Interrogation of Marshall Barrington of Command Post Games

 Interrogation Files: Marshall Barrington of Command Post Games

**Q: Marshall, thanks for taking the time. Let’s start simple - who are you and what’s Command Post Games all about?**

**A:** I’m Marshall Barrington, founder and lead designer at Command Post Games. We’re the rebels of the wargaming industry - think of us as the Apple Computer of historical gaming. While everyone else is stuck making the same hex-and-counter complexity festivals, we’re reimagining what wargaming can be. Our flagship product is Pub Battles, and honestly, it’s causing quite a stir among the grognards.

**Q: “Rebels” is a strong word. What exactly are you rebelling against?**

**A:** The tyranny of the 100-page rulebook! Look, I love this hobby, but somewhere along the way we convinced ourselves that complexity equals realism. That’s like saying a car is better now because we just added 100 new buttons that you have to push while you are driving. 

 

I was at a convention last year watching two guys spend 45 minutes resolving a single combat because they had to total up and divide dozens of combat factors and cross-reference and apply 3 different modifier charts.  When they were done, somebody noticed that they forgot a rule 14.8.2.3 about the fatigue modifiers vary depending on different types morale.  Yep, so they had to start all over again.   Meanwhile, at the next table, two kids were playing Pub Battles and making brilliant tactical decisions in real-time. Which table looked more like actual command? The answer was obvious.

The entire industry has become obsessed with simulating every rivet on every tank instead of simulating the experience of command. We’re the guys saying, “Hey, what if we focused on the command decisions instead of the calculations?”

Monmouth

**Q: Tell us about Pub Battles. What makes it different?**

**A:** Pub Battles strips away all the mathematical noise and gets to the heart of command - making decisions with incomplete information. We use wooden blocks instead of counters, so you literally can’t see what your opponent is doing until you’re in contact. No charts, no modifiers, no PhD required.  You don’t have to roll on a table to ‘simulate’ the fog of war.  You just really don’t know where they are at. 

 

Here’s a story that sums it up perfectly: A veteran GMT player tried our Brandywine game at Origins. He kept asking, “When are they going to arrive?  Where are they going to come from?” Twenty minutes later, he was completely absorbed, moving his blocks intuitively, reading the battlefield like Washington actually had to. After the game, he said, “This feels more like commanding an army than any game I’ve ever played.”  That’s why the military loves to use are games for training.

   

That’s our secret weapon - we simulate the fog of war by actually putting it in the game, not by adding more rules that try to simulate it.

Real commanders didn’t have perfect information. They didn’t know exactly how many enemy units were in that forest or precisely what their combat strength was. They made gut decisions based on limited intel and battlefield intuition.

Traditional wargames give you godlike omniscience - you can see every unit, friendly and enemy.  You know every combat factor for attack and defense, morale, supply level, organization level and can calculate every possible modifier that could influence the combat result. That’s not command, that’s accounting. At the Battle of Antietam, McClellan thought he was outnumbered 2:1 when he actually had the advantage. Our hidden blocks system recreates that uncertainty naturally.

A friend of mine, a military historian, played our Little Bighorn game and said afterward, “For the first time in a wargame, I felt like I understood why Custer made the decisions he did - because I was making them with the same limited information he had.”

Brandywine

**Q: Are your rules too simple?  Don’t you lose historical accuracy and realism with only 4 pages of rules?**

**A:** That’s the beautiful irony - we’re actually MORE historically accurate and realistic, not less.  I’m not sure I can explain it.  It’s a paradox.  Like it’s really simple to design a very complex game.  It is extremely complex and difficult to design a simple game with few rules.  Less is more.  Here’s the key:  Just because there isn’t a rule for it, doesn’t mean it isn’t in the game.  It’s very deceptive in a way. 

   

Here’s an example:  You look at the pieces and they are just blocks.  No individually rated combat factors, movement factors, morale, etc.  They all kind of look the same.  Generic.  Like playing checkers, right?   WRONG!

It is all in there.  You just don’t see it.  It’s baked into the system.  We do have individually rated units.  Instead of different combat factors, or morale ratings, they are denoted by color:  militia, veteran and elite.  We also have gold, Guards units with special abilities.  They each have a very different feel and character in combat.   

Militia are very fragile.  With a little luck, they can dish out a blistering volley as good as anybody, but they can’t take it.  Their 1st hit in combat counts as 2.  So they will often break and run after the first round of combat.  Elite units are the opposite.  They shrug off and ignore their 1st hit.  This gives them a lot of staying power.  They have the discipline to just keep coming round after round under fire.  Pub Battles has all the same “crunch” and “detail” that we are used to seeing in wargames.  You just don’t have to slog through pages of rules to tons of number crunching to play it.  The system handles most of it for you. 

Antietam

  

**Q: Your games use miniature-style movement instead of hexes. That’s pretty radical for board wargaming.**

**A:** Why should geography be imprisoned in hexagons?   This hex is half woods and half clear, so what do we call it?  This road is in 1 hex but it zig zags around so much it should really be 2 hexes.  There are tons of inaccuracies and distortions in hexes.  You just don’t see them because the designers hid them all.  Real armies don’t do the drunken stagger across a hex grid and face only in 60-degree increments.

People are just used to hexes.  We don’t have to have them.  It takes a little getting used to.  I remember it felt a little confusing to me at first.  Where exactly IS this unit?  Is he in the woods or in the clear?  With a little practice, it’s actually really and very precise.  Do you know who picks it up right away?  Non wargamers.  Kids.  Wives.  It’s very intuitive, simple and obvious to them.  It’s in the woods because I put it in the woods.  It’s right here.  See?  It’s not confusing.  As wargamers, we’re just not used to seeing it that way. 

 

This is where our Apple DNA really shows. Steve Jobs famously said, “Think Different.” The wargaming industry has been so locked into hexes that they’ve forgotten movement can be organic and intuitive.  Especially when it comes to musket warfare.  It’s very linear.  The formed up in lines, fought to hold lines and moved in lines.  Trying to force all that into a awkward geometric hex grid just looks ridiculous.  It doesn’t fit.

  

With free movement, you can actually form your defensive line around the natural curve of Cemetery and Culp’s Hills.  Wellington can place his artillery just out of sight on the reverse side of the ridge line, not this weird hex sticking out here, that can’t be used because that’s where the grid hit out. Suddenly, terrain matters in ways that hex grids can never capture.

I remember watching a couple of grognards launching Pickett’s Charge in a regular hex game.  The line of contact is all jagged, right?  So they spent all this time, trying to analyze the hex grid.  Which attacks can they get 3 hexsides on vs just 2 or 1?  How many artillery factors do they need to add to each attack to maximize their odds ratio?

I mean to an outsider, it just looks silly.  Is that what Robert E. Lee spent his time doing to prepare for that attack?  Did Napoleon organize each regiment at Waterloo by calculating the best odds ratio for each exposed hexside?  In Pub Battles, it works like it does in real life.  Do you think now is a good time to send Pickett forward.  You move him up to attack or not.  Who exactly are they attacking?  We don’t know.  It might change before the end of the turn and we resolve the combat.  We shell the defender with artillery.  Did that flip them to spent?  They may rally.  They may fall back.  New units might move up to reinforce the defense.  The Federal artillery might open up and flip Pickett to spent status before contact.  There are many things at play but this is how war really works.  The game system encouraged historically accurate tactics organically.  It teaches you to think like a real general, not an accountant.  

Ligny

**Q: You face criticism from traditional wargamers. How do you respond?**

**A:** Same way Apple responded to IBM loyalists in the 80s - we stay focused on making better products for people who want something better.

Look, some grognards are never going to change. They’re invested in complexity the way IBM was invested in command lines and MS-DOS. They’ve spent decades mastering these systems and don’t want to admit there might be a better way. I get it.

But there’s a whole generation of potential wargamers who took one look at a traditional wargame rulebook and said, “Life’s too short.” We’re making games for them - and for the secret rebels inside the grognard community who are tired of being rules lawyers and accountants when they want to be generals.

One of our fans sent me a photo of him playing Pub Battles with his girlfriend.  “She hates my wargames but she does like Pub Battles.  She will play that.”  I’ve heard the same thing with kids too.  They grew up on computer games.  Their eyes glaze over when they see a 100 page, fine print wargame rulebook.  –but they will play Pub Battles.  “Dad, this is way cooler.”  If Wargaming is going to have a future, we need to start moving in new directions. 

 

In Development

**Q: What’s your vision for the future of wargaming?**

**A:** Yeah, exactly.  We want to be the gateway drug that brings a million new people into historical gaming. Right now, wargaming is this tiny, insular community because we’ve made it too intimidating for normal humans. That’s tragic, because history is fascinating and strategy is fun - when it’s not buried under mathematical complexity.

Hey, I’m a grognard too.  I love games like World in Flames or Advanced Squad Leader.  Pub Battles is too simple for you?  Fine, get it and play it anyways.  Here’s why:

Imagine walking into a restaurant and seeing a dad or grandpa playing Pub Battles with a kid.  Where regular families and people might actually see it.  Hey, what is that?  Looks like fun.  How does it work?   Imagine history teachers using games to show students why the South lost the Civil War and what command decisions really feel like. That’s our moonshot.

The traditional companies can keep making games for the 5,000 people who want to spend their weekend calculating combat ratios. We’re going after the 500,000 people who want to experience history without needing an engineering degree.

Coming Soon Austerlitz!

**Q: Any final thoughts for wargamers who might be curious about Command Post Games?**

**A:** Try thinking different about wargaming. Don’t take my word for it – go pick a Pub Battle at commandpostgames.com and try a game. We have a 100% money back, satisfaction guarantee.  Thirty minutes with Pub Battles will teach you more about command than thirty hours with a traditional monster game.

We’re not trying to destroy traditional wargaming - we’re trying to evolve it. The same way Apple didn’t destroy computers, they just made them human.

And to the grognards who are secretly tired of being spreadsheet warriors when they want to be Napoleon or Stonewall Jackson- welcome to the revolution. We saved you a seat at the pub.

-----

*Marshall Barrington is the founder and lead designer of Command Post Games. Their Pub Battles system covers conflicts from ancient Rome to World War II, all playable in under two hours with rules you can learn in ten minutes. Visit commandpostgames.com to join the simplicity revolution.*

 This is a rundown of games that are in development:

Pub Battles:  2nd Bull Run

Gruppenfuhrer:  Tactical WW2 Combat.

Supremacy SLBMs & Bombers

Fall of Berlin & Bulge:  Berlin is very close.  We are trying to rectify the system with Bulge and France 40.  If it works in all those places, it should be good for anything in WW2.

Pub Battles:  Borodino

Gettysburg Campaign:  Operational Scale.

Command Post Games

 

 The Battle of White Plains

Twilight of the New York Campaign October 28th - 31st, 1776

Battles of The American Revolution, Volume X

by

GMT Games

  The American Revolution, at least in New England, was a much bigger historical period in people's minds than even the Civil War. There are hardly any summer weekends where reenactments of battles or just field camps cannot be found. The area where I was born and raised had several smaller battles, and the larger ones were  100-150 miles away. The memory of The Green Mountain Boys is a staple in Northern New England. Unfortunately, because of urban sprawl there is not much to see in Southern New York State except, of course, for the environs around West Point. I was a pretty young child, younger than five, when we lived in a house that had been part of a Revolutionary War battle. There was a plaque outside of the house saying that this was where Benedict Arnold's horse was shot during the battle and then buried. I am told that as a toddler I attacked the front yard like a mole or a budding Indiana Jones looking for said horse, or at least its remnants. I doubt I had enough wherewithal at the time to think the operation through to its conclusion. It is probable that this was my first steps on a lifelong love of history. Let us take a look at this newest entry in the Battles of the American Revolution series of games.

 The Battles of the American Revolution Series comprises these games:

Saratoga Volume I

Brandywine Volume II

Guilford Volume III

Savannah Volume IV

Monmouth Volume V

Pensacola, 1781 Volume VI

Germantown, 1777 Volume VII

Newtown Volume VIII

Rhode Island Volume IX

The Battle of White Plains Volume X

The Battle of Green Springs Volume XI - P500

 GMT also released two American Revolution Tri-Packs of the earlier releases. These are:

Monmouth, Germantown, and Newtown

Guilford, Saratoga, and Guilford - P500 reprint

 There is also a new series of Small BoAR with The Battle of Cowpens being Volume I.

 These were all designed by Mark Miklos

 This is what comes with the game:

Two Hard-mounted Maps Featuring 1-inch Hexes

245 Unit Counters & Game Markers (1.5 Countersheets), Including Seven Replacement Counters for Previous Games in the Series

52 Opportunity Cards: 26 American & 26 British

16 Tactics Cards: 8 American & 8 British

Two Full color, 4-page Player Aid Cards: 1 American & 1 British

One Full-color Exclusive Rulebook

One Full-color Series Rulebook

Two 10-sided Dice

Game Scale: 1 hr. per turn

Map: 200 yds per hex

Units: Infantry Regiments, Battalions & Companies. Cavalry Troops. Artillery Batteries. Each Strength Point equals 100 men or 2 guns.

Players: 1-2

 This is some information from GMT Games about White Plains:

"White Plains is among the least written-about battles of the American Revolution, an oddity when one considers the scale of forces engaged. Most secondary sources give it a passing mention in the larger discussion of the New York campaign while among the scant primary sources there is considerable disagreement as to key details. Source maps are scarce and often contradictory as well. To bring you Volume X in the Battles of the American Revolution series, exhaustive research was conducted in the sources and on the ground to bring to life the most accurate battlefield map possible.

Likewise, the order of battle was painstakingly reproduced from scraps of information: memoirs, General Orders, casualty lists, pension records, compilations of the Westchester County Historical Society, journal articles, Blogs, secondary-source histories, firsthand accounts, and a little intuition. As usual when studying the American Revolution, British records are more complete. American records less so. Where specific unit placements are known the corresponding units are placed accordingly. Where specific deployments are not known, deployments are notional but stand up to the litmus test of brigade and divisional integrity."

 The first thing we will talk about are the maps. You are given two sections of a large, mounted map. The map and game were designed by a consortium of Charlie Kibler, Rodger B. MacGowan, and Mark Simonitch. I am very impressed with its look. Somehow, they have illustrated exactly, to me, what the Colonial Era would look like on a map. The hexes are very large, and the terrain is clearly marked out for every single hex. So, you will have none of the arguing over what terrain is in each hex, or which type of terrain is the majority in each hex. The Army Morale, Turn Track, Terrain Key, Strength Point Loss, Leader Summary Table, and a few others are strategically positioned around the outside of the map. I am very much a fan of having these, as much as possible, on game maps. Having to make room for a map is sometimes enough of a problem without having to have those tables etc. strewn next to a map. There is also a small box with the story of the 'Headless Horseman'. He might have been a Hessian that lost his skull at this battle. The story comes from the northern settlements of New Amsterdam.

 The Series Rulebook is in large type and is double-columned. It is in full color and only 16 pages long. Next, we have the Exclusive Rulebook for the game. It is also in full color, double-columned, and the same large type in 36 pages. The actual exclusive rules for the game only take up 13 1/2 pages. The rest is taken up by the scenario setup/rules, Opportunity Card Notes, Design Notes, Order of Battle, and a Counter Manifest (I wish more games came with this). Each player gets his own 11" x 17" four-page fold out Players' Aid. These are made of heavy-duty card stock. The type size on them is sometimes smaller than the actual Rulebooks, with the 'October 31st Deployment Reference' on the back page being the only type that I need to bring closer to my aging eyes. There are four card decks that come with the game. Each side gets an 'Opportunity Deck' and a Tactics Deck. The Opportunity Decks have contemporary pictures on them. The Tactics Decks do not but only have the different modifiers on them. These are for Frontal Assault, Turn Flank, and Stand fast etc. The cards are the normal size for wargaming cards. However, they do seem to be a little stiffer than most. The Opportunity Decks are actually split into three different decks for each player. Each player starts out with deck one, and then on game turns October 30th and October 31st deck two and then deck three are added to the players usable cards. The counters are well done and are sized at 5/8". This is a good size for the less dexterous of us. They have either a representation of the troop type or a picture of the commander on them.

 The physical components of the game certainly pass muster.  

 Oh no! The game comes with some errata. There is one problem with the Player Aid Cards. Two minor problems with the rules, and one problem with the American Order of Battle. Thank you, GMT for being so thorough.

  Sir William Howe has been always described as being very wary of attacking the Americans when they were entrenched in any way. This was supposed to have come from his firsthand knowledge of what happened at Bunker (Breed's) Hill. This game uses that hesitancy of Howe's in a novel manner. Because of the nature of the ground where the American lines were, the ability of these troops to entrench themselves was limited. They did however do their very best to mimic real fieldworks with the material they had on hand. This was achieved with stacked cornstalks and clods of earth stuck to them like mortar. So, what looked to the British like a bristling line of dug in Americans was not exactly what it seemed in most places. This leads us to the game rule that is called 'Ruse de Guerre' (Trick of War). The rule is a little complicated and slightly devious, as its name suggests. The American player secretly designates 1-5 of his fieldwork hexes as containing a Ruse de Guerre. Then he rolls a die, and using the Ruse de Guerre Template in the back of the Exclusive Rulebook, he then consults the Ruse de Guerre Table situated on the map. These locations will be written on the template. It sounds a little more involved than it really is. Now comes the British part of the rule. If the British player does attack one of the hexes the ruse has been discovered, and the American player must tell the British player that it was a Ruse de Guerre hex. Then the British player is allowed to take the 'Probe' card from his Opportunity Deck. He can then use it to probe the American lines for other Ruse de Guerre hexes. The actual history of the battle has the Ruse de Guerre working so well that the British never attempted to attack the American lines. I think this is an elegant way to represent the actual history of the battle, since we know, or assume, that our nowadays British commander will not husband his cardboard pieces as Howe did his men.  

  As you can tell by the size of the rulebooks the game is not overly complex. It is rated as a six out of ten on GMT's complexity scale. That is assuming that you have played other 18th and 19th century wargames. These are some of the rules that you will encounter:

Initiative

Stacking (6 SPs and one artillery unit. Leaders and markers do not count toward stacking)

Zones of Control (All six adjacent hexes)

Movement/Strategic Movement

Rifle Fire

Defensive Artillery Fire

Close Combat

Tactic Cards (To be used by the player in Close Combat)

Rain Turns

Army Morale

Militia Special Rules

 This is the series sequence of play:

Each game turn consists of two player turns. During the initiative 

segment, players determine which player executes their player 

turn first. Each player turn consists of several phases that must be

executed in sequence. A more detailed version can be found in the 

Expanded Sequence of Play on the back page. 

A. Initiative Segment

 1.Determine which player has the Initiative this turn.

B. Initiative Player Turn

 1. Flip the game turn marker to indicate the correct player turn

 2. Movement phase

 3. Rally phase

 4. Defensive Artillery Fire phase

 5 Rifle Fire phase (simultaneous)

 6. Close Combat phase

 7. Move the game turn marker to the bottom half of the game 

   turn and flip it over

C. Second Player Turn 

  1. Movement phase

  2. Rally phase

  3. Defensive Artillery Fire phase

  4. Rifle Fire phase (simultaneous)

  5. Close Combat phase

D. End-of-Turn Segment

  1. Check for Automatic Victory

  2. If it is the last game turn of the scenario, determine a winner

  3. If additional game turns remain, advance the game turn 

marker to the top half of the next turn. 

This is the setup for the four-day scenario. Chatterton Hill is almost in the middle down at the bottom with just two lonely regiments.

 The game comes with three scenarios:

Historical Scenario: Chatterton Hill October 28, 1776 Four- and one-half game turns

Hypothetical Scenario: Howe's Grand Assault October 31, 1776, ten- and one-half game turns

Campaign Game: October 28, 1776, to the evening of October 31, 1776, 42 game turns

 As is the usual with me I dove into the deep end and played the four-day full battle scenario first. I have played some of the other games in the series. So, I felt that I could work through the exclusive rules somewhat easily. The historical Chatterton Hill scenario is an excellent one to teach tyros the game system. It has the least number of counters, and both of the smaller scenarios do not use some of the rules that only apply to the four-day scenario. 

 It is obvious that a lot of thinking went into making this game as historically accurate as possible. The Putnam Engineers counter only allows the American player to build up real fieldworks a hex at a time. This melds right into the rule about the Ruse de Guerre and the physical properties of the ground that the Americans are on. The Hessians also get an Amusettes counter. This was a very large caliber 'super' musket that was accurate to about 500 Yards. They are represented as having a two-man team. Think of them as a prototype bazooka without the exploding warhead. The American militia troops are also treated differently than the trained troops on either side. They can be exceptionally brittle. The British player also gets to roll a die before game turn 32 (7:00am, October 31). He then checks it against the Patriot Militia Attrition Table situated on the map. The American player then has to remove from three to seven militia units. The American player also suffers a -1 against his Army Morale. This occurs in the Campaign and Howe's Grand Assault scenarios.

 I did find one problem. Howe's counter is marked 2358 for setup. It should read 2538.

 Thank you, GMT Games, for allowing me to review this excellent addition to a great series. I might be more partial to this game and the Saratoga one because of knowing the areas and having visited them.

Robert Peterson

The Battle of White Plains

Battles of The American Revolution

GMT Games

Preview of End of Empire: 1744-1782

by

Compass Games

 I took advantage of the 40% off sale at Compass Games and finally picked this one up. It has the Colonial Wars between France and Britain, and the American Revolution rolled into one. Here is the blurb from Compass Games:

 "End of Empire: 1744-1783 is a two player game covering the three great conflicts fought on the North American continent between 1744 and 1783: King George’s War, the French and Indian War, and the American Revolutionary War. The game represents great value with 15 scenarios spanning these 3 wars."

This is the Northern Map

 This is what you get with the game:

Two 22 X 34 inch maps
Five countersheets (9/16” size) & Replacement Counters
One rulebook
One scenario book
Multiple reference cards

 The map is done very well and it is easy to read and figure out the terrain of each hex. The counters are excellent and have the picture of each general on their counter. The Rulebook and Scenario Book are in black and white, but the type is large and easy to read. The Rulebook is twenty-three pages long. The Scenario Book is twenty-seven pages long and is packed with the aforementioned fifteen scenarios. I was very pleased to see that Compass Games had added another scenario to the game 'Lord Dunmore's War 1744'.

 These are the scenarios:

Invasion of Canada 1775

Main French and Indian War

Full French and Indian War

The American Revolutionary War: 1775 Start

American Revolution 1776 Start

The British Invasion Scenario

American Revolution 1777 Start

The Saratoga Scenario

Burgoyne's Second Chance (What If)

The 1778 Scenario

The Southern scenario

The Final Year Scenario

The British Dream Scenario (What If)

King George's War

The war of Jenkin's Ear

 So with the added scenario that gives a player a whopping sixteen. The game pieces look excellent and it portrays some of my favorite periods to game. I cannot wait to get this on the table. Compass Games' sale continues until 4/5, so hurry up and get your order in. Thank you Compass Games for what looks to be another great gaming experience.

Robert

Freeman's Farm 1777

by

Worthington Publishing

 

  This is a game about the battle that sealed the fate of Britain in the American Revolution. After this battle, Burgoyne's surrender was pretty much a done deal. There would be more fighting for sure, but this battle was his last gasp to break through to Albany. The plan to attack from Canada was not a bad one, it would just need much more resources than was allotted to it. For some unknown reason, the people who should have known that dragging an army across this wilderness was next to impossible were unable to sway 'Gentleman Johnny'. The fact that Burgoyne not only made it this far and had taken Fort Ticonderoga is only a tribute to the British and German soldiers' ability to deal with adversity. Unfortunately for Burgoyne, his slow progress allowed the Patriots to build a large army, indeed larger than his own. This battle is also the high point in Benedict Arnold's career as a Patriot (though there seems to be a large rift between historians on Arnold's actual whereabouts during the battle). If not for his insubordination to 'Granny' Gates, the battle could have been lost. So we are placed in the unenviable situation of either winning the Revolution, or breaking through a larger Patriot army, and cutting New England off from the other states. So let us see what the designer and Worthington Publishing has given us to recreate this titanic battle. This is part of the description of the game:

"An innovative card driven board game on the Battle of Freeman's Farm.  1 - 2 players.  Playable in 1 hour.
Freeman's Farm: 1777 is the first game in our new Battle Formations game series. These games are a new game system  centered around battle formations and have been designed for solitaire and two players .  In solitaire mode players can play as either the American or the British against the solitaire player game engine.   
Players decide which formations to activate and how far to push it once it begins attacking. Push it just enough and they can win the day.  Push it too much and failing a morale test will break it." 

 This is what comes with the game:

• Large Mounted Game Board
• American and British Formation Cards 
• American and British Activation Cards
• Tactic Cards
• Rules
• Player Aid Cards
• Game Markers
• American Blue Wooden Formation Markers
• British Red Wooden Formation Markers
• Hessian Green Wooden Formation Markers
• 8 Dice

 The components are all very well done, and very easy to read. As you can see, the map looks almost like a period piece or one from a book about the battle. The first thing that should catch your eye is the absence of hexes or areas for movement. The Battle Formation Games have set places where you or your opponent can move his forces. These are all places of the battlefield where action did actually take place. The rulebook is only twelve pages long and the rules themselves take up less than nine of them. The last pages are a Historical Summary and Designer Notes. There are two Player Aid Cards; one side is for a two-player game, and the other is for playing solitaire. It is nice to see so many publishers and designers adding solo play to their games. The Formation Cards are large and simple to understand. The units for each player are just wooden rectangles and cubes, but they fit very well with the look and feel of the game. The Activation and Tactics Cards are simple looking, but are extremely easy to read for even the most myopic of us grognards.  The components easily pass muster. Now onto game play.

This is the sequence of play:

 Each Player's Turn has the Same Phases:

1. Play Activation Card

   1.A Option  - Countermand Activation with General

2. Pay Activation Cost

3. Optional: Play Tactics Cards

4. If Combat is Selected as a Command, Roll Combat Dice

   4.A Optional: Maintain Momentum

5. Apply Results

6. Optional: Purchase Tactics Cards

7. Draw Activation Card

 The British Player takes the first turn in a round.

Then the American Player takes their turn in a round.

The British Player then begins the second turn.

 Play continues until all Activation cards have been played, ending the game.

 In the Designer Notes, the designer states that what he felt most missing in games was the struggle of generals with keeping command and control of their own forces. He then goes on to state the pedigree of the game, and how he developed a few concepts from many different games to design it. The other two large concepts in the game are morale and momentum. Every time you activate a formation, you must lower its morale by one, or remove a formation marker (wooden rectangle representing your troops). You can use a General Card to countermand the activation, and some Tactics Cards have effects that forego the penalty to morale. Once a formation gets to a morale of five or lower, it incurs a morale test. This is done by rolling a six sided die and comparing it to the morale of the formation. A higher number than the formations morale means that a formation is 'broken'.  Momentum Cubes for each formation are gained by playing the Activation Cards for that formation. Each card has a number of momentum cubes that the player receives (from one to three). One nice touch is that if the player receives the same amount of Momentum Cubes on three Activation Cards in a row, he receives an extra two Momentum Cubes. Momentum Cubes can be used for rerolls, or to purchase Tactic Cards. Skirmishers, which were a large part of the battle, can be used by both sides.  You can download and check out the rules yourself via a link I will post at the end of the review.

 

  The rules seem simple at a glance, but are very nuanced. The designer has succeeded in creating a game where the flow of battle is as changing as a see-saw. I believe he has captured the sword of Damocles that is hanging over every general's head. Do you push your formations one more time and try for victory, only to have the formation collapse in front of your eyes? You will not win the game by 'playing it safe'. That will only allow your opponent to pick and choose exactly what he wants to do. Playing as the British, this is it; you really have this one chance to breakthrough the Americans. Historically, the American Player just needs to pull out a tie to win strategically. The games actual victory conditions show this. The game lasts up to fifteen rounds (fifteen activations by each side). If the British Player has not won by then, it is an American victory. The game ends automatically if either side breaks or destroys  three or more enemy formations. As I have mentioned before, we are now in the 'real Golden Age' of wargaming (gaming in general, but Euro games, eww!). The earlier golden age had more games sold, but nowhere near the innovation that designers are showing us now.   The added touch of an actual fully functioning solitaire mode is a godsend. It is possible to actually play almost every game solo, but it is a very good thing that more companies are adding actual solo forms of play. Thank you very much Worthington Publishing for letting me review this very innovative and great game. It does help that this is one of my favorite battles, and the one that I have spent the most time wandering around the actual ground it was fought on.

 I found this treat going through discussions about the game. If you like what you have read so far, you will really like this. It seems that Worthington Publishing is going to Kickstarter a game about Chancellorsville. It will have most of the same rules, but will also have some new neat twists, such as hidden movement. Here is the link to the preview page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1040417273/2785622?ref=bggforums&token=b117acc9
 Freeman's Farm 1777 link:

https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/collection/freemans-farm-1777

Rules:

https://dochub.com/worthingtonpublishing/P9P6WbK/ff77-rules-pdf?dt=BssrRM57TQk9Rsw81gkw

Robert