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!
Worthington Publishing kindly provided me with complementary review copies of Antietam 1862, Shiloh 1862, and The Seven Days Battles. Cedar Mountain 1862 I bought with my own money because I’m an obsessive completionist.
Sequence of Play
A good sequence of play can really make a game and I think the one used by these games manages to fit a lot of interesting decisions into quite a simple order. The order is that the active player shoots all their artillery, moves, is then shot at by the other player, then they get to make their infantry attacks, and finally they can (hopefully) rally any routed units. There are a lot of little interesting bits in there, but to me the most intriguing is that the opposing player gets an entire shooting phase every turn. Reactive fire isn’t exactly new to wargaming, but most games I’ve played have it as something that is triggered by a specific action the active player takes. In these games it is instead guaranteed, the non-active player will always get to take as many shots as they legally can every turn. This actually makes the other players turn almost more enjoyable than your own. On your turn you have to make hard choices about where to move forward, knowing that your units may be routed before they even get to attack, but on your opponents turn every time they move forward you get to think about the attacks you’ll get to make. It’s a lot less stressful.
The way that artillery and infantry combat is split on the active player’s turn is also really interesting. On your turn your opponents infantry will shoot before yours do, but your artillery will shoot before that. This can create difficult choices on your turn when it comes to thinking about what will happen on your opponent’s turn. For example, if on my turn I force an enemy unit to retreat – do I advance to take their space? If doing so moves me adjacent to an enemy infantry unit, I know that I will get to shoot him before he shoots me on my opponent’s turn, but if I move adjacent to artillery I will take a face full of cannister before I can attack. It’s a critical difference, and an interesting decision space.
I really like how artillery and ranged combat work in general. Artillery are double strength against adjacent units, but only half strength against infantry at further distances. This makes artillery much better for long range counterbattery to prepare for your melee offensive – reducing the enemy’s strength so that they don’t obliterate your infantry once they get in close. Again, a great way to nudge you towards using artillery for counterbattery without making it an explicit rule in the game.
I’m a big fan of systems where units shoot each other at adjacent hexes – reduces the fiddly-ness of line of sight and keeps things easy and doesn’t slow down play. Thankfully the LOS rules aren’t too complex here, so even for the artillery I didn’t suffer too much. The one wrinkle that’s really interesting is only units adjacent to your target block LOS. This allows for some really interesting shots, and also makes positioning artillery tricky. Before the lines engage you have a lot more shots, but once fighting commences things get messier.
Attrition
This is a system built for attrition, full stop. Individual units have many steps, some over thirty, and almost every result on the CRT inflicts at least one step loss. Over the course of a game you will be placing and adjusting many strength counters (something that is made blessedly less annoying by the design of the counters, so you only need to rotate or flip them most of the time not dig out a fresh one every time a step loss happens). Step losses then trigger morale checks which can cause routs which can trigger more morale checks which can trigger more routs – and every artillery that routs will likely suffer more step losses as they limber to flee. At the end of a full game, you will see the toll that the fighting took on your troops – both on the battlefield and on the score track, as each step loss is also a victory point. Attrition is baked into the essence of these games.
I don’t say the above as a value judgement. I love games of maneuver, and there is some maneuver to be had here, but I also want the game’s systems to align well with their topic. In this regard I think Worthington has made excellent choices in terms of which battles to adapt for this system. Antietam, Shiloh, the Seven Days, and soon Gettysburg. These are all extremely bloody battles defined by the toll they took on both sides. They wrote their name in American history in blood, and I’ve found some systems did not do a great job at capturing that feeling. Where something like Jackson’s Valley Campaign, while far from bloodless, is probably best captured by a system that emphasizes supply and movement, these battles are, to my mind at least, about attrition and the horrible cost of war. I think this system does a great job at conveying the high casualties and chaos of these battles within a relatively rules light and still fun to play game. Certainly the final product is still far from the realities of these battles, but as a cardboard equivalent they are quite good.
Narrative
As I spend more time thinking and writing about wargames, I have come to understand how important narrative is to my enjoyment of the hobby. I want my games to tell a story, to hook me in with it, and for that story to convey some of the history behind the game. I bring this up because I think the Worthington Civil War Brigade Battle series strikes an excellent balance in how it constructs the narratives of these battles without an immense weight of rules behind it. Nothing about the game’s system feels like you’re on the rails, it isn’t forcing you along a narrow path, but I’ve found that in each of my plays the arc of the game’s narrative conforms with what you would expect from these battles. The fighting is hottest near where it was historically and there is a real pressure for an attacking force to take ground but that generally happens at extraordinarily high costs to its units.
This is where the grand battle of Antietam begins.
I worry that this could make it sound like it’s a bit bland, or too restricted by history. These games are quite open-ended, I’m glad to report a general lack of onerous rules that restrict your decisions and force you towards historical decisions. Where they do exist, like in the grand battle scenario for Antietam, they provide a very general limitation (e.g., you can only activate two Corps a turn instead of your whole army) which can in turn inspire more careful decisions on the player’s part.
And here is where Antietam ended. You can kind of see how the narrative unfolded, where Union attacks succeeded and where it ran into more trouble. This arc to the game’s narrative is so much of the appeal to me.
I think part of why this works so well is that the grand arc of the games’ narratives conforms to historical expectations, but that is not exactly true on a turn-to-turn basis. Each turn presents specific challenges and will spit out various results, usually chaotically in my experience, but over the course of three or four turns you will see the narrative develop. The number of dice rolls will conform to the mean and chaos of the individual turns will produce a more consistent strategic outcome. This interplay between the chaos of the moment and the arc of the overall battle is really satisfying and a large part of each game’s appeal, for me at least! There are times where I wished that I could see the overall narrative a little faster, where I wish turns went a little quicker, but overall the stories that these games tell over an evening is really enjoyable and among the best I’ve found in this kind of game – especially for a system that is so light!
Playing Solo
I really enjoy playing hex and counter games solo. Leaving a game set up and periodically moving counters around, rolling some dice, and then wandering away to do something else is just a really meditative experience for me. That said, not all hex and counter games are suited to this kind of play – while I adore Great Heathen Army, I don’t think it’s a great solo game. On my personal ranking of hex and counter games that are enjoyable to play solo, this series is very near the top. It has a lot of the elements I want in a solo hex and counter experience. The dice generate so much chaos each turn that you can only plan so far ahead, which stops me from getting lost constructing plans within plans, and then counters to those plans. It is easy to take a turn, play it as optimally as you can, and then switch sides and try to figure out what to do in the aftermath. I think I even prefer this series as a solo experience. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun playing it with others and I would do so again, but I also just enjoy playing games with my friends so the floor for having a good time is pretty low. I think I am more excited about setting up one of these games to plod my way through slowly over a few days than I am to show them to a friend – I have so many other games I want to play with people instead and these are so good solo.
The Material Itself
While the art in this series is not going to blow you away, I find it very pleasing to look at, especially the maps. The game maps strike a nice balance between simple aesthetics and usability, they are not so gorgeous as, say, a Rick Barber map but they are also not nearly so overwhelming to play on. I’m not going to frame one and hang it on my wall, but I’ve enjoyed looking at them as I’ve played the game. The counter art is simplistic but functional, and I believe getting an update in the next game. I quite like it. I also really appreciate how in the Worthington published titles there are no Confederate flags on the counters. It may seem like a small thing, but it is great to see someone understand that you don’t actually need to slap the Confederate battle flag on a game to prove that it is about the American Civil War.
I also like how while there is a lot of rotating and swapping of strength counters to track the game’s attrition, each type of counter has distinct coloring on the numbers which makes it much easier to identify at a glance what each one is. This is a lovely bit of usability in design that plenty of publishers would have overlooked. It is also a nice touch that the CRT is split into ranges of four strength points, so every time you flip or swap a strength counter you know you’ve dropped a level on the CRT when making attacks. This is a really nice piece of design.
The Less Good
It’s not all sunshine and cake here, every game has its issues, and this system is no exception. While not enough to stop me from enjoying my plays these are the elements that keep me from pulling one of these games off my shelf on a more regular basis. These are just my complaints about the system, any issues with individual games will be covered later in the review.
The games are long for what they are. There’s not much that I would take out of the games to speed them up, but the grand battles will easily last you at least two hours and probably up to four. I know for some wargamers this will feel short, but for me, for a game this light, I would like it if they could consistently stay within two hours.
I would like an earlier cut off for some of the battles. While it is very possible for the fortunes of war to turn, sometimes one side is down 100 victory points at just over the midway point in the game and you have to accept that it’s finished. There is always the option to agree with your opponent that it is over, but I would like more mechanical options for ending the battle. Just agreeing to stop doesn’t really provide a satisfying narrative ending for me.
Resolving all of the defensive fire every turn can slow things down in some of the bigger battles. It’s a lot of dice rolling to resolve attacks with almost every unit on the board twice every single turn. I wonder if removing the ability of the defender to shoot their artillery at more than one hex would speed things along a little, but maybe it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I think I would like just a little more complexity in the system. I love its simplicity but sometimes I’m missing a little extra chrome.
Which is the best?
The core mechanisms behind each game are nearly identical – they all share the same core series rulebook, and each scenario has only a page or so at most of unique rules that set it apart from the others. Beyond that the key differences are in the order of battle, the maps, and the scenario options. For scientific accuracy I have played every entry in the series so far and I have written my abridged thoughts on each one below.
Antietam 1862
Antietam is the originator of the series and thus arguably the game at its most simple – not that there’s a huge difference between any of the published designs. It has the greatest variety of scenarios in terms of scale, with several scenarios on just section of the battle as well as one big grand tactical full battle option. I have to confess that I’m not generally very keen on playing parts of battles – give me grand tactical or bust – and so while these shorter and smaller scenarios are a great way to mix up the game’s length, they also don’t really appeal to me. With my limited interest in these smaller scenarios, that kind of limits Antietam to just one big scenario.
I think Antietam is the game in the series where I like the art the least, but I do still quite like it.
I quite enjoyed the rules restricting McClellan’s activations during the full scenario. Whether (or how) to restrict McClellan at Antietam is an interesting area for debate – designing around a general who was so indecisive and terrified of nonexistent Confederate reserves is no small feat. The limit on McClellan’s activation does seem a bit like a restriction to nudge the game towards its historic outcome rather than one that puts you in his shoes, which is something I don’t usually like, but I did actually find that this restriction made for a more interesting game. Activating every piece on a map with this many units can be a bit exhausting and time consuming, so this limit on the Union turns really helped keep the game moving at a good clip and kept each turn interesting for me. I actually had more fun playing the Union under these restrictions than the more open Confederate side. I think the degree to which this is a good model for McClellan’s generalship is open to debate, but as a game experience I really liked it.
Overall, the narrative the full scenario in Antietam told me was really engaging and I had a lot of fun playing this scenario. That said, it took me a long time and I don’t know how often I would unpack it to play it again. With my very limited time (and even more limited shelf space in my tiny European house) I don’t think this would be the game I would keep in my collection. It’s a lot of fun and I would happily play it again, but I think other entries in the series better fit my needs.
Shiloh 1862
Shiloh is probably the most complicated entry in the series so far, but the barrier separating it from the rest is razor thin. Shiloh adds rules for the Union army being caught unawares and having to slowly wake up and organise a counterattack, Confederates getting distracted by looting the Union camps, and the occasional bombardment by Union gunboats on the river. None of these are particularly complicated, and the alert rules will be discarded about a third of the way into the game once the full Union army is activated, but they are a little bit more chrome than I’ve seen in the other entries.
Where Shiloh really stands out is its length - this game is long! The full two day battle can last 31 turns, more than double the length of Antietam. This makes sense, as Antietam is a one day battle and Shiloh was two days, but it is still a very long time to be playing the game! This makes the full battle at least a full afternoon game if not a whole day experience, rather than something you might be able to cram into an evening. For me this makes Shiloh just too long. I like this system the best when scenarios are in a seven to ten turn window, for me that is the sweet spot, and Shiloh’s shortest scenario being fourteen turns is just too many for me.
The opening deployment of the first day of Shiloh - the Union sleep soundly in their camps while the Confederates swarm out of the southwest. The Union will get major reinforcements at the end of the first day, while the rebels have pretty much all the troops they’ll get.
I do want to end on a compliment, and that is that Shiloh has the best map of the lot. The confluence of the rivers creates a naturally blank space in one corner of the board that has been used to place the casualty track and several useful tables which reduces the need to constantly be glancing at the player aids. This makes Shiloh smooth to play, but I also just really like the aesthetics of the map and how it all comes together. It’s also really interesting to play on. The bonus to defense for being in the woods means you want to be in them more than not, and there’s plenty of woods here, but you will at times need to push units out into the open for key attacks. There’s plenty of interesting decisions to be made here about where to move units and how to manage the shape of the battlefield and its varied terrain. It’s great, love this map.
Overall I like Shiloh a lot, but it is too long for me to see myself reliably playing it. One to check out if you’re a fan of the topic and/or you like your games to have lots of room to breathe and develop, best avoided if your time is limited and you need your games to go quickly!
Cedar Mountain 1862 by Pascal Toupy
Cedar Mountain is kind of the odd one out. It was published in Vae Victis magazine, not by Worthington, and it was designed by Pascal Toupy rather than Grant Wylie. As a magazine game it has a smaller footprint than the other games in the series, although it does still manage to pack quite a lot of game in, so it doesn’t feel very much smaller than some of the scenarios in the Seven Days Battles.
The flow of the battle is really interesting. The Union starts strong but has to take Confederate ground – the victory conditions bar them from winning, no matter how many more VP they might have, if they can’t secure some of the Confederate position. The Union starts with all of its troops on the map (excluding an optional alt-history you can use to bring in reinforcements) but the Confederates will receive periodic surges of reinforcements. This means that the Union must act quickly to secure a foothold and then pray they can hold on to it in the face of Confederate counterattack. It’s a nice little narrative and one that I enjoyed.
Cedar Mountain is just such a neat little package. The smaller counters could be fiddly for some, but I didn’t have any problems with it and I really like having this as a smaller alternative. My one gripe is that differences in European and American standard paper size means the map won’t fit inside one of the boxed games.
Those victory conditions are also very clever because they always give the Confederates a chance at victory no matter how well those opening turns go for the Union. In a game where victory is determined by points alone it can be a bit discouraging to see yourself fall so far behind that you can’t feasibly catch up – it can make the final turns of a game feel pointless. Having a way to secure victory outside of just points is a great way to ensure that both players stay on the edge of their seats for the entire game.
Cedar Mountain also alters the re-rolls mechanism to grant each individual general a single re-roll to use in the game rather than one per side. This gives a little more in the way of options to mitigate the dice in a game where you will be making a lot of dice rolls. I also like how this is restricted to units that are in command range, so it makes the positioning of generals a little more important – being out of command isn’t too punishing in this system (and some units can be in command of their overall leader but not their division leader), so having a little extra reason to think about it is very nice.
Unfortunately, I think Cedar Mountain is mostly out of print now, being as it is a limited run magazine game, but I would say that if you can find it this is absolutely the best entry point into the series thanks to its much lower price point and footprint. It’s a great little game.
Cedar Mountain also has its own art style and while I generally love it, I am not in love with the decision to include Confederate flags in the art – especially because the absence of these flags was something I really liked in the rest of the series.
The Seven Days Battles
I’ve already written an extensive First Impressions article on The Seven Days Battles, and my observations from those initial games remain relatively unchanged so I want to focus on just a few elements of why I like The Seven Days Battles and why I think it is the volume I will keep.
First and foremost, it is the variety of scenarios. With four maps, and the option to combine those maps into bigger scenarios, The Seven Days Battles just has the most variety in terms of scenarios and I’m someone who really craves variety in my hex and counter games. There are single battle games that I adore, but more often than not if you give me a box with 4+ battles versus one with just a single battle I will basically always take the former.
Beaver Dam Creek definitely develops differently based on when and how often Stonewall’s units (at the top of the picture) actually succeed in activating. I don’t mind randomness in my games, but this could skew matters significantly which may be frustrating for a game that could last nearly two hours.
Seven Days Battles also has a lot of variety in the size of its battles. Where Shiloh just offers a grand battle and a slightly shorter grand battle, and for Antietam I just don’t care for the smaller options, with Seven Days Battles each individual battle is generally a manageable scale and then if I want something really big (which I do from time to time) I can put two boards together and play several battles in sequence.
I do have some reservations about The Seven Days Battles, though. I’m still not totally convinced by the Jackson sleeps mechanism; it just feels a little too random and like it could upset the balance in some of the smaller scenarios. I’m also not totally sure about the balance of some of the scenarios – I don’t care a lot about game balance, especially when playing solo, but if the outcome feels a bit predetermined after a while it may reduce my enthusiasm to revisit certain scenarios over time. For the time being, though, I really enjoy Seven Days Battles and I’m looking forward to playing the rest of the battles in the box that I haven’t tried yet.
Conclusion
I had a good time playing each and every one of these games, but I also don’t think I need to own them all. Of the three boxed games (ignoring Cedar Mountain because it’s easy to find space for) I think I only really need to keep one volume. Especially when you consider that Worthington has already Kickstarted a Gettysburg game and has plans for many more volumes in this series, I just don’t think I’ll be revisiting them all enough to justify owning more than one, or at most two, entries in this series. Maybe if I had an enormous basement with nigh infinite shelf space I would feel differently, but for the moment this is a series which I really like but that I’m also content to probably just keep my favorite entry – unless a new one comes along and dethrones it!
The one I’m keeping for the moment is The Seven Days Battles, and while I’m not prepared to declare it the best game in the series it is the one that appeals the most to me. The variety of scenarios and the scale of those scenarios really hit a sweet spot, followed closely by Cedar Mountain’s small footprint offering. Really, though, I think any of these are worth a try if you get a chance and you should probably be guided by your own interest in the topic of the game. These are really solid bits of design that are a great way to spend an afternoon or a (long) evening.
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