Overview
Virginia-
Basically my grand idea petered out when the large move on DC was blocked by mother nature herself. PGT didn't make it across the river in 15 days and Johnston didn't make it to DC on his forced march....both could have been inactive too of course. So that left me with a couple options, and I decided to attack Alexandria. I knew he would reinforce DC and if I didn't take it that turn it would be almost impossible to take it after he moved some divisions there. After that action, now my thought process has turned to trying to annihilate McDowell's stack, either by hunger or by force. I've had very little luck with the latter when playing this game, so I will attempt to take all of his retreat paths away from him and watch them wither away...that's the plan at least. After that I have settled on a defensive front here in NV. My initial thought was to try for DC and I wanted to put some pressure on Charles to reinforce this area, which he did with a few divisions from where I don't know, but that was my intention. I'm content to settle in defensively here for now. With a line running from Harper's to Alexandria, entrenched, behind a river and all within MTSG, I feel almost positive Charles won't attack here. Which will let me focus on other areas. Without DC this will probably be a long game, so I hope he wants to attack. That probably won't happen knowing Charles though.
Lee has activated this turn as well. I'll keep him here for now and send Johnston out west until Grant becomes a 3 star. Then wherever he goes, Lee will go also.
Mobile-
Here is the thorn in my side. As you probably saw, Charles sent a rather large invasion force very early to Mobile. At that time I barely had troops in NO and Charleston, much less in Mobile...so it fell easily. Ever since then I've been tempted to attack and take it back. However, I knew I would be defeated and I refuse to throw away southern lives with no chance for victory. That is all about to change though...at least I hope. When KY opens my whole western theater will be in a vice, squeezed from both north and south. I can't afford to have three separate forces operating out here...KY, Mobile and now Montgomery. So, I will rail Longstreet's command south, 1 region north of Meridian in the FOW to meet with PGT and Johnston where they will become corps commanders under PGT (who is 4-3-6 atm). Polk will take over PGT's stack north of Mobile as a corps, and then Longstreet's command will then rail south next turn and assault Mobile. Under who I don't know yet, we shall see. Two of the three leaders will then head toward Tenn/KY. Risky I know. If we fail in the attack and KY opens...I don't want to even think about it. Charles will know Grant is alone and could make a move south. But this is my thought process on the move...
Basically I'll have 60k men (if Polk MTSG) vs. I would say around 20k. My hope is KY stays closed one more turn and we can push the US out of Mobile. Then I could drop a mostly volunteer division with some arty to defend Mobile and immediately rail 4-5 divisions back north to Corinth for a potential Grant move. A division entrenched with arty should prevent him moving back on Mobile, at least for now. Polk with one division could then move over to a division I have south of Atlanta to watch any move from Montgomery. This would give me two divisions defending the route to Atlanta and close the Mobile front to Charles. Basically I would rather face two fronts than three and not have to spread my smaller forces out so much. If we can close Mobile off to Charles, it will then give me an extra division to take back to Tenn/KY. This is all a huge risk I know, but I feel like I have to at least try it now, while KY is still closed. I do have two divisions ready to be moved to Bowling Green to defend it, but I don't know if that will be enough if Grant happens to move that way. That's my story, and for now I'm sticking to it. :/
Missou-
Well the St. Louis grab was nice if I do say so myself. Either Charles forgot to raise the loyalty or didn't bother with it, I don't know...but it let me see he basically had nothing there. So Forrest swept in. I was going to just destroy everything there and move on...but I captured two ironclads in production so now I have to wait for them to finish, I just have to! I have 20k men there so I think we'll be okay for now. We are short on ammo though and only get 17 per turn from St. Lo, so it would take three turns to get back to 100%. My first thought is quick strike on Cairo, but I don't know. For now we are sitting tight.
Far West-
Well I screwed up here. I forgot to send units immediately to Tucson which Charles took advantage of. My thought was to have 2 good brigades 1 in Tucson and 1 in El Paso. But with Tucson gone I did the next best thing by basically destroying Carson's force and moving on Sante Fe. For now I have Van Dorn sitting in FOW with 9k men and 30 cannon (what a waste), but ready to pounce if Charles moves out of the boxes towards El Paso.
We can't really build anything at the moment so I'm ordering a few replacements and saving up to afford two large KY brigades immediately when/if KY opens up.
Sorry for the wall of text and no pics, but honestly I hadn't taken any up to this point but I hope that will change. Anyway, I look forward to any questions and discussions about the game and can't wait to actually watch the vids.....who knows when that will be though. :P
