Post by Douglas SIs 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 ***@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