Seven Pines Solo – Conclusion

7:00pm and the exhausted Confederates continue to attack the Union forces at Seven Pines crossroads. Both sides are cycling fresh troops onto the firing line risking 'passage of lines' morale checks.

At Fair Oaks the Federals have a small success by breaking Law's Brigade with a combination of canister and rifle fire, however the Union troops are themselves shaken and unable to follow up.

Turn 14 was twilight which meant no long range artillery fire. At this point Johnston strayed too close to the firing line and was himself wounded (a 50% chance to recreate the historical risk). Bad news for the North as this will result in Robert E Lee being promoted to command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Turn 15 was a night turn which meant I could re-dress the lines, bring on reinforcements and remove all shaken and broken markers returning units to good morale, I also allowed some limited SP recovery for units with 6SP’s or less.

The Confederates ended day one without taking Seven Pines so they started day two with a 1DEM handicap increased to 2DEM as they had 2 destroyed Brigades against 1 for the Union. This meant that the Federals had a small but significant advantage over the Rebels for day two.

The view at dawn on June 1st. The rest of Sumner's corps has come up over night to strengthen the line opposite Fair Oaks. The Confederates had Huger's Division arrive by the Twin Houses ready to support the attack on Seven Pines.

4:30am and Wilcox and Pickett successfully assault the Union line just north of Seven Pines routing Birney and Jameson.

Simultaneously, Armistead carries the trench line in front of the crossroads, the Rebels are now just 1VP short of victory.

And that total is reached as Hood's men charge forward and break Dana - game over!

The situation at the end of play, Turn 17 (5:00am). Enlarge the image to read the unit labels.

The Confederate victory came slightly against the run of play and if I had finished the turn it is possible the Reb’s would also have reached their DEM level, however I felt that as they had taken the Seven Pines crossroads it was right to call the game in their favour.

The total SP losses were Confederates 89, Union 58. The most heavily engaged Confederate Division was R H Anderson’s veterans who lost 31 SP’s and had 2 Brigades destroyed (Kemper and Pickett). On the Union side Keyes Corps lost 29 out of 69 SP’s with one Brigade destroyed (Palmer), many of these casualties were incurred in the first few hours of the battle.