From: Chuck Lietz Subject: Bloodiest Day While on vacation last weekend, I had a chance to play Antietam-Bloodiest Day by Spearhead with my brother. The first game involved some getting used to the system and by the time we figured things out, Jackson was dead and Hooker and Mansfield had crushed the Rebel left. We decided to play a second time and this time it went a little better but some strange things came up that maybe I'm doing wrong: 1) It seems that the +2 modifier for each additional unit is too high for assault combats. This led to some killer stacks being formed of as many units as you could pile into an area. To combat this, I as the rebel tried a using a thin line of one INF unit in an area with a large stack as a "mobile reserve" to immediately counter-attack a killer stack's incursion. This seems quite ahistorical and I'm wondering if anyone else experienced this. 2) The turn ending roll can be devastating for the Rebels and seems a little too "gamey" for my tastes. In the second game, I was getting hit hard on the Rebel left but had just moved Jackson up to take out Hooker. I caused about 13 CP's or so which left most of his units spent and retreated on about Impulse 4. Mansfield moves in with his killer stack and causes only about 5-6 CP's due to the Rebel "8" strength unit being a little more likely to withstand a killer stack's attack. I then assaulted Mansfield back and caused some serious CP's again leaving most of units spent and retreated. I was just ready to start finishing off the spent units when my brother rolls a "3" on the impulse roll. ALL of those units then bounce back to fresh and then proceed to dismantle my killer stack due to a bad roll/good roll. It just seemed too strange to have every unit immediately come back to optimum fighting strength all at the same time. This seems to make things tough on the Rebels as an early end to a turn will not allow them to finish off spent units which is bad news. 3) Rules question: If during an assault you have some spent units retreat but other units remain and have a leader present, can you retreat the leader with the spent units? I looked in the 2nd edition rulebook and couldn't find anything one way or another but I could have missed something. 4) Rules question: Do the unattached Rebel units such as Evans and ANV ARTY count as units of different divisions for purposes of the OT modifiers for Assault and Volley combat? Again, I checked the rulebook but may have missed it. All in all, while the game was kind of interesting and sort of fun, the way we were playing it failed so far on the historical accuracy side that I found myself with a mild dislike of the game at this point. The problem quite frankly is that the concentration of a force of 10 units attacking power on one defending unit just doesn't seem possible. Couple that with the "Kreskin's Mass Spell of Heroism" that rallies all units on the board when the turn ends and it made for a disconcerting gaming experience. However, I will try again and probably see if They Met at Gettysburg has corrected some of this. Oh, for the record I lost again as the Rebels in the second game but it was fairly close as Burnside never got going but L'il Mac got the center rolling just in time to attack when Hooker and Mansfield were weakened to the breaking point. I had to deal with the threat to my center and wasn't able to deal with my left in time to kill enough units to turn the tide. Thanks for reading! Chuck