From: sos@panix.com (Steffan O'Sullivan) Subject: Re: Avalon Hill Gettysburg 1959, 1961, or 1964? duglis@adelphia.net wrote: >Is anyone here familiar with these 3 versions of this battle by >AH? Each one is apparantly different from the other. >If so, can you explain the differences and which one in your opinion >is best? I've played them all, but it's been a while. 1958 Gettysburg was my first wargame, and I still have it. It's basically a miniatures game played on a board. The board has 1" (25mm) squares, but they didn't govern movement. Instead they allowed a grid for tracking hidden movement and allowed you a rough gauge to be sure your - and your opponent's - movement was really kosher. You can swivel the pieces on their centers as you move, and you get bonuses for flank attacks. Infantry pieces are long rectangles, cavalry a bit shorter at 1" by .5", artillery shorter still, and HQs and outposts are .5" squares. The board is very attractive for its time, and the higher hills are shown with denser lines. The only really wonky thing about the game is the odds table. If you get, for example, 7-3 odds there was no "round in favor of the defender" rule that most AH games soon adapted. That is, in the 1960s AH games, that would become 2-1. In '58 Gettysburg, you roll a die (not sure if a single die roll suffices or each side rolls one - dosen't matter for this point). You adjust either the 7 or the 3 depending on the die roll. If it's still not exact odds, you repeat the die roll. Thus it's possible to convert 7-3 to 7-2 and then to 8-2, which becomes 4 to 1! You can use later odds charts if you prefer... 1958 Gettysburg was before hexes were used in wargames. In 1961, Charles Roberts first adapted hexes, and came out with an astonishing number of hex wargames that year. It's hard to tell which one was the "first" hex wargame, but I seem to remember him once writing that it was D-Day. But I've heard Chancellorsville from someone else, so am not sure. At any rate, 1961 Gettysburg is hex based with all .5" counters. Our group in those days found it plodding and tedious after the freeform magic that was 1958. And this was not just because of the hexes: we took to the other hex games like fish to water. 1961 was popular with other gaming groups of the time, but never with us. I happily traded it away before 1967 sometime. I never owned 1964 Gettysburg, but my wargaming buddy did. We thought, since it had squares, that it was a return to the 1958 edition, by then long out of print. Since he loved my 1958, he bought a 1964. What a disappointment! There were 1" squares, all right, but they now regulated movement. Gone were the miniature rules. Enfilading didn't work, the game was severely broken. Mind you, this impression is now nearly 40 years old, but still strong. I was bummed and still feel the pain. I remember no other details - we tried it twice, I think, rereading the rules between playings to be sure we'd gotten it right the first time. To our high-school taste of those days, it stank. He made copies of my movement range cards from 1958 and used those rules with it - much better! In short, to my tastes, 1958 (with some odds table modification and not using the hidden movement rules, which were tedious) is clearly head and shoulders the best of the lot. I concede I may be prejudiced by the fact that it was my first wargame, bought before hexes were even used in wargames, but we did love it so and played it so much some pieces wore out. We never could stand to play the others more than a few times. -- Steffan O'Sullivan sos@panix.com Plymouth, NH, USA ---------------------- http://www.panix.com/~sos --------------------- "You can no more win a war than win an earthquake." -Jeanette Rankin, first woman elected to US congress