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 in the Old Dominion. 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.
As this is my second review of a Blind Swords game, I won’t be going into very much detail about how the system works. If you are interested, I would point you to my review of Longstreet Attacks, which goes into a bit more detail. Suffice it to say, all the basic stuff I liked about Blind Swords is also here and I still like it.
On Tempo
Something that I find really engaging about First Bull Run, and which was very limited in Longstreet Attacks, is the slow arrival of new forces and the wavelike nature this gives the conflict. Units clash, break off, and then the next line joins them and pushes everyone forward again. I wasn’t entirely sure how well Blind Swords would work for this pace because of its inherent randomness. Blind Swords is a system where having a brigade stall on a section of road for 2-3 turns is not exactly uncommon, and that seemed like it could risk ruining the tempo of the battle.
The opening movement - Union divisions rush down the roads towards Henry House Hill and Sherman gets an early crossing over the ford at Bull Run.
My experience with the game suggests to me that these fears were largely unfounded. While yes, I did have units get stuck for a time, the activation ratings of the leaders were good enough that most units would get to move on most turns and the game has enough turns that eventually everyone should be able to make it to the front. It did give the tempo the feeling of a vehicle that periodically stalls, coming to a jerking stop, before lurching forward rather than the smoother pace of something like Manassas. That’s not a criticism exactly, both were very enjoyable, it’s more of an observation of how the two games differ. The system used here is arguably a better fit for the smaller map – The Day Was Ours is played on a map maybe a third the size of Manassas, so to evoke that same tempo it was probably necessary to interrupt the movement sometimes where Manassas could use a much more consistent pace but drag it across a vast distance.
The greater impact I noticed from Blind Swords’ semi-random activations was that it made it much harder to plug holes in your lines and form new defensive positions. While Manassas’ tempo really focused on desperately trying to plug holes in your defenses, The Day Was Ours would create similar situations but whether those holes could be plugged or even whether your opponent could exploit them was far more random. Manassas felt like screaming at your soldiers as they scattered in the face of the enemy while The Day Was Ours felt more like being frustrated at troops who won’t march forward into enemy fire. It’s a subtle difference, and I wouldn’t say one is better. Both are interesting.
Perhaps the most significant way that The Day Was Ours impacts tempo is in its mechanic of The Lull. At some point in the first half of the game, the Confederate player can declare a lull in the fighting. This triggers several turns where movement around Young’s Branch is restricted and combat becomes significantly harder to initiate. This creates a few turns where movement essentially becomes the only consideration for both players. The design notes say that this was done to deliberately slow the battle and make it less combat heavy – early iterations were proving to yield results that were too bloody and violent for what First Bull Run was historically. I don’t hate this mechanic – lulls in battles were a thing and while I think the rules could have used more examples of exactly how the movement around Young’s Branch works, they are mostly coherent. What I’m less convinced by is placing the decision of when the lull happens entirely in the hands of the Confederate player. This feels a little artificial, especially in a system that tends to favor chaos and randomness. I think I would enjoy it a bit more if the lull was semi-random (and maybe someone has designed a variant where it is). The idea is interesting, but I’m not totally on board with the execution.
Fighting stalls for the Lull and both sides try and bring troops to the front. The Rebels need to form a defensive line on the hill while the Union looks to prepare itself to attack any weak spot it can find.
The way Blind Swords represents unit deterioration feels particularly well suited to First Bull Run. While there isn’t Manassas’s pure chaos of disordered and routed units scattering across the map, the inflicting of Battleworn status and the ability to always rally and rebuild units makes a lot more sense to me in a battle like this where morale was the greatest scourge than in something like Gettysburg where men were actually dying by the thousands and a regiment may be so completely destroyed that it never fights again. This is a small detail, but one I thought I would mention. Whereas Longstreet Attacks gave me a lot of cognitive dissonance between the game’s narrative and my own understanding of the battle, I felt none of that with The Day Was Ours. I’m sure there’s room to nitpick, there always is, but by and large it felt like the system married well to the narrative of First Bull Run. The greater number of turns in The Day Was Ours as well as the lower unit count on both sides makes it a little easier to find space to rebuild units and maybe get them back into the fight.
On Victory
My greatest frustration with Blind Swords, and the thing that stops it from being one of my all-time favorite hex and counter systems, is the victory conditions. In the main battle scenarios I’ve played (and the one I’ve read the rules for but not yet played), victory is determined by victory points accumulated every turn for controlling certain hexes on the map. I really dislike this. This may seem like splitting hairs, but I don’t mind games where victory points are awarded at the end of the game based on who controlled what territory when the fighting concluded. Manassas does this with several general areas of the map. What I find tiresome in these Blind Swords scenarios is that victory points are counted at the end of every turn.
The Union assaults Henry House Hill - they apparently need the VPs here. Meanwhile the Rebels try and turn their flank. The whole tactical situation is a bit of a mess.
I think I understand what the idea is – both players are compelled to rush to key points on the battlefield and try and control them for as much of the game as possible. I have two objections to this. The first is simple: I think it’s tedious. Counting up the VPs every turn is boring, especially as I usually have to lift counters to remind myself where each VP hex is. It’s not fun or interesting.
My second objection is that it just feels too game-y and it takes me right out of the experience. I can understand why controlling certain locations at the end of the day could determine victory, but I don’t see how being the person who held this one section of the battlefield for 60% of the game should matter if you lost it in the end. This is absolutely a matter of personal taste, but this is my review and I continue not to like this victory condition.
The Day Was Ours does offer some interesting victory points related decisions for the Confederate player on whether they should abandon their position on the main ford across Bull Run. Moving units away involves surrendering VPs to the Union, but you may need those units. On the one hand, I can see this as an interesting decision for players, but on the other it still feels too game-y to me. I prefer Manassas’ approach where leaving the ford unguarded could result in Union units crossing there. The Day Was Ours doesn’t really allow for this option, at least in the standard rules. It does include many interesting variants to try, though!
I should note that for my play of The Day Was Ours I chose to just ignore the victory conditions, not bothering to count VPs, and instead decided to judge which side had won at the end of the game. I liked this quite a lot more, but I suspect that not everyone I play with would be inclined to agree to “arbitrary judgment” as a victory condition.
The end game state - technically this was a couple of turns early because we ran out of time. I decided this was a Union victory, but you’re welcome to offer an alternative interpretation.
(Note: I know that points are also awarded for the number of units on the Routed track, but this has not proven to be particularly decisive in either of my games)
On Memory
I played The Day Was Ours as a semi-solitaire experience; I wasn’t alone, but I was kind of playing on my own. As I mentioned at the start, I got this game to play with my dad while I was visiting my parents. What I didn’t mention is that my dad has pretty severe Alzheimer's. His long-term memory is still pretty good, but his short term is a disaster. While he could remember facts about First Bull Run, the battle, he couldn’t even remember the topic of the game we were playing all the time, let alone any of its mechanisms. That said, he was more than happy to sit with me and chat while I played and talked him through what I was doing each activation. We had a really good time and for giving me that experience with my father I will always be grateful to The Day Was Ours. My father was an old Avalon Hill gamer, and we played a ton of We the People when I was a teenager – I had hoped to get to play some wargames with him now that I’m getting back into the hobby as a parent myself. Sadly, we are very limited in that regard, but at least on this occasion we got to play the game together even if it was very different from what I had hoped for. The memories I got playing The Day Was Ours will stay with me for years – this may be the last opportunity I get to play a game with my dad and I’m happy it was this one.
Action shot of us playing with unclipped counters and no tweezers, like a bunch of barbarians.
As a solitaire gaming experience, I really liked The Day Was Ours. It is chit pull and quite chaotic, so it naturally works very well for multi-hand solo play. It also has fewer interrupt events than Longstreet Attacks did, so that helps minimize the one barrier to making it easier to solo since there’s less hidden information you have to consider. The game’s small footprint also makes it handy to solo. Yes, it is quite a long game, but the relatively small map can be set up in a corner somewhere and visited periodically when you find the time. I really enjoyed playing Longstreet Attacks against an opponent, but I suspect that I will have an easier time getting Blind Swords to the table as a solo experience and I’m looking forward both to trying more of them and to playing The Day Was Ours more.
To Conclude
The Day Was Ours addresses almost all of the concerns I had with Longstreet Attacks. It is a much smaller game than Longstreet Attacks – the map is the same size, but it has only a single sheet of counters which makes the entire experience far more manageable. The events in The Day Was Ours were a bit more interesting and I significantly preferred the more equal footing in terms of the unit and general ratings between the two armies. If the victory conditions were a bit better, I would judge it to be a near perfect hex and counter game. I would highly recommend it to fans of the Blind Swords system and to anyone who is looking for a good entry point for the system to try The Day Was Ours. This is a great little game and I’m excited to get it back to the table.