Battle of Nashville 1864

Hood Tries to Redeem Himself

We played the Battle of Franklin several months ago, so it was only fitting that we go on and finish this theater with the Battle of Nashville. The battlefield is quite large and we had some space limitations, so we had to cut off a few feet from one of the edges, which in the end did not have that much of an impact anyway. As in real life, the Union assault was massive and hit the Confederates in several places. In our replay the few Confederate divisions that were in place when the attack began did a good job of barely hanging on until reinforcements could arrive. This was one of those scenarios where one side really needs to do well at the start and here it should have been the Union, but things didn't go as they had planned. For one thing a few smaller Confederate brigades held their ground much longer than anticipated and a viscious counterattack on the right flank not only stabilized that flank, but almost split the Union forces in half. The Union forces kept coming and applied pressure at several points along the line. In one instance they punched a hole and it looked as if the game was going to be over early, but the opening couldn't be exploited quickly enough. The Confederate reinforcements began to arrive and set up a second defensive line as well as providing desperately needed reserves. The Union did get over the Confederate lines in several places by the end of the game, but by that time the Confederates had several fresh divisions in the area. This was an ambitious game and there was no way we were going to finish it in one night! In fact, we estimated that we were only halfway through the battle with things still very much in doubt. The Union had taken some serious casualties, but then they could afford those kinds of losses due to their numbers advantage. The Confederates had, however, held long enough for more troops to arrive and most importantly, had suffered few losses. Overall it was a very fun game that we will have to try again with the full set up and make sure that we allocate at least double the amount of hours to play it.