Battle of Blackwater Bridge

[wanderingthoreau1987]

I've been struggling with this battle over more than a half dozen play throughs and just never can break the Union stacked up around the heights behind the bridge.

I haven't seen anyone else mention it and was wondering what the best method to win was? Without a phyrric victory.

[harman]

Flank around the right , really far right, get behind the yankees and you should be able to push them on to the other side of of the forest ( your left side, their right). Be sure to make sure you men when flanking hold their fire until they are in position or else you men will stop and open fire in akward positions and take casualties.
Being more specific: Once you cross the bridge take your flanking divs and hug the river until the reach the forested area then start to push up behind the yankees as i said, you should be able to rek em easier. However dislodging the federals from the left side of the forest will be tough and require some multi pronged attacks. In the end it may not be worth it.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

I've noticed that I can push the Yankees off the bridge with a combination of cannon (12 and 24 lb howitzers), and ultra accurate skirmisher fire, but I canthink clear out a bridgehead large enough to flank withe being cut to ribbons.

I was under the impression that the rivers were all impassable on the map.

[harman]

You can place a brigade in cover of the woods (on the right side) which are within range of the defences to the right of the bridge and you can simply mow them down (they were using the springfield M1185 for me) then you can get a clear bridgehead and clear out the other barricades.

[GeneralPITA]

I line up cannons on the riverbank and charge cavalry over the bridge, then create chaos in the forest as I move my infantry up with cannon fire to cover my crossing.

[NavySealsDude]

i have been able to get several good wins from this (CSA). I always use my third core under Jackson in the smaller battles because he has the xp buff as his first skill. Anyway, i always detach skirmishers from my inf brigades at the start of the battle to take care of the 3 units of skirmishers the union has on our side of the river. then i move 4 alrtillery batteries up to the right side of the bridge on our side. This will put them in canister range for the defensive position on that side. As my artillery is just about in position (before they are in rifle range :) ) i send all my skirmishers to engage that infantry brigage that is hold up there. Once broken i shift my skirmishers to engage the artillery just to move them back out of canister range.
After having done that i leave 1 artillery battery in position to keep that infantry brigade from retaking the defensive position and shift my skirmishers to deal with the defensive position on the left. I place my 3 remaining artillery cannons on the left side of the bridge on our side same as before just opposite sides.
I then send my Infantry accoss be sure to leave one of them to hold down that defensive postion on the right to keep the union from reoccupying it. Once the brigade on the left in the first defensive position on the left has been delt with i swing all my remaining infantry and my unit of cav up the far left flank basically forming a large L shape in the tree line. From there you can just contiue to flank and destroy the entire enemy army. also if you have any skirmishers left i find it quite useful once your infantry is fully engaged to send them behind the ememy to the upper right hand corner of the map. This is where the AI tends to retreat having the skirmishers there to close the circle at the end of the battle makes it go a bit faster. :) I usually get out taking about 3-3.5k losses of rookie troops but depending on the play through, I am at 16-20% medicine so replacing rookies with rookies isnt really an issue.

[retreatbyrecoil]

NavySealsDude has it right. This is somewhat of an unavoidable frontal assault, but the Union brigades are rather brittle in the end. Once their right flank is gone its rollem up and its over.

[Burnin Prograde]

I did a frontal assault with 2200 casualties on my first shot at the mission. Since the mission paid more I just took it and kept advancing. I engaged the units across the bridge with my good rifles and sent in two lorenz brigades. They each volleyed once into the right (CSA right) fortified troops and then charged. I had a general across the river with cover aura and morale boost. I followed the Lorenze charge with 3 units of 500 shock cavs on the left fortification. Once those two units were routing it was a steam roll with my rifles charging the bridge and setting up a firing line.

[brett.a.hankinson]

I send my skirmishers to the bridge to entice the Confederates to cross. While they're occupied with the skirmishers, Clint Eastwood and some rough looking dude go down to rig the bridge with explosives. Once the Rebs are on the bridge....Boom. Insta win

[Bullero]

This battle is not that hard as many people think. This is not problem to win here with less than 5000 casualties. Use your artillery, and try to broke one flank in the one time, and then other.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

I tried this battle again (should have saved first) and tried both the left and right end fortifications. I was more successful rolling up their left, but the damn buffed Melee Cav just kept charging and charging ruining my momentun. That said, my attempt to flank their right was less successful as they just had brigades lined up fed them in as needed. I took my loss and sub 3k losses and moved on. I just can't get enough troops over the river quickly enough. And the AI use of Melee Cav is spot on for how strong it can be. A brigade can only recieve so many charges (even with detaching skirms) before the infantry behind breaks them. I wish I was facing some brittle Union brigades that said, the AI can still deliever a surprise from time to time. Kudos.

[Dodde]

Do you use cav of your own? Becouse it's kind of a double edged sword, untill you get enough of them. If you for example have 4 or 5 big cav brigades in your army ( entire army, not the attacking corp ) the AI will have more, and bigger brigades. Which ends up being a problem if you deploy a corp without cav.

[brett.a.hankinson]

2 divisions of sabers and one division of infantry plus cannon. Engage with infantry and use a division of cavalry to take out an entire brigade one by one.

[wanderingthoreau1987]

Originally posted by Ohen:

Do you use cav of your own? Becouse it's kind of a double edged sword, untill you get enough of them. If you for example have 4 or 5 big cav brigades in your army ( entire army, not the attacking corp ) the AI will have more, and bigger brigades. Which ends up being a problem if you deploy a corp without cav.

Yes, I do use cavalry. Approx 8k of them, but this map is a poor place to try and deploy cavalry in my experience. The Union right has troops stacked up deep, and their left is long and they can deploy their cavalry at hotspots. If I try to use mine in a scwehrpunkt fashion, they are deeply disadvantaged. Oh well. I'll keep trying, but I don't know if I will get a better result.

[DanielHall15]

Well, I will definitely have fallen for this shallow trick once. The pre-battle map shows a first class flanking opportunity on the left flank. Start the battle, and - oops, that part is now cut off.

Extremely cheap trick, my dear developers. Extremely cheap.

With the smaller map, this is just Burnside Bridge in reverse. Not worth it.

[hafoe]

Iám able to win without losing more than 4.000 men on MG, you only need 8 Inf Divs, all the rest ist arty. Some Long range 20 Pdr Parrot, 10 PDR Parrot and some howitzers. Bring the union skirmishers in as POW than first drive the first union line away with the howitzers and concentrate your Parrots to their cannons. The timer doesn´t count, so move careful forward with the howitzers when the union artillerie is gone. Use skirmishers for the advance, bring a bridgehead and then flank the enemy on your right. Be careful and SLOW!