Longstreet - Crossroads - 1863 Battle #2

The Longstreet campaign with my son continued with a second battle in 1863. The objective being possession of an important intersection of two roads.  Here are pictures of the table setup from the Rebel and Union perspectives.

The brigade of E.P. Marmalade has been given orders to defend the crossroads until reinforcements come up later.  Precisely how long that may be is unknown. All Marmalade can see is one hot damn mess of Yanks and their artillery.

Marmalade orders his cavalry reserve forward to plug the gap on his right flank as Pellets McKenney deploys half of his artillery.

At this point, the Union center has been stalled with decent Rebel cannon fire. For this battle McKenney was not as fortunate with his cannonade.

Since the Reb cavalry was dismounted and committed to a position, McKenney ordered his cavalry to sweep around the other flank at an attempt of encirclement. 

Marmalade immediately countered the maneuver by about facing his rear guard battalion and drawing two guns off the front line to meet the threat.  It was a risk but the Union center had taken a large number of casualties so far.

Pellets McKenney unleashed the fury in a cavalry charge. This time the southern boys were ready.  A quick vicious brawl resulted in the loss of one of his Cavalry units and the retreat of the other.  (Sadly, I forgot to take a picture during the charge.) As they tried to retire to reform, another Rebel gun was turned in their direction.

Marmalade retracted his right flank to protect his artillery and dismounted cavalry.  As this was occurring, he continued to snipe at McKenney's troops on his left.  With a few lucky shots he was able to break the Union attack and the battle was over.

This was also the second time where the phrase "Need a six, rolled a six." has been used in our campaign. Marmalade has gotten lucky twice on the victory check.  Whew!  Here is the final position of the battle.

After the game, we went through the campaign post battle process. There were no promotions, but John gets more artillery!  He is at the maximum now for the year 1863. We also rolled for the next scenario which is "Meeting Engagement".  The scenario describes an unplanned meeting on a pike out in the middle of nowhere.  It will be interesting.  I will post a report after that battle.