Customer Reviews

Pea Ridge: The Gettysburg of the West, March 7-8 1862 (Great Battles of the Civil War, Vol. 1)

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One of the earlier games in the series, this game covers the little known "Gettysburg of the West" that was fought in the extreme northwest corner of Arkansas. Unlike battles in the east, western fields were usually more remote from "civilization", and Pea Ridge was no exception.

Both armies in this game are flawed. The Union divisions are undersized, and arrive on the field in fragmented form, while the Confederate commander has to deal with the unknown quantity that was the Missouri State Guard. The Confederate player also has huge amounts of artillery, most of which spends the first day of the battle penned up in a wooded ravine.

The battle was "formed" by the crack-brained ideas of Earl Van Dorn, who marched his entire force around a defensible Union position just off of the south edge of the game map. The surprise that he obtained through this Napoleonic action was largely offset by the dislocation that it caused with Confederate logistics. In this game, when your Confederate artillery batteries are out of ammunition, they remain that way - no resupply at all.

(You also get Albert Pike's motley band of Indian troops from the Five Civilized Tribes. Think Italian Army circa 1943, and you'll be close to the mark there.)

The Union player has a series of defensive positions that will, if he is careful, serve to delay the Confederate tide until the second day when all of his troops are at hand...

...unless he has the experience that I once had.

The Missouri State Guard, full of very large regiments of untested troops, can function as a bludgeon if things go your way. Using the system's "Seeing the elephant" rule, each of these untried units has the potential to be very poor (as they were in reality) or very good. As my mass of Show Me Staters filed onto the north-east corner of the field, my esteemed opponent decided to take the bull by the horns and pound on them good.

Unfortunately, each and every "division" of the MSG (save one of the smallest) received moral ratings that were equal to Napoleon's Old Guard. They marched south, sweeping all before them, until the Union position at Elkhorn Tavern was turned and the Union retreat turned into a rout. Ah, good times...

It's not perfect. There are some small map defects, this when comparing the game map to the actual field (which is one of the nicer parks in the National Battlefield Parks collection). (If you visit the park, you get the impression that the main part of the first day battle was fought at the tavern - in actuality, it was fought a half mile or more to the north, deep in the big ravine.)

The designer (whose great grandfather actually fought in the battle) also goofed things up with the Confederate cavalry, claiming that they were all dismounted at the time of the battle. From what I've read, they had their horses throughout, but I could see how turning the Confederate horse lose when mounted could cause game balance problems.

But, on balance, it's a great game, more playable than most in the series, and well worth multiple playings. And, if you get lucky with the Missouri State Guard, you can put the fear of God into a competent Union opponent.