Cemetery Hill (game)
Cemetery Hill: The Battle of Gettysburg, 1-3 July, 1863 was a board game published in 1975 by Simulation Publications, Inc. (SPI). It represented the fighting on Cemetery Hill in the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.
"Cemetery Hill is a simulation, on an operational level, of the battle between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia at the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The game covers the period from 1 July to 4 July 1863, when these two armies fought the bloodiest battle in American history to that point. The game system is an adaptation of the popular Napoleon at Waterloo system. Various special and optional rules allow the Players to recreate a picture of an historical event." [1]
The game system was designed by Redmond A. Simonsen, Edward Curran, and Irad B. Hardy and issued as a part of SPI's Blue and Gray Folio Series. The game, which came packaged in a clear plastic 8.5"x11" bag, consisted a 17" x 22" three-color hex-based terrain map, a sheet of 100 cardstock counters, rules book, and folio cover sheet. It was also sold as a part of a four-game boxed set entitled Blue and Gray. The sales channel strategy was to primarily sell the game through specialized wargaming, hobby and board game retail stores, as well as through mail order catalogue sales directly from SPI.
The wargame covered a ground scale of 400 meters per hex, and each game turn represents 1-2 hours. Game mechanics are fairly simplistic, with a standard "move/combat/advance and retreat" format, with rigid zones of control. One player commands elements of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the other takes the Union Army of the Potomac. Game turns are sequential, and a major strategy is to cut off the opponent's lines of retreat by positioning the counters to take advantage of the zones of control. Counters represent brigades and list the unit's strength factors (firepower). The combat results table is based upon a combination of the ratio of the attacker's strength to the defender's, coupled with a random dice roll. Results include either the attacker or defender being forced to retreat, or a loss of strength (the higher the numerical advantage in strength, the greater the odds of a successful result). The average game lasted 2 to 2.5 hours in playing time.
The Blue and Gray folio series was a popular seller, with a number of individual titles. A second Blue and Gray II quadrigame was published a couple of years after the first edition.
Notes
- Cemetery Hill rules folder