For episode nine of We Intend to Move on Your Works Pierre and I dive deep into Great Campaigns of the American Civil War with Stonewall Jackson’s Way II. We have a lot of thoughts in this one, I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as we did recording them!
Stonewall Jackson’s Way II (GCACW) by Joseph M. Balkoski, Ed Beach, Mike Belles, and Chris Withers
Few wargame systems have as much veneration from their fans as the Great Campaigns of the Civil War. However, despite its dedicated fans it still manages to feel somewhat obscure - a series that is often out of print and intimidating for new players to get into. For those in the know, this system has been a touchstone of the hobby since Stonewall Jackson’s Way was published by Avalon Hill in 1992. The series was originally designed by Joe Balkoski until 2001. When Avalon Hill’s catalog was bought up by Hasbro the series was taken up by Multi-Man Publishing (MMP) who worked with other designers (including Chris Withers and Ed Beach) to update the old Avalon Hill games into new editions with revised rules and graphics.
Podcast: Shiloh: April Glory by Tom Dalgliesh and Grant Dalgliesh
In the final episode of season one of We Intend to Move on Your Works, Pierre and I finish our journey through Shiloh’s woods by discussing Shiloh: April Glory from Columbia Games. This is another classic Columbia Block game, similar to their game Shenandoah that we covered on episode two of the podcast. How did we like it compared to Shenandoah and the other Shiloh games we played? Listen on to find out!
Preview: Rebel Fury by Mark Herman
I was lucky enough to be invited by Fred Serval to be his opponent for an early preview of the final version of Mark Herman’s latest American Civil War game: Rebel Fury. We played the Chickamauga scenario, which Mark recommends as the best starting point in terms of length and complexity. Rebel Fury expands on his game Gettysburg, originally published in C3i Magazine, but has a few neat changes. The combat system has been pretty substantially overhauled, with more factors to consider around unit positioning and support between units, but the change I liked most was how headquarters now have to postures they can assume, one which benefits them in battle but limits their command range and one that allows for a wider range of movement but cannot add a DRM in battle. This is a promising looking system and I’m keen to try more. You can see our full play through of the first two turns (just under half a full game) of Chickamauga here:
Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz
A common refrain I have found when reading recent books on the Lost Cause, and in particular ones with a personal relationship to the subject, is the choice to highlight two events from the past decade as marking a key turning point in our relationship with the memory of the American Civil War. These are the murder of nine churchgoers in South Carolina at the hands of an avowed white supremacist and the murder of Heather Heyer and injury of many other people during the violence around the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Sometimes the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police is also added into this mix as well.
We Intend to Move on Your Works Ep. 7: Shiloh 1862 by Worthington
It is once again April 1862 and Pierre and Stuart are lost in the woods near Shiloh Church. This time it is with the far less complex Shiloh 1862 from Worthington Publishing. How will they fair with naught but eight pages of rules to guide them? Will Stuart get extremely angry about the woods again? Was Albert Sidney Johnston's death a turning point in the war? Listen to find out as the deep dive into the Battle of Shiloh continues!
We Intend to Move on Your Works Episode 6: Longstreet Attacks
Apologies for the delay - we started playing Longstreet Attacks back in July to mark the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, which is why this game breaks our chronology, but the game took longer than expected and then the editing took even longer than that. Thankfully this episode is a good one, so hopefully that makes up for the delay, and we aim to have the next one with you much sooner!
Grand Havoc by Jeff Grossman
Blind Swords is quickly climbing the ranks to be among my favorite hex and counter systems. The chaos of the chit draw, the unpredictability of the CRTs, the manageable footprint, and the elegant presentation from Revolution Games have all wormed their way into my heart. Longstreet Attacks showed me the potential of the system, but in a form that didn’t totally agree with me. The Day Was Ours showed me that it could do approach to battle and the chaos of First Bull Run. After playing that I was pretty sure that I would prefer Blind Swords as a single counter sheet experience – low counter density leaving me plenty of room to explore the map. It was with some trepidation that I punched the two counter sheets of Jeff Grossman’s Grand Havoc. Would this cement my love for Blind Swords, or would it be another Longstreet Attacks, an almost hit that doesn’t quite land? I’m delighted to report that it was the former – Grand Havoc delivers a larger scale Blind Swords experience and seems to resolve pretty much all my misgivings about Longstreet Attacks. This is a great game, and I’m excited to talk about why.
Race and Reunion by David Blight
Every so often I read a book that so overwhelms me with its breadth and depth of information that I wish I had already read it twice in the hope of clinging to just a little bit more of its knowledge. Race and Reunion is such a book. David Blight documents the aftermath of the American Civil War, when two previously warring factions had to come to terms with still being part of the same country and make sense of the bloody years that had just passed. Conflicting ideologies competed to interpret the events of the Civil War, sometimes with violent outcomes, and in the end they created a vile system of white supremacy and oppression alongside unfulfilled potential. How emancipation transitioned to Jim Crow isn’t the core focus of the book, it is far more expansive than that, but it would do as a pithy summary.
The Worthington Civil War Brigade Battle Series
Worthington Publishing’s Civil War Brigade Battle Series by designer Grant Wylie is a rules light hex and counter system on, you guessed it, American Civil War battles at the brigade scale. It also should not be confused with The Civil War Brigade Series (CWBS) from The Gamers, which is also a brigade level hex and counter system but is far more complex and also much older, with its first published entry from 1988 as opposed to Worthington’s system which began in 2019. It’s a little confusing. Worthington’s system currently spans four games, three by Grant Wylie and published by Worthington and one game by Pascal Toupy and published in French wargame magazine Vae Victis. There are already plans for quite a few more entries as well. These are rules light games, the system rules are eight pages long with each game adding at most one page of extra game specific rules on top of that. They also generally play in two to four hours. These are fun games for fans of hex and counter Civil War gaming and are also a great entry point into hex and counter gaming for anyone who has always wanted to try them but has been hesitant to do so. They are probably not going to blow your mind, these aren’t radical designs the likes of which you’ve never seen before, but I’ve had a lot of fun playing them and if simple hex and counter is your cup of tea then I think you’ll enjoy them too. But you probably didn’t come here for the tl;dr, you came here for some nitty gritty detail, so lets get to it!
Armies of Deliverance by Elizabeth Varon
For over thirty years James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom has stood as the gold standard single volume history of the American Civil War. Recently, a friend recommended Elizabeth Varon’s contribution to the genre, Armies of Deliverance, as a possible successor, or at the very least valuable supplement to McPherson’s venerable classic. Having now read Varon’s book I have to say that it is a very impressive piece of scholarship and a thoroughly enjoyable read. It certainly could act as an alternative to McPherson’s hefty tome, but with the caveat that it depends on what exactly you want out of your history of the American Civil War. It would be wrong to say that Varon is doing the same thing that McPherson did – these are two very different histories with different approaches, and both offer valuable insights into the war and the people who fought it.
Review - The Day Was Ours by Matt Ward
When I was initially looking for more Blind Swords games to try, I passed over The Day Was Ours because I thought that I had no need for another game on First Bull Run since I own and love Rick Britton’s Manassas. This was doubly true when I considered that The Day Was Ours didn’t even promise a faster playtime; I can only manage so many 5+ hour games in my life. That changed on a recent trip across the Atlantic to visit my parents. I was looking for a game I could possibly play with my dad, and I realized that Blind Swords was a good option because it would fit easily in a corner of the house, and I already knew how to play it so we could set up and get playing quickly. I also wanted to pick a topic my father already knew reasonably well, and First Bull Run fit that bill admirably. I’m glad I did because I was really impressed with The Day Was Ours. I am not without some reservations, but overall, I had a great time and I think I will manage to find room on my shelves for another First Bull Run game after all. Who knows, this may even be the beginning of an obsession.
Podcast: Into the Woods and GBACW
For Episode 5 of We Intend to Move on Your Works Pierre and I discussed the latest entry into the venerable Great Battles of the American Civil War: Into the Woods from GMT Games. This was our first experience with the series, although we have both played other games by Richard Berg who originally created it. To spoil things a little, we did not particularly enjoy our time with Into the Woods but despite that I think we managed to have an interesting discussion about the game and how it represents history. Please be aware that we discuss some pretty heavy stuff in places, including slavery and racism.
Review - In Magnificent Style by Hermann Luttmann
The (hopefully) final entry in my Confederate Solitaire Tirlogy is a classic game from Hermann Luttmann, a name familiar to anyone with an interest in games on the American Civil War. Originally released by Victory Point Games, In Magnificent Style received a deluxe reprint from Worthington a few years ago. This is one of two solitaire games on Pickett’s Charge, where the player tries to outperform Pickett, Pettigrew, and Trimble in their disastrous assault on the Union position on the third day of Gettysburg. I don’t really want to bury the lede, I think this is a gross subject for a game. Despite that, I had quite a lot of fun playing In Magnificent Style – stripped of its topic this is a very enjoyable light solitaire game, but that theme severely degrades my ability to enjoy playing it. Before we get to the heavy stuff, though, let’s talk a little about the game’s mechanisms and why it’s fun!
Review - Mosby’s Raiders by Eric Lee Smith
There are too many solitaire games where you play as the Confederacy. By my count there are at least seven. In contrast, I have found only one dedicated solitaire game where you play the Union. I find this imbalance a little distressing, and since I’m doing a project on the Lost Cause in American Civil War games, I think it behooves me to play some of them. I have previously reviewed Ben Madison’s Jeff Davis, and this week I’m going back in time forty years to what must be the first game in this suspect genre: Mosby’s Raiders by Eric Lee Smith. It would be a bit of an understatement to say that this game has something of a legacy. Eric Lee Smith was a co-designer on Ambush!, one of the original solitaire wargames, and also designed The Civil War 1861-65, potentially the most influential strategic game on the American Civil War. The confluence of an influential solo and ACW designer making a solitaire ACW game is certainly worthy of attention. What I found in Mosby’s Raiders was an interesting game portraying some less interesting history.
Podcast: Discussing the Lost Cause with Beyond Solitaire
I was lucky enough to be invited to appear on Dr. Liz “Beyond Solitaire” Davidson’s podcast a few weeks back. We discussed my ongoing project on the Lost Cause in historical wargaming as well as a range of subjects, including why we are drawn to difficult subjects and why we might want to play and write about games we know that we won’t actually enjoy playing. It was a great discussion and I think provides some excellent context to the We Intend to Move on Your Works project. You can listen to the podcast via all main podcast distributors or you can watch it on YouTube below:
Review - Longstreet Attacks by Hermann Luttmann
Few names loom larger in the, for lack of a better word, wargame-ology of current American Civil War games than Hermann Luttmann. A Most Fearful Sacrifice, his enormous game on the full battle of Gettysburg, has won countless awards and is easily among the most talked about games of 2022. Before that he was widely known for his Blind Swords system, which includes several battles from the Franco-Prussian War but is dominated by American Civil War games. Seeing as I am currently undertaking a tour of ACW designs it was inevitable that I would play a few Luttmann designs. As my entry point into the ludography of Luttmann I selected Longstreet Attacks. This wasn’t because I thought it to be the best entry into the system, many people have said it is not, but rather a choice based on the game’s subject. I wanted to play something Gettysburg to mark the 160th anniversary back in July and I thought playing a game about the second day on the 2nd of July would be appropriate. I managed to approximately time the beginning of my game with the timing of the famous attack, but the actual playing of the game took a fair bit longer than Longstreet’s disastrous assault did. I also think the figure of Longstreet and his position in the Lost Cause myth is an interesting one, and something that is very germane to my project.
Review - Jeff Davis by Ben Madison
Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears
I don’t read all that many battle histories (a small irony as I’m currently writing one) but it’s not because I don’t think they’re interesting, they absolutely are, but rather I tend to be a bit more of a bigger picture guy, only digging into the details now and then. I read battle histories, but usually only after I’ve read at least one or two books on the wider context. Since I’m reading more about the American Civil War it was inevitable that I eventually read a book on the war’s most famous battle. I have visited the Gettysburg more times than I can count, but despite that my knowledge of the specifics has always been a little hazy. I thought since it was recently the 160th anniversary that I should finally fix that. Stephen Sears’ book came highly recommended and was available from my local library, so I decided it was a great place to start!
Teach and Play of Antietam 1862 by Grant Wylie
Hot on the heels of my initial review of The Seven Days Battles, I joined Fred Serval to play an introductory game of Antietam 1862 - the first game in the same series. We played a quick game of the Bloody Lane scenario, a very small and quick playing introductory experience. We also chatted about our thoughts on the series as well as a variety of other games. You can watch the video below: