On September 28th, the citizens of Big Stone Gap go to bed, confident that they will awake to a new day - a day in which the Kingsport military forces finally liberate the town of Sneedville from the grasping claws of the Knoxvillians. The next morning, they awake to a nightmare.
As a gently rain falls across the town, an entire army of Knoxville's worst appears on the road north. The little town militia scrambles to make ready a hasty defense, and every man wonders how this could have happened. How could so many have slipped around behind the powerful Jones' Army?
In reality, the besieging army consists of just 600 regular soldiers and 750 medium horse. But to the sleepy town of Big Stone Gap, they look grim, capable, and professional.
The Sneedville campaign faces its first siege. It's a small one, with only 1,350 trained soldiers attacking a defense force of just 200 militia (for a C-class town per William Sylvester). Better than six-to-one odds is pretty good, but the road into Big Stone Gap follows the Powell River through a narrow valley - a natural choke-point that might negate the Knoxvillian weight of numbers.
If you need to know the stats of the Big Stone Gap garrison commander, you can roll your own or use this set that I rolled up. These numbers were generated by rolling percentile dice, and the stats are those suggested by Henry Hyde in his recent tome,
Wargaming Campaigns. He uses these numbers (abbreviations are explained in
The Rules) to determine the likely success of various strategies to end a siege quickly. As you can see, our militia Commander is a consummate politician, smart and likable, but that's about it.
Int 79, Init 20, Cou 28, Cha 81, Str 24, Hea 24
Have at it, fellas. What hope do the hometown militia have? They are in a defensible position, but they are volunteers who are outnumbered almost 6:1 by a professional army.
The Harlan Blitz arrives on September 29th. How long does it take them to crack the Gap? How do they do it? What are their losses?
That's all the information I have at this point. You've got the terrain, the orders of battle, the direction of contact. Everything else is up to your discretion. You can look up more specific information on the area to answer your questions. You can use the rule set and scale that is most comfortable to you. Play it as a pike and shot or 1945-era tech or even, as one viewer suggested a post-apocalyptic battle, it's up to you. And if you want your version thrown into the canon, post results on a blog or social media site of your choosing. Just make sure you let us know in the comments where to find it!
[Let's set a deadline of August 8th for results.]
