I’ll save you some time, it’s boring and terrible. If you want to know more click through, but be warned what lies within contains discussion of some pretty vile stuff (and a really quite terrible game).
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:
Initial Impressions - Seven Days Battles by Grant Wylie
While arguably one of the most important battles of the American Civil War, the Seven Days Battles have not really ingrained themselves into our popular consciousness the same way battles like Chancellorsville or Gettysburg have. There are no doubt many factors that explain this, but I would hazard that one of them is that the Seven Days sits in an awkward middle between being more than one battle but not quite a full campaign. From a game perspective it also presents an interesting challenge to design for. The Seven Days, as the name suggests, was a series of battles covering a week of combat. During the Seven Days, Robert E. Lee, recently appointed to command of the Army of Northern Virginia, lead a series of aggressive attacks on the Union army of George McClellan which was stationed just outside of Richmond. Lee’s army suffered horrific casualties, but, thanks in part to McClellan’s own fears about Confederate military strength, it was able to drive the Union army back to the coast of Virginia. My initial expectation was that the battle would work best at an operational scale, which lead to me playing The Late Unpleasantness, which I found… underwhelming. Now I’m taking my second shot at the Seven Days Battles but this time as a hex and counter tactical game thanks to the latest entry in Worthington’s Civil War Brigade Battle Series.
Podcast: Seven Pines; or, Fair Oaks by Amabel Holland
For episode four of ongoing podcast series We Intend to Move on Your Works, I am once again joined by Alexandre and Pierre as we discuss Amabel Holland’s interesting hex and counter take on the battle alternatively known as Seven Pines or Fair Oaks Station. This was a great discussion and well worth your time!
Arquebus: Fornovo 1495 by Richard Berg
It’s been a while since I played Men of Iron and I’d been been hankering to try some more Arquebus so I took a break from playing a small mountain of American Civil War hex and counter games for a brief holiday in sixteenth-century Italy. I decided to try the Fornovo scenario for the very boring reason that it was the first battle in the play book and I’m glad I did because this is probably one of the most interesting Men of Iron scenarios I have ever played. It reminded me of everything I really like about Men of Iron, as well as some of the elements of the system that I don’t think work so well. Those wrinkles weren’t enough to stop me from enjoying Fornovo a lot and putting it high on my list of scenarios I want to try again.
First Impressions - Tetrarchia by Miguel Marqués
I was lucky enough to be invited to guest on a teach and play of Tetrarchia Second Edition, published by Draco Ideas. I’ve been interested in trying this game after I was very impressed with Draco Ideas’ game 1212 Las Novas de Tolosa, and I was excited to give it a shot. You can see our full replay as well as an extended discussion on a variety of topics in the video below:
Review - Andean Abyss by Volko Runke
It happened! COIN came to the internet’s best online wargame platform, Rally the Troops, in the form of the series originator Andean Abyss. In many ways this is the obvious choice for Rally the Troops, it’s both a great place for those interested in learning the system and out of print with little promise of a reprint soon, so not in direct competition with sales. It also offered me the first time to try and dive deep into a COIN game and see how I feel about the system after repeated plays. The requirement to get four players and dedicate most of a day has made consistent plays of COIN games a challenge. I have dabbled with solitaire play, and enjoyed that, but I’m terrible at flow-charts and multi-hand solitaire is a very different kind of experience. So, I’ve been logging many, but not an insane number, of Andean Abyss plays over the past month or so, what have I learned?
Review - Here I Stand by Ed Beach
I first played Here I Stand five years ago at a time when I was far less familiar with wargames. In fact I had recently purged my small game collection of every wargame I owned but Here I Stand because I had given up on finding time and people to play them with. Despite this, in 2018 I made the effort of gathering six of my friends and spending the entire day playing Here I Stand. It was amazing. It took us over eight hours. In the end I emerged victorious as the French, securing an instant victory moments before the Ottomans won on VPs earned mostly through piracy. I spent the next 24 hours buzzing with excitement and exhaustion after that phenomenal day of gaming. I had to get it back to the table, I needed that experience again. Finally, a child, a pandemic, and five years later I managed to play it again and let me tell you, it was just as good the second time!
Joan of Arc: A History by Helen Castor
Helen Castor’s biography of Joan of Arc is a good account of The Maid’s life that doesn’t get too lost in the weeds and stands out in part as a result of her interesting choice of framing for the narrative. I enjoyed reading it but at the same time I think I may have somewhat ruined books like this for myself by digging a little too deep into the mines of history. As a result it left me a little unsatisfied in ways that will probably not affect most readers.
Review - Seven Pines or Fair Oaks by Amabel Holland
My ongoing exploration of American Civil War games brought me back to hex and counter after a run of operational games and I was pretty excited to be here. I love operational games, but there is something just so satisfying about a tactical hex and counter game even as someone who generally doesn’t find battles to be the most interesting lens through which to view military history. I was also excited to be playing another Amabel Holland game. She is always an interesting designer even as I’ve not always loved her games. However, I adored Great Heathen Army, so more hex and counter from her was clearly something to look forward to.
The Confederate Battle Flag by John Coski
I want to be positive to begin with, because I will say some unkind things in this review. This was a deeply frustrating book to read and at times a labor just to get to the very end. However, I learned a lot about the history of the Confederate flag from reading it. I feel much more informed about its history and better qualified to examine its role in American society than I was before I read it. In that regard this book was an unqualified success - I got out of the experience what I most hoped to when I started reading it. However, getting there was something of a chore. I don’t mean in terms of the writing, which is largely fine even if it can drag at times with the inclusion of too many case studies with too much superfluous detail. Instead, it is in Coski’s analysis of the history of the flag that the problems begin to arise.
Half of a Review of The Late Unpleasantness by Steve Ruwe
I want to open with two confessions straight out of the gate. The first is that I have only played half of Steve Ruwe’s The Late Unpleasantness: Two Campaigns to Take Richmond. As the sub-title implies, there are two games in this box and I have only played one of them. The two campaigns are If It Takes All Summer, on Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign, and The Gates of Richmond, on the Seven Days Battles in 1862. I have only played the latter, but I feel like my experience with it is sufficient to review that part of the game even if this is not a review of the whole box. My second confession is this: I didn’t really enjoy The Gates of Richmond. Usually games I don’t enjoy I don’t write about, because expressing my lack of enjoyment isn’t very much fun for me and this blog is first and foremost a hobby. However, in this case I had what I felt were sufficient thoughts on the game and its representation of history that it would be worth writing about it, even if in the end I don’t think the game itself is very interesting to play.
Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule
“History is dangerous.”
This refrain repeats throughout Ty Seidule’s autobiographical history of the Lost Cause and it is a fitting chorus. The Lost Cause is testament to how dangerous history, or in this case the distortion and denial thereof, can be. The Lost Cause has long since collapsed within the halls of academia but it continues to hold significant sway in popular memory and there’s plenty of work to be done still to fight against its sway in politics and wider American society. While plenty of authors have broken down the specifics of the distortions and horrors of the Lost Cause, what Dr. Seidule does in this book is a more personal account of neo-Confederate mythmaking. I found this to be a highly valuable approach, but I have to acknowledge that it may not work for everyone. Still, I think this is a valuable addition to the corpus of literature combating the Lost Cause in the 21st century.
Review - 1914: Nach Paris
I played 1914 Nach Paris in something of a frenzy over the month of March and early April. Finishing a game one evening, setting up the next scenario and playing that the following night. It dominated my little gaming corner, pushing everything else to the edges. Night after night I struggled to learn to swim in this complex operational hex and counter game about the opening weeks of the Western Front of World War I, designed by Bertrand Munier and published by Vuca Simulations. That I played this so many times should give some indication about how much I’ve enjoyed my time with 1914: Nach Paris but this is a huge box and there’s a lot to unpack, both literally and in terms of the experience it offers. I hope you’ll bear with me for what will prove to be a meandering review through the pre-trench warfare of 1914 Northern France.
Henry VI by David Grummitt
Henry VI often comes across a as almost a secondary character in his own life, which has made him a challenging figure for biographers to approach. He ruled disastrously during a particularly pivotal moment in medieval English history, a time that has been famously captured in some of Shakespeare’s more boringly titled plays - yet another element that has bolstered his name recognition while pushing the real person further away. David Grummitt's very approachable biography of the king does not overcome this challenge, in fact it does almost the exact opposite and embraces a perspective of Henry VI that largely holds the person at arms length to examine the systems and culture that shaped him. This makes for an engaging account of not only the life of Henry VI but also of the broader Lancastrian era of the English monarchy: its goals and its failings, and how they shaped and were shaped by the dynasty’s longest ruling monarch.
We Intend to Move on Your Works - The Lost Cause in Games on the American Civil War: A Project
I am a scion of the Great Commonwealth of Virginia, the Old Dominion, and the son of an avowed Civil War buff so you can probably imagine that my childhood featured a lot of information about the American Civil War. In School I didn’t learn any history after 1865 until I was fourteen. The period between Jamestown and the end of the Civil War was the high point of Virginian hegemony and the school system was perfectly happy to dwell within that temporal space for as long as possible. During my childhood I was frequently taken to battlefields to play - I’ve been to Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Gettysburg, and many smaller sites more times than I can count. I even have a favourite obscure American Civil War site (it’s the Confederate Breastworks in West Augusta County, Virginia - although more for its scenic views and lovely hiking trail than its historical importance). Few historical events loomed as large in my life as the American Civil War and this has given me a complicated relationship with it.
First Impressions: Shenandoah: Jackson's Valley Campaign by Tom Dalgliesh and Gary Selkirk
I love block games. Someday I will maybe be able to fully articulate why the simple fog of war and tactile satisfaction of blocks make my brain so happy, but today isn’t that day. Let’s just start from a position that I love them. However, I do not love them all equally and there are even some block games that I don’t like very much. I have previously written about card driven Columbia block games, most of which I really enjoyed and continue to enjoy, but I had never played a game from Columbia that used any other activation system. I must confess that I didn’t even know how such a thing might work. When I set out to make a study of American Civil War games I knew I had to include a block game and I also wanted to play something on Jackson’s Valley Campaign, so Shenandoah seemed like a perfect fit for the project. It also served as an ideal palette cleanser for myself and Pierre after our lengthy game of Manassas - we loved that game, but playing something that could be finished in a couple of hours had a great attraction after that marathon of a game. I didn’t expect a whole lot from Shenandoah, I was just looking for something light and easy to play, but I was really impressed with the experience it offered. I think people have been sleeping on this one, this is a great little block game!
The Hundred Years War by Anne Curry
I want to say at the start that I think Anne Curry is one of, if not the, most important scholars working on the Hundred Years War. Her work on the prosopography of medieval soldiers is truly astonishing and she has collaborated with many excellent scholars to put out an amazing body of work. That all having been said, it is a black mark on her record that she has written two different books titled The Hundred Years War. I am of the opinion that authors should entirely cease titling their books The Hundred Years War, it is becoming impossible to find them among the sea of identically titled books, but to have one author write two such books is beyond the pale.
First Impressions - 1914: Nach Paris by Bertrand Munier
I have been admiring the games coming out of Vuca Simulations in Germany for some time. They have a striking aesthetic whose attention to detail and consistent feel across numerous games really stand out. Plus, they are among the best in the industry at box covers. However, their games are largely on World War II which is not a subject I have a burning desire to play games on, if I’m honest. I was still tempted because of their amazing aesthetic, but then I saw 1914 Nach Paris and I thought that this would be a great option for my first Vuca game. While I’m still more drawn to pre-twentieth century games, World War I does hold some interest and an operational look at the war’s opening weeks promised to be really interesting. At the same time, though, it looked like a daunting game in terms of complexity - a step beyond the games I have played so far. Still, I was excited to try it!