Gettysburg- 1964 by Avalon Hill Game Review

 Gettysburg- 1964 from Avalon Hill

This is the first in a possible series of game reviews and adjacent topics with the intent to examine gaming culture of the early to mid-1970s.  With an ultimate goal of learning and understanding Original Dungeons and Dragons as it was played at its inception, before it was influenced by the new upcoming release of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, as well as broader pop cultural influences such as Star Wars.  I hope to look at mid 70s board wargaming mostly at games produced by Avalon Hill, but also at miniature wargaming at the time, the great sword and sorcery and science fiction literature of the time, and also the influence of things like chess, Diplomacy, and the early Braunsteins run by Dave Wesley to get a frame of reference as to what a gamers life was like in the mid-70s, and how they would have been informed and prepared to read the 3 little brown books of OD&D and interpret the intended way to play it.  But those conversations are for the future, right now I’d like to do a review of Avalon Hill’s 1964 version of the classic Gettysburg.  

In looking at some history of Avalon Hill videos, and in reading Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World, this seems a very popular and universally known and played game from the late 60s and early 70s.  It was common to see ads in The General, Avalon Hills newsletter, from gamers looking for opponents in their area to play Gettysburg.  Gettysburg was among the first releases from Avalon Hill, who basically started the board wargaming movement.  Prior to Avalon Hill and its founder Charles Roberts, wargaming was of the miniature variety, and required participants to figure out for themselves what ruleset, miniatures, terrain, and board they intend to use.  Board wargaming made all of this more accessible by giving players all of the components of wargaming in a convenient box.  

Gettysburg from a rules perspective is extremely stripped down, and I can’t help but imagine that there likely were some house rules added and agreed upon by players to sustain interest and playability in the game.  It has a beautiful retro looking map with lots of terrain features on it and many of the historically known sites from the battle of Gettysburg such as Little Round Top.  However, the terrain has almost no effect on the game, roads do not aid movement, crossing rivers does not hinder movement.  The only terrain effect is that defending from a hill or ridge in combat doubles the defender's combat value.  The other rule that affects combat is the game has facing, you can pivot your units facing at the end of each turn, and attacking a unit's flank or rear can double or triple an attackers combat value.  Other than that it is a game of positioning, planning the addition of reinforcements and the time it takes them to get to the battle, as you play out the order of battle over the 3 days of Gettysburg.  There is a standard Combat Results Table or CRT, this table is the crux of most board wargames.  You calculate the ratio of odds of attacker vs defender, reference that column on a chart, and a single die roll tells you the results of each combat.  You have the added tactic of “soaking off”, or intentionally setting up one of your combats to be at very poor odds, so that the remaining units can fight in such a way that they have very favorable odds.  These CRTs always favor the defender, so great planning on the part of the attacker is required to set up combats in such a way that the attacker has a chance of winning the combat.  

This is a game that I purchased off of ebay a few months ago, and I clipped the corners on the chits, and set it up a few times, but I found solo play to be impossible.  Perhaps with some kind of oracle you could solo play this, but it wasn’t until my wife agreed to play a game with me did it really reveal its tactical fun.  I let her pick what side she wanted to play since she was so gracious as to play a stuffy old wargame with me, and she picked the South.  I warned her that the South is at a bit of a disadvantage, explained the basic rules and that defending from a hill was a wise play, and she affirmed that she still wanted to play the South and was up for the challenge.  The game for the North is basically hold out in the early game as they over time receive a lot more reinforcements, then try to single out parts of their army in advantageous combats.  We found that with the South, castling units on ridges and hills and being aggressive early on when the South has their cannons but the North's cannons have not yet arrived are both good plays.  Our game did not develop into combat in several sections of the board, the South used the hills in the NW of the board to draw my troops who mainly were coming from the south and east into long marches across the board.  We played for about an hour and a half and 24 turns into the game, we both saw the inevitable end of the South as they just did not have enough reinforcements.  Despite losing, my wife said if we played again, she would want to play the South again, as she had some new ideas for different strategies.  

The game is very historically accurate, you get an order of battle that is the same from the historical record, troops arrive from the correct road that they historically were at, and there are chits in the game representing all of the generals that commanded the different units.  However, the HQ chits have no bearing on the game, they do not fight, and have no zones of control.  At one point in the game some of the HQ chits were kind of in the way on the board, blocking the best paths into combat, and we wondered if that was the intent of the pieces, but no it clearly states in the rules that they have no effect on the game.  There are certainly areas where some simple house rules could enhance gameplay such as more terrain effects, and doing something useful with HQ units.  I have seen in other iterations of the rules that HQ units can defend only and they defend on a 1, so it is possible that there are some minor rules changes in other versions of the 1964 release.  This game was redone several times, once in the late 70s, and again in the 80s, and from what I’ve read both of these updates are vastly different games with a lot more complexity than the1964 version, so take note if you are in the market for this game.