagerly awaited for 2013, I half-jokingly mentioned Guns of Gettysburg. This was, surprisingly, only a couple of weeks before the kickstarter got announced. Reading about the kickstarter starting was an unexpected joy.

For many reasons, both financial and personal, I did not join the kickstarter: for a start, US kickstarters tend to be very, very expensive for UK residents (the only one I've shelled out for is the one for 18OE, and that's only because I believed that the game itself would never hit retail). The wait until the game hit the retailer was excruciating, but finally my favourite online retailer finally had it in stock (I even managed to make him reserve a copy for me). I bought it as soon as it was available and within the week it was within my hands. I couldn't wait to get it on the table and so the badgering of anyone with even a remote interesting in wargaming began.

The first hurdle was placing the stickers on each of the blocks: unlike Napoleon's Triumph, each block in Guns of Gettysburg is more or less unique and as such, it has its own sticker. The entire army, replacements and all, had to be stickered, something that took me at least an hour of careful application. Fortunately, a spare sticker sheet had been handily provided in case I screwed something up: with my butter-fingers, this inevitably happened.

Another difference from Napoleon's Triumph was the size of the box and the size of the board. The NT map is a gargantuan affair, while the Guns of Gettysburg box and map are relatively smaller (although the map will still take an ample part of a table).

The layout of the rules was immediately familiar for anyone with knowledge of NT, but for the first time in a long time, some of the rules and sentences did not make immediate sense to me. It is unfortunate to say that there were more than a few occasions when, after reading a sentence, I immediately thought "wait, what the hell does that even mean?" and had to re-read the sentence in question several times before I finally understood what it was attempting to say. Overall, however, the game seemed slightly easier than NT, with only some of the concepts (organisational requirements and multi-hour turns, to name a few) that seemed difficult to understand. I felt confident that I could teach this game to another even if he hadn't read the rules.

This, it was clear, was a bit foolish on my part. Although I think I've got most of the rules right now, there were several rules that I completely forgot about in my first few plays, all of which were pretty critical to the flow of the game. Guns of Gettysburg, however easier in comparison to NT, is still a difficult, complex game with many rules that are easier to miss during the course of the game.

Exploring the comparison with NT further, there are many changes within the game that distances both the aesthetics and gameplay from its predecessor. For a start, as beautiful as the NT map is, one of the main concerns I heard from people that played the game was that it was very difficult to read the various attack penalties printed on the board. For me personally, it was almost impossible for me to read the locale unit limits due to my poor eyesight.

Guns of Gettysburg fixes a lot of this by forcing blocks to always be on approach (as befits the 'long line' fighting of the Civil War as compared to the Napoleonic-style of congregating units in big corps), terming them to be 'positions'. Positions can hold up to three blocks and the relative facing of a block is determined by where the block is relative to the dividing line. Another much needed innovation is that the terrain effects that affect that position are now in front of the block, making it immediately possible at a glance to determine what terrain will affect a particular fight.

The most notable difference between the two games is that Guns of Gettysburg blocks all start at strength two (with only Union cavalry being strength one). Guns of Gettysburg blocks, however, are assigned to different divisions/corps, some of which are qualitatively better than others. The way this is reproduced is by how blocks are reduced when they take casualties.

Instead of going straight from two-strength to one-strength, the owner of a block that needs to take a reduction picks up two replacement blocks with the same division/corps name as the one taking the reduction and then lets the other player randomly decide between them. Replacement blocks can either be reduced two-strength or reduced one-strength, with specific corps/divisions having more reduced two-strength replacements and thus being more likely to go to reduced two-strength rather than reduced one-strength. Reduced two-strength blocks, however, always reduce to reduced one-strength, while the latter blocks are always eliminated. The above might sound confusing but in effect is not too difficult to understand once you get to grips with it.

From a designer standpoint, the above rules is present for two reasons: one, it allows different blocks to be qualitatively better, as stated before and two, it allows for an element of fog of war that would otherwise not be present in the game. Within NT, this is done by the starting setup and different starting strengths: within Guns of Gettysburg, the chaos of the battle will mean that eventually you will be unable to determine if what you are facing is weak one-strength units or fresh two-strength ones.

Movement within the game is limited to moving from one position to another, although changing facing can be done without counting towards the movement limit. One of the main differences is that units exert a field of fire: it is not possible to go through a field of fire unless attacking and it's not possible to exit an enemy field of fire unless withdrawing (which in this game is a separate move  action from regular marches).

The main difference between the two games, however, is the combat system and this is where another element comes in: battle tokens. In order to represent artillery within the battlefield, Guns of Gettysburg makes the use of battle tokens which are played when an attack is declared in order to either help bombard the defenders or provide defensive artillery fire. Placement of tokens is limited by the aforementioned organisational requirements: usually you have to match specific tokens to specific divisions/corps, which means that it's important to make blocks from the same division/corps stick next to each other.

From a design prospective, this is actually quite an elegant rule: it forces your units to stick organizationally together in an organic way, without forcing you to explicitly keep them together. There are no rules that mean that you have to keep the blocks near each other, but if you split them apart in an emergency, you aren't able to make use of their artillery tokens, making them less effective than if they had stayed together.

The combat system is one of the major ways in which the game has been overhauled. After declaring an attack, the defender places his battle tokens face down in positions that have a field of fire. After he's done, the attacker places his tokens, with every three cannon symbols knocking out an enemy artillery token. After the attacker is done, any remaining defensive artillery causes one reduction per three cannon symbols in the defense, with ridges potentially providing more.

Once the artillery phase is over, the leading units for the attack/defense are shown and various modifiers are given to find an end result (much like NT). Some of the modifiers are things like fighting on a steep position, or flanking threats or even, for the confederates, a +1 for simply attacking. A result of 1 or above is a victory for the attackers. If the result was at or below -2, only the attacker takes a reduction, between -1 and +1, both sides take a reduction, while on +2 only the defender takes a reduction. Attackers that lose are forced to retreat immediately, while defenders have to perform a mandatory retreat during their own turn.

Another element that I have not discussed before and which relates to withdrawals is General Orders. Within NT, command and control is modeled through the use of a limited number of actions for corps/independent units, with the Allies having less options than Napoleon's army. Within Guns of Gettysburg, the command and control system does not limit the number of blocks you can move, but limits HOW you can move them. At the end of your turn, you can give one of three General Orders for your next turn: attack, hold or withdraw. You can only attack during attack General Orders and likewise, you can only withdraw during Withdraw General Orders.

This means that there is always a level of uncertainty, since a position that you thought was tenable could suddenly collapse and since you didn't give the correct order last turn, there's no way you can protect it! Fore planning and ability to spot trouble before it happens is very important in this game, especially since units cannot move unless they withdraw/attack if they are within the field of fire of an enemy.

One of the most difficult aspects of the game is multi-hour turns, which also tie in on how reinforcement works. Bowen Simmons, rather than give a 100% historically accurate reproduction of a battle, has stated several times in the past that he prefers to give the players the essence of the battle, the reason why the battle is different/important/interesting. For Austerlitz, this was the importance of the French reinforcements and the uncertainty of where the Allied attack was coming from.. For Marengo, this was the initial bottle-neck followed by the open battle.

For Guns of Gettysburg, the main essence of the battle is uncertainty. Neither side knew where exactly the enemy was, or how far they were away, or how soon their own reinforcements were going to come. Neither sides had even planned to fight at Gettysburg in the first place! This uncertainty is reproduced in the game through the use of double-blind reinforcement schedules: each hour, you draw a reinforcement token which tells you both if you get a reinforcement or not and from which road the reinforcements come if you do. Reinforcements can either come in off-road (in which case you bring them in next to the board edge all at once) or on-road, which allows a block to move up a road as many spaces as it wants as long as it doesn't enter an enemy field of fire. The latter, however, is limited to one block per hour.

This, however, causes an issue: lets say that the Confederates get lucky and get lots of reinforcement early on while the Union player barely gets any. If the objectives were in a fixed placed, this would undoubtedly make the job of the Confederate easier. However, if the situation was reversed and the Union player had lots of reinforcements, then it would be almost impossible for the Army of Northern Virginia to win. These sort of imbalances are prevented by allowing the union player to move the objective markers if he gets less reinforcements than the Confederate player, making it possible to keep the game more or less balanced even in extreme situations. The game is won when the Confederate player controls an objective and the Union player cannot attack anymore (either due to night starting or the union player running out of battle tokens, since at least one has to be used in order to be able to attack). If the Union player manages to last three days without the above occurring, then he wins.

Since turns in Guns of Gettysburg are still hour-long, this might suggest that games would ordinarily last THREE TIMES as long as NT, but this largely is not the case (although generally games still last longer than NT games). This is due to the aforementioned multi-hour turns, which can be called if neither player has called an attack general order in the previous turn. Multi-hour turns allow for increased movement and allow you to draw additional reinforcement tokens and this section alone accounts for a large degree of complexity within the system: it's necessary to track when a reinforcement appears in order to determine how much further it can march etc. Still, multi-hour turns do seem to do their job in speeding up the gameplay considerably.

So, in general, how does Guns of Gettysburg stack up to Napoleon's Triumph? It is clear, from the start, that there is one critical element that distances the two games. While Napoleon's Triumph is noted for its complete lack of random elements, Guns of Gettysburg brings to the table not one, but three distinct randomization mechanisms: reinforcements schedules, battle tokens and reduction system. For that alone, it is clear that die-hard fans of NT might be slightly dissapointed when approaching Guns of Gettysburg, but even taking that in consideration, the randomness of the game is far lower than most other wargames.

As well as that, some of the randomization allows the game to have a much higher replay-ability factor. Although it is possible to play with the historical reinforcement schedule, the fact that the schedule is different from game to game leads to remarkably different games: one game, the Confederates might have their back against the wall while in another, the Union could be pushed back almost immediately. The only thing that made games of NT different was how the Allied player dealt with his initial setup.

Some other issues with the game center around the relative immobility of units: there are penalties in calling a withdrawal which can lead to units staying static in a position until they finally attack (something which is especially true for the Confederate player). Due to defensive fire causing reductions (while attacking fire only knocks out enemy artillery or gives modifiers to combat), a botched attack that faces a lot of artillery can literally destroy an entire division/corps in one blow and with defenders getting their artillery back, it can often be a fatal blow.

Although the objective system is balanced against reinforcements received by either side, there's no morale collapse like in NT. This can lead to weird scenarios in which the Union fight to retain objectives which have ended up in relatively silly places: the field in front of the Angle or the Peach Orchard, which for some reason HAVE TO BE TAKEN BACK even though there's a nice safe defensible ridge behind them.

Lastly, as stated at the start of this review, the rule book can be difficult to digest and there are some rules which are very, very easy to miss in the first playthroughs. However, anyone with even a passing familiarity of NT should be able to understand them relatively easily especially since some of the systems (especially the one for combat) are much easier than the relevant system in NT.

Even when taking in consideration the minor niggles above (which to me are minor, thanks to the immeasurable bias that I have towards this game), the game does one thing well: reproduce if not the actual battle of Gettysburg itself, but the feeling and 'quiddity' of the battle. General Orders, the qualitative dominance of the Confederates, the numerical dominance of the Union, the uncertainty of the reinforcement schedule, the flanking line battles, the desperate charges, the killing fields created by artillery placed on ridges, the restrictions created by rough terrain, they are all elements which add up to a surprisingly realistic simulation of a civil war battle.

This game doesn't reproduce THE Battle of Gettysburg, but it reproduces a possible battle, one coloured by chance and by your own choices. Maybe this is the time when the Union managed to hold the field North-West of Gettysburg! The possibilities are end-less and they are not tied down by a strict adherence to history. This is something that would seem sacrosanct to a wargamer and history fanatic but in this case, it doesn't matter. This is what exploring alt-history should feel like and in this alone, the game delivers.

I cannot overstate how happy the mere existence of this game makes me. Although mechanistically I feel the game is weaker than NT, it does not seem to matter since all of the rules contribute so much in creating such a unique feel within the game. And although in good conscience I cannot rate it as highly as NT, the era depicted in Guns of Gettysburg is of such interest to me that I cannot help but be naturally biased into liking it more. In terms of my chief interest in boardgames, that of visual storylines, both game deliver in abundance, with the battle lines of Gettysburg eerily reminiscent of many of the battle maps present within the ACW books that I've read.

It is impossible for me to truly be objective about this game. Maybe if the issues with this game were larger and more obvious, then maybe I would not rate it as highly, but they seem so minor to me that they are completely negligible. It's even difficult for me to end this review, as I love this game so much, but I am filled with the fear that maybe the words of praise are only said due to my own inherent bias towards the game and era. Maybe my score, which is 9 scowling King Philips out of 10, reflects this bias, but I really hope this will not be the case when you finally get a chance to play the game and thus confirm how wonderful this game is.