Brandy Station (2005) - Full play-through

Description provided by Nathan Wailes Gaming on YouTube:

I didn't grow up playing hex-and-counter wargames and I'm finding that magazine games are really helping to build my confidence with them, there's a lot of little things to learn like knowing when to create your own player aids and markers that aren't explained to newbies. For this game I created a sequence-of-play tracker, a victory point tracker, used tiddlywinks to keep track of which units had expended 3 MPs and would thus fight at half-strength, and used tile-spacers to keep track of which units had moved and where they moved from. The Confederates won, I think largely because 1) they got lucky and drew a chit that allowed them to activate two powerful infantry brigades ("Rodes' Division"), and 2) I created a tracker for them that allowed them to use the Union's behavior to gradually narrow down which of the six possible sets of victory conditions the Union was operating under and thus optimally counter-attack to prevent the US from achieving its objectives. I also think the Union may have made a mistake at the very end by over-retreating its units instead of staying in defensive ground along a broader front with the threat of counter-attacking towards some additional objective-hexes. I think this would have made it more difficult for the Confederates to make use of their powerful Rodes Division units. Rules Mistakes: 58:27 - I treat the move of the CSA leader and the unit stacked with it as if it requires spending an initiative point. 1:17:41 - The result is a DR2*, not a DR2, so the attacking unit should have received a DM marker. Strategic Mistakes: 1:30:40 - The Union probably should have moved that cavalry unit 5 hexes towards the hill hex east of Culpeper at 0512 to try to occupy it before Rodes' Division could activate.