Review - Manassas by Rick Britton — Stuart Ellis-Gorman

I grew up in central Virginia with a father who is something of a Civil War history enthusiast and a casual wargamer. This meant that my childhood was steeped in Civil War history and my house had a small but influential selection of American Civil War wargames. I never played these growing up, at least not beyond convincing my father to set them up and let me and my brother push counters around with only minimal regard for the rules. However, when I started getting into wargaming in early 2022 I asked my parents if there was any game they would be willing to send to me to try. My father picked Manassas by Rick Britton, a venerable classic first published in 1980. He had bought it directly from the designer, who lives in my hometown, in the early ‘90s on someone else’s recommendation but had never gotten around to playing it. I can see why, Manassas is a daunting game in terms of its scale. The game map is three feet by four feet, far too large for most tables and for that reason it took me most of a year to get it to the table. However, when I decided to do my project on American Civil War games I knew that this one had to be the first game my companion and I played. I’m so glad we did, this game is goddamn amazing.

Screen shot of vassal mod showing initial deployment — The initial deployment - Manassas allows free deployment of some units within given constraints. Only a very small number of counters start on the map and most of those are restricted in their position for the first third of the game. The remaining troops will arrive by the roads. I also want to note that experts will definitely note some errors in this game, we made mistakes, please don’t judge us for it!

Before I get into why Manassas is great, and why it’s a tragedy that it is out of print, I should provide some explanation of what it is. Manassas is a hex and counter grand tactical game covering the entirety of the First Battle of Bull Run. It is a regimental level game, i.e. each counter represents a single regiment, with a significant emphasis on maneuver and positioning. Each turn of the game represents fifteen minutes of real time in the battle and players take command from it’s very start on the morning of July 21st, 1861 until the early evening. Reinforcements will arrive for both sides over the course of the day and victory is determined by casualties inflicted on the enemy as well as control over the map’s geography at the end of the day. An interesting wrinkle the game includes is that unit strength is not printed on the counters and instead is tracked on a separate sheet so each player knows the strength of their own units but must try and remember which enemy regiments have been worn down and which are still at full strength. Morale also plays a central role in the game as disrupted and routed units will flee the front and must be rallied and brought back into the fight. It’s as much a game about how you approach the battle and where you draw your lines of attack and defense as it is about the individual combats. While it is relatively minimal in terms of counters it manages to feel immense.

Game map on turn 3, more troops are arriving from the top and bottom of the map — Reinforcements for both sides arrive, the initial combat will be between these divisions and not around Bull Run which for the time being is largely a staring contest.

At its core Manassas is not a very complicated game. Each turn you resolve rallying and fleeing units, artillery bombardment, movement, and then combat in that order. The core rules for these are all pretty simple. Each counter has a movement value printed on it and they move that many hexes by default. Some terrain will slow or prevent movement entirely and if units are in column formation (changing formation is easy, you just spend two movement points) they get bonus movement as long as they move along a road. Combat is a matter of summing up unit strength comparing it to enemy defense, adding any terrain bonuses, then finding the correct ratio column on the table and rolling on that. It is very minimal in terms of elements that can cause column shifts or DRM modifiers. So far so fairly light hex and counter.

Game map at the end of Turn 5 — First contact! Much of the battle, like it was historically, will be fought around Henry House Hill here. No casualties have been suffered but one Union regiment has been disrupted, which is almost worse in this game. Two artillery divisions on the east are marked Engaged as they are stuck in an artillery duel.

Artillery bombardment is not much more complicated than movement or close combat. You total the number of guns you have shooting, which will give you a DRM for your roll, add any other relevant DRMs and then roll on a table based on the range you are shooting at. Each distance has two results, one for rifled and one for smoothbore guns. That’s about it. In play you can take risky shots at enemies from long range or you can wait until enemy troops close for more deadly short range firing. The reason you might want to wait is that you only have a limited pool of ammunition and over the course of a very long game you will want that ammunition. Ammunition is tracked on a separate sheet and thus hidden from your opponent, so they might be trying to remember if you shot five shots or six and do they feel lucky before they launch that next assault.

The game map around mid-morning — The Confederacy stakes its claim to Henry House Hill but McDowell and a large Union force are coming down the road. No casualties yet but the Morale effects are mounting on both sides. In the East Tyler is approaching Stone’s Bridge but can’t cross until the Union player succeeds at the Tyler Seizes Initiative check.

Tracking all of this hidden information is relatively straightforward - especially in the surprisingly robust Vassal module - but I did struggle a bit with all the different unit names. The artillery in particular could take me a surprisingly long time to grasp which line on the reference chart referred to which counter on the map. If you’re an expert in the structure of Union and Confederate armies in c.1861 this may not be as much of a barrier, but to a neophyte to these finer points like myself it was a challenge. Still, I liked it as a mechanism - it reminded me a bit of Napoleon 1806 - and I think with a little more polish to make it easier for ignorant types like me to use and it could be nearly perfect.

Screenshot of the vassal module game map — First blood! Both sides have suffered casualties - each Loss is a victory point for your opponent so you can see the current count along the top of the map but not which units have actual taken the hits which are tracked in secret. The Confederates continue to push the Union back but with a new wave of blue soldiers nearly there and their own still in the distance have they been too aggressive?

So far the game might seem relatively light, at least for the type of game it is, but Manassas adds many layers of chrome on top of this simple structure to make for a more complex experience. This chrome includes things like rules governing the different command structures of the Union and Confederate armies, including who can influence Command Control over which regiments and who can attempt to Rally which units. There are rules governing when General Tyler finally seizes the initiative and attempts to cross Bull Run and when General Cocke can abandon his position at the river fords to support the other positions. There are also rules for bayonet attacks, cavalry charges, avoiding combat, killing generals and promoting their replacements, and the capturing of artillery.

Screen shot of the map after the next turn — The Union has arrived in force and the casualties are beginning to accumulate but the Confederacy has decided to try and hold this hill for as long as they can.

I don’t think any of this is unwarranted - although I personally would have put capturing artillery under the Optional Rules - but it does make Manassas a fairly complicated game. I think overall this is a good use of the game’s complexity budget, though. By keeping the core of Manassas relatively simple it allows for all of this nuance and detail to be built on top of it without making it unwieldy. You’re never at a complete loss as to what you can do in Manassas but, especially on your first play, you will often find little rules that you forgot as you play. It is just a lot to keep in your mind, especially if you aren’t familiar with the American Civil War and this battle in particular. I will say that there are a few ways the game could have made this a little easier to track. The manual could be a little easier to reference and there is probably room in the graphic design of the counters and terrain tables to simplify things and provide useful reminders for key rules. This is of course hardly unique to Manassas and I could be describing any number of wargames with this critique!

Screenshot of the next turn of the game — McDowell and the main Union force push the Confederates off their hill and across Young’s Branch river, but Thomas Jackson (not yet “Stonewall”) has taken up a defensive position on Henry House Hill for the forward forces to fall back to.
Meanwhile in the East Tyler succeeds at seizing initiative earlier than his historical counterpart and begins the slow process of clearing the abatis and crossing Bull Run

The description above may sound interesting, but it probably doesn’t sound amazing and I’ve promised you amazing. What makes Manassas amazing isn’t some innovative mechanic or twist on a familiar formula that fundamentally changes the play experience. Instead, Manassas excels by being far more than the sum of its parts. I’m going to try my best to explain how these elements come together to make one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had playing a hex and counter game. I will also cover some of the downsides, because while it is an amazing game it is not perfect and it is definitely not for everyone.

Screenshot of game map after next turn — McDowell and Tyler’s attacks begin in earnest but to mixed results - one of Schenck’s units in the east is routed by artillery fire while in the west the Union is slowed by crossing Young’s Branch. There are also already several routed Union units scattering through the wilderness.

Let’s start with Manassas’ most indulgent but potentially best feature: its stupidly big map. The map is two sheets that when combined span three feet by four feet (or approximately 90cmx120cm for those more metric inclined types). It’s insanely big and when I first started playing I thought it was a little absurd, even if the map is gorgeous. However, after only a few turns I really began to appreciate all of the thought that went into the map and all of the possibilities it entailed. You probably won’t use every part of the map every game, but you will use a lot of it and over several games you absolutely could use basically every one of these hexes. Movement and control of the geography of the battle are the beating heart of Manassas and this map brings all of that to life with minimal effort. The actual rules for terrain are relatively light but the network of roads, forests, and hills, plus the two main rivers, together create more than enough decisions to keep you busy and, perhaps more importantly, to constantly make you wonder about the road less traveled.

Photo of the physical game map set up before the first turn — I had to show off the gorgeous physical map for this one. This is what the actual game looks like set up - sadly my opponent and I live in different countries so we will have to wait a while before we can play with the physical game.

Did it make sense to move those troops down the shortest road to attack the enemy position? What if you had tried flanking on another road? Sure it would have taken longer, but then maybe you could have avoided this goddamn hill you keep trying to attack up. It’s hard to explain just how much the map affects your decisions in Manassas but after months of playing hex and counter games with fairly minimal terrain on maps that might as well be blank I am completely in love with the approach on offer here. One thing that I will probably say about Manasssas several times is that it’s not a game that could be about any other battle - it is ground up built to be about First Bull Run. A major part of that is the design of the map and how closely integrated it is with every other decision in the game. Moving this system to a different battle would require rebuilding pretty much the whole game from scratch starting with the map. It is no exaggeration to say that I cannot wait to get this map out again and try something different with its expansive network of roads and hills.

Screenshot of the vassal game again — Tyler has crushed the easternmost position of Confederates north of Young’s Branch, putting the whole southern position behind the river.
Meanwhile, to the west a lone Confederate attack is threatening McDowell’s position, forcing a roll on the ever scare leader casualty table!

I feel like I’m becoming a parody of myself, but we need to talk about this game’s combat results table (CRT). I’ll get the downside out of the way first: it uses ratios. I don’t like calculating ratios, summing up each sides’ strength and defense and then figuring out if it’s 1-1 or 3-2 or 2-1. It’s not for me. I’m bad at math at the best of times and in the midst of a game is not me at my best. However, this is hardly unique to Manassas and I can’t complain too much about it.

Screenshot of vassal game right after the previous one — McDowell is killed outright! The overall Union leader is dead, forcing a series of field promotions and a reorganisation of Union command, plus giving the Confederates a hefty 10 victory points.

That was the Bad, let’s talk about the Good and the Weird. The thing I like most about the CRT is that it uses 2d6 rather than the more common d10. I like 2d6 because it produces a very different distribution of results, tending to cluster around 6, 7, and 8, rather than every result having an equal probability. This creates some really interesting design options around how you lay out your CRT. Which brings us to The Weird - the results on the CRT are absolutely insane. On several instances we would roll a result, say a 9, and realise discover that it was a terrible result for us but if the odds had been one column worse for our side the result would actually be better! Usually by the middle of a game you have an idea when you’ve rolled well and when you’ve rolled badly, but in Manassas we never knew if the result was good for us until we checked the CRT. It created truly wild amounts of chaos in our game and I could easily see it being one of the most controversial elements of the design. But me? I love it.

Screenshot of the Vassal game — The death of the Union commander can hardly be cause to stop the attack, though, and the Union is now coming at Henry House Hill from two directions. Attacking up hill is punishing in this game, but the Union regiments are strong and many of them fresh. More reinforcements will be coming for the Confederacy but will they last that long?

I would love to see someone do a statistical model of the distribution of results on the CRT and the probability of rolling them, I’m genuinely curious. Chaos aside, I would not accuse the game of being overly random. In general, being in a more favourable combat position will yield more favourable results. What the CRT adds is a sufficient dose of anarchy - remember you are fighting with barely trained soldiers who have never seen combat before - to keep you on your toes all the time. Despite the CRT’s chaotic nature overall I never felt like my successes or failures on a grand scale were beyond my control to mitigate or that I was not at least partially to blame for the setbacks that I faced. The game is played more in positions and strategic movement than it is in any one combat so the CRT can hurt you but it is not the sole cause of your failure.

Slowly the Union makes progress on the eastern edge of Henry House hill but the western side doesn’t look so good. However, the last wave of fresh troops is coming down the road from the North - will they be enough to break the Confederate position?

I’m increasingly aware of the fact that I love games about maneuver and deciding where to fight and when to give or take ground. Manassas is a king among these games. The core of the game is fighting for key terrain. Beyond that, though, you will spend lots of the game bringing in new reinforcements as the battle escalates and both sides commit ever larger portions of their armies to the fight. In this regard the game is almost more about the approach to battle than it is the battle itself. Picking where to move your reinforcements, and the pressure of whether they will arrive in time, is so stressful. That agonising feeling of wondering if your front line will hold for long enough for fresh troops to reach it. Should you just rush these new soldiers to the front as fast as possible or would that just be throwing more troops into the meat grinder? What about attempting a flanking maneuver or setting up a fall back position? For artillery you need to pick where to position them for the best coverage over the following turns since artillery cannot fire and move on the same turn. You also have to balance smaller decisions around when to switch formations as units in column formation are more vulnerable to attack, especially by artillery, but if you switch too early you’re just wasting movement points that could be used better next turn. There’s a lot of decisions to be made every turn and the stakes always feel high.

Screenshot of vassal module — The Union continues to push up the hill and is even beginning to reach the top of it in places, allowing them to negate the defensive bonus the Confederates have been relying upon until now. There are still more troops coming down the road for both sides and some fresh Confederate troops are coming to shore up their line on the hill.

The movement and combat elements of Manassas combine to deliver on one of Manassas’ greatest elements: how it captures the ebb and flow of battle. Positions are assaulted, taken, attacks repulsed, and flanks crumbled by truly horrible results on that maniac of a CRT. With only a minimal element of prescriptivism in terms of unit movement and deployment Manassas manages to capture the feel of a battle from this era. You also experience the anxieties of a commander as you seize strong positions only to see your units crumble, forcing you to either fall back or take them again. We played at least six turns where each one felt like it could be the last turn of the game but both sides tenuously held on through them all. One Union attack on Henry House Hill felt like it would be the end for my Confederates but their aggressive position put them in point blank range of my guns and the subsequent artillery barrage routed huge swaths of the Union line completely changing the state of the field. This kind of thing didn’t just happen once, it happened almost every turn!

Screenshot of the vassal module — A fairly disastrous turn for the Confederacy sees their lines crumble in the north east, but for the moment they’re still holding it together. Further east Sherman’s troops are routinely failing to cross Young’s Branch and Tyler has completely crossed Bull Run.

Manassas really threads the needle in terms of nudging players towards historical strategies and outcomes but without being prescriptivist. In my game at a critical moment Thomas Jackson and his regiments had to hold Henry House Hill against a Union attack from two directions until Jubal Early could bring up reinforcements to secure the position. This very neatly emulated the historical battle, which gave Jackson his “Stonewall” nickname, but no rules explicitly pushed me into this. Manassas also eschews giving units special abilities to, for example, help ensure that Jackson’s units hold when another one might not and thus more reliably recreate history. There are no special rules for the famous “Stonewall” or Irish Brigades/Regiments even though both are present here. Instead all units and commanders are the same, excepting only difference in unit size and strength, and this makes Manassas feel highly organic. Like an enormous sandbox for you to play in but one that teaches you without you even noticing because it’s so subtle. It’s really quite brilliant.

Let’s talk aesthetics for a moment. It would be an understatement to describe elements of Manassas’ appearance as “old school”. The game was published in 1980 and I would guess that no part of its aesthetics ever touched a computer. This is all hand drawn components. The map, as already discussed, is gorgeous. The counters are a little simple but they include some really nice touches. The greatest of which is definitely that the width of the bar representing each corps aligns approximately with the unit’s starting strength - but only approximately. It’s enough to give you the gist of what you’re up against but you can’t rely solely upon it, especially once casualties start accumulating. It’s a lovely little bit of fog of war, offering a tantalising taste of information which will have you sweating bullets as you plan your attacks. It’s great. I think the artillery counters area little busy, particularly with regard to the names, and it would be great if the counters had some kind of indicator to remind you of divisional structures, but overall they’re very functional and add a lot to the game.

One interesting decision that Rick Britton made, and which is made more impactful using an optional rule I haven’t tried yet, is to use the actual historical colours of the regiments uniforms for the counter colours. This might not seem like a dramatic decision, but you have to understand that in 1861 the two sides had yet to settle into their archetypical blue for Union and grey for Confederate. Some Union troops wore grey, some Confederates wore blue, and some from both sides wore the distinctive red of the Zouaves. The Vassal module we played on removed these colour distinctions (with a small exception, when you click on your own units it changes to the colour if it is different from the default) which was mostly good for the sake of simplification but I think it actually went a little too far. The Union also has a group of Federal Regulars, practically the only trained soldiers present, which are distinguishable because their counters are a lighter shade of blue - except the module removes that as well so you have to track them by knowing which units they are. I don’t think this had a significant impact on our game, but since I was playing the Confederates and couldn’t easily see where the Union regulars were I couldn’t regularly remind my opponent of their special rules, which mostly involved ignoring Command Control limits and not being disrupted if a routing unit runs through them. The multi-coloured counters is an interesting decision and I like that it reflects history, but both the original vision and the Vassal amendment seem a little messy.

Zoomed in photo of the physical game map showing off the starting positions for both sides — Here is the physical game showing the range of counter colours. You can see the light blue Federal regulars and dark blue troops who have been untested in combat. Sherman has one regiment in grey while across the river are Confederate Zuaves in Evan’s division and some dark blue Confederate artillery.

I’ve heaped a lot of praise on this game, let me lay out some negatives. Let’s do them as bullets!

At times the Chrome is a bit much and there are a few rules I probably would have shunted to Optional rather than keeping them in the core rules. For example, capturing guns is a lot of bookkeeping, I would have had spiking them be default and capturing be an optional extra for people who already know the game pretty well. There are also some rules that could use additional clarity. Retreating in particular seemed to cause us regular consternation as we hit weird edge cases we weren’t entirely sure how to untangle.
Manassas is super long, do not trust the estimated playtime of four hours given on Boardgamegeek. We played for around a dozen hours for just one game. Now, that was over multiple sessions so we had to do a fair bit of relearning and Vassal is often a little slower than in person play, but still. I would believe that Rick Britton could play this in four hours when he was designing it, but for most people this is going to be an all day game.

I really like the chaos of the CRT but its unorthodox distribution of results and the difficulty in knowing how best to optimise your combat results could really irritate some players.

Sometimes you just need to be prepared to embrace a more Vibes based approach to playing the game. On the map terrain types often bleed into neighbouring hexes and you could probably spend hours arguing over the specific of drawing line of sight in some parts of it. You need to be willing to agree a ruling with your opponent and keep the game moving, this is not the kind of game to play with someone who needs to have every single possible situation addressed within the game’s rules. This didn’t really bother me and I think it’s true of quite a few wargames, but if you’re a hardcore simulationist it may not be for you.

On the whole, these are all very mild criticisms but I do think I need to raise them because for some people they will matter more than they do to me. Not every game is for everyone, and that’s fine.

With my heaping praise on long out of print obscure hex and counter game The Flowers of the Forest last year I really feel like I’m running the risk of being the guy who recommends out of print games from decades ago and I don’t want that. A lot of older games are not that great and are out of print for good reason - don’t let people tell you that you need to go back and play all the “classics” from prior generations. Play the stuff that’s good now. That said, there are some genuine gems hidden amidst the mass of mediocre cardboard and it is borderline criminal that they are not more available. Manassas is one of those gems - this game has a deeply old school feel but at the same time except for it’s obviously 1970s aesthetic it feels like it could have come out a few years ago, the design is that fresh and engaging. This is a phenomenal game.

The good news is that Compass Games has signed on to do a reprint of it and I really hope they give it the love it deserves. I think with a little bit of polishing in a few places this game could be an all time classic. That said, I’ll be keeping my original copy - it’s signed by Rick himself and it’s a gift from my father, who sadly never got to play it and isn’t really in a position to play it now. I hope one day at a convention to find the time and space to get it out and play it properly with the physical components instead of just on Vassal. I’m not willing to commit to saying that Manassas is the best game I’ll play all year, but I will say that I would be shocked if it isn’t on my best of the year round up in December 2023. This is a great fucking game.

Screenshot of the final game state on Vassal — The final game state - after twelve hours over eight sessions we agreed to call it here with a few turns still to go. The Union weren’t going to full take Henry House Hill in those turns but neither would the Confederates retake any lost ground. We removed the Routed units that could no longer be rallied, adding their losses to the VP total, and the result was a Tactical Confederate Victory - significant VP margin but they had lost control of the Warrenton Turnpike. Reasonably comparable to the historical outcome.

I hope you enjoyed this review, it took a long time and a lot of work to put together. If you enjoyed this, or any other content on this blog, I would really appreciate it if you would consider buying me a coffee (or a pint if you prefer) on https://ko-fi.com/stuartellisgorman. Any funds raised will go into the maintenance of this website and the creation of further content for it. Many thanks!