Carrier Woes and the Civil War Breaks Out

McClellan's Army of the Potomac, thrust on the horns of a distressing dilemma.

Well, the original plan was to have an AAR for a Carrier playthrough for you this week. But a little user error took place, leading to some slightly game breaking results. Will make good on that commitment and get you an AAR sometime in the near future, apologies for the delay.

And anyway, my copy of The US Civil War showed up in the mail and I got excited for it. These things happen.

I don't think I told you, but I've picked up a new gaming table, allowing me to have not one, but two games in progress at any given time. Possibly three if they have a small footprint. Pretty soon every square foot of my apartment will be filled with maps and counters and campaigns I don't even remember starting.

It'll be like Rain Man, but with Empire of the Sun instead of poker. And me instead of Dustin Hoffman.

Anyway, on to the Civil War.

The US Civil War

Bragg's Army of Tennessee, gored on the horns of a hair-pulling doozy of a dilemma.

In terms of inspiration and design, the game's designed by Mark Simonitch and draws a lot of ideas from For the People from GMT and The Civil War from Victory Games. I haven't played either game yet, so I can't comment intelligently on that, but Mark Simonitch mentions both games in his designer's notes and the map for The US Civil War looks a lot like the Victory Games title. I get the impression this game takes what worked from the Victory Games production (dice differential activation, strength point system, leader management system) and gets rid of the fiddly parts that get in the way of the experience.

Anyway, for the game itself: it's a pretty big one. A two mapper, representing the main theaters of the conflict from 1861 to 1865. From Maryland in the east to Missouri in the west, and as far south as parts of Texas and Florida. As the North, your job is to grind away at Southern resources in a relentless war of attrition, keeping pace with a demanding timetable while hoping political pressure doesn't press for you to do anything stupid. As the South, your job is to gradually realize just how impossible it is for an agrarian economy to fight and win an industrial war, and just how very doomed you are.

There are five turns per year, one for each season (with two summer turns because it's the most active time of the year). Each turn there’s a reinforcement, strategic movement, and leader management phase. This is followed by four action phases, where players roll for initiative. The action phases are where you actually do stuff. Battles are fought, cities burned, forts seized, etc. At the end of the turn you make a few adjustments and check for automatic victory (i.e., the demanding timetable the Union has to worry about).

On the whole, I am loving this game. It's exactly the kind of game that most appeals to me–one that allows you to not only recreate history, but where the game mechanisms emergently show you why history played out the way it actually did.

If you're familiar with the war, you'll have heard of Forts Henry and Donelson. In most popular accounts of the war, it's a footnote that's mostly important in introducing the rise to prominence of Ulysses S Grant. My first playthrough of this game showed me why Henry and Donelson were important in a real and immediate way.

I'll tell you more about that in a subsequent post. We'll see what's in the tea leaves when it comes to next week's post–it may be back to the South Pacific, or it may be more of The US Civil War. For now, Grant's marching on Memphis and Jackson's tying McClellan in knots. Take care, and pray the dice love you.