Stuart Ellis-Gorman's Blog, page 7

Norman Conquests (Men of Iron V) by Ralph Shelton (and Richard Berg)

I am a certified, card-carrying Men of Iron obsessive so of course I was excited when I heard a new volume in the series was coming out. That excitement was dampened slightly by the knowledge that since original designer Richard Berg had passed away, he would not be continuing the series himself. Still, carrying on that legacy was an all around positive even if I had slight trepidations about what that would mean for this new entry. I am pleased to report that while it is not a perfect game, Norman Conquests is an admirable addition to the Men of Iron series. At time of writing, I have played all but two scenarios in Norman Conquests and I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am saving the remaining scenarios because I like to savor my Men of Iron experience. It’s not like we get a new entry every year, you know.

I even have a custom dice tower - I’m basically ride or die for this series at this stage.

GMT Games kindly provided me with a review copy of Norman Conquests

Who is this Norman guy anyway?

Norman Conquests is in many ways a “back to basics” game for the series. It covers battles from the eleventh and thirteenth centuries – the thematic link is honestly pretty tenuous but I’m hardly going to condemn it for that – with most of them being small scale for the series. These are battles that you could easily set up in and play through in an evening, 1-2 hours tops. It is basically the opposite of Arquebus, Men of Iron volume IV, which had only one battle that played in less than two hours and included what must be the largest battle in the system to date. Instead of that volumes indulgence and excess Norman Conquests focuses on small scenarios with a limited unit pool. At times it is reminiscent of Blood and Roses with the two sides of a battle having essentially symmetrical unit compositions.

All of these elements together make Norman Conquests an excellent entry point into the Men of Iron series. The rules are not any less complex than other games, so you still need to fully learn how to play, but the actual scenarios themselves are small and won’t overwhelm you as you familiarize yourself with its systems. That’s not to say that this game is only for the uninitiated. While I love Arquebus and its borderline overindulgence in scale, I’ve really enjoyed being able to set up and knock out a game of Men of Iron in an evening without breaking a sweat. Playing a big scenario from Arquebus is almost an event whereas I can set up and play Norman Conquests on a weekday evening when I’m tired and just want to relax with some medieval warfare.

The core elements of Men of Iron are still here, in particular the system’s ability create emergent narratives from (relatively) little rules. The smaller battles help Norman Conquests avoid the major problem I have with Men of Iron, where large numbers of troops may never be activated because it’s better to keep activating 1-2 Battles over and over again than to rotate between 3-4. Norman Conquests doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and in some ways is arguably a step backwards (I’ll cover that more later), but it retains all that core Men of Iron flavor and as a fan of the series I couldn’t help but have a lot of fun while playing it. I will note that it is a little weird that the rulebook is labeled as the “Tri-Pack” rules and reproduces all the rules from those three games (but not Arquebus) with Norman Conquests added in alongside the original Men of Iron. I would have preferred a specific Norman Conquests rulebook that doesn’t clutter itself up with rules for Infidel or Blood and Roses - but then my dislike for series rulebooks is pretty well established by now.

The moment when a lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective) Continued Attack killed King Harold and spelled doom for the center of the English line in my alternate battle site game of Hastings. If this picture gets you excited then you should probably just go buy the game now.

The production of Norman Conquests is also very nice. The counter size has been increased and it is a huge improvement to the play experience. The original games were all half inch counters, which is fine, but I always prefer my counters to be larger than half inch if given the option. The larger counters in Norman Conquests just really increase the tactile joy of moving pieces across the map. They also helped speed up the set up as I found it much easier to find the counters I was looking for in the mix given the larger size and text. I quite like the art on the counters and maps, although I do wish the leaders had more variety to their coats of arms instead of repeating the same ones for all the leaders on each side.

If you’ll allow me an indulgence, it wouldn’t be a Men of Iron review if I didn’t talk about archery. The archery in Norman Conquests remains incredibly powerful, very like the original entry rather than some of the revisions made in later volumes which I felt were a real improvement. However, the difference in the number of archers in each battle made the role they played in individual battles far more interesting. Unlike in the original Men of Iron where one side might have a dozen or more archers, in Norman Conquests individual Battles rarely have more than one archer, so a side might only have 1-3 archers total. I found that archers remained a critical part of my strategy when playing Norman Conquests, but I couldn’t be quite so blasé in how I used my limited supply, and it forced me to be a lot more careful in my application of missile fire. This created a more interesting game experience where I would use archers to (hopefully) disorder a given unit in the enemy line and then immediately try to apply melee force to that point to break a hole so I could start flanking enemy units. This is a lot closer to how archers were used in medieval warfare, so kudos to the game for that. There should have been more crossbows, though, which I’m sure we’ll talk about later.

I also couldn’t help but notice that the the Welsh at Evesham have longbows when nobody else does. Berg clearly subscribing to the erroneous but very popular myth that the Welsh invented the longbow. A slight mark against him, but more because longbows are way overpowered and I was happier without any in this game!

All is not necessarily right in kingdom

While I have had plenty of fun playing Norman Conquests it is not a perfect game and is thus not beyond criticism. My main complaint about the game is the scenario design. Many of the scenarios feature armies of near identical unit composition positioned on a mostly blank battlefield approximately four hexes away from each other. Coincidentally, the movement rate of most units of the slowest units is 4 hexes. This means that there is no approach to battle and instead games begin with an immediate clash. To some degree this immediacy is nice, it is great to get into the thick of things quickly, but at the same time it generates a level of sameness to the play experience. Those early turns of moving the armies closer together are a great way to generate alternative narratives and try new strategies. The alternative strategies available in a battle like Fulford Bridge are mostly just activate the other battle first this time. These aren’t bad experiences, but nor are they as exciting as they could be.

The initial set up for Fulford. I will say that the swamp and river do at least narrow the battlefield some and have the potential to shake things up a little but it is still two virtually identical armies facing each other from really quite close.

The scenarios also often have very few special rules or variant options to explore. One of the things I loved about earlier Men of Iron games was how Berg would include all these weird variants for what if a historical element didn’t happen or for an alternative interpretation of the history. This expanded the options for replaying the scenario and let you pick and choose a historical interpretation, something I often did when I disagreed with the default one on offer. The Berg scenarios also generally each included some variation on the core rules that made each scenario stand out. These are not completely absent from Norman Conquests but of the first four scenarios in the box only Hastings has anything in the way of significant special rules, and that rule didn’t even come up in my playthroughs because the Normans did so well in both games I played (more on Hastings specifically below). One could be forgiven for thinking that Civitate, Fulford, and Stamford are all essentially the same scenario but with different maps.

For anyone wondering, at Fulford I chose to activate Northumbria first, but maybe next time the King should go first.

There are two very noticeable exceptions to this which are the final two scenarios in the box: Lewes and Evesham. These are scenarios that were originally designed by Richard Berg for his game Simon Says, a precursor to Men of Iron as we know it. That they stretch the concept of historically what a “Norman Conquest” is can be forgiven because these are probably the two best scenarios in the box. They retain those interesting Berg elements and while not quite as involved as some of the big, weird scenarios in games like Infidel or Arquebus they stand out as excellent additions to the Men of Iron family. I just wish more battles in Norman Conquests were like them.

Evesham, giving me that Berg-ian chrome that I yearn for so badly with its fleeing Welsh troops, possible escape for the Montfortian army, and big hill in the middle of the map. Stellar stuff.

Some parts of Norman Conquests feel a bit like a step back for the series. It could be argued that this was a move to return the series to first principles, as the game seems to take most of its notes from the original Men of Iron, but I think it shows a certain lack of ambition. I already mentioned the archery, but Norman Conquests also abandons ideas like Army Activations and returns to the original Combat Results Table (CRT) of the first game. The loss of Army Activations is arguably no big deal because in virtually every scenario you start so close to the enemy as to render them pointless, but I also find that choice disappointing as discussed above so I would have preferred to have the option and to have an approach to battle for each scenario. The CRT is more of a loss – I loved how Blood and Roses introduced a “retreat or disordered” result and made it harder to inflict mandatory retreats on units. The retreat rules in Men of Iron are incredibly punishing and actively discourage making the kind of tight formations that medieval armies used. Blood and Roses introduced a quite elegant solution to this problem, and I wish it had been picked up here. To be fair, Arquebus didn’t keep this change, but it did introduce the Engaged rules which I for one am a fan of – and these rules were partially introduced to the earlier entries in the Tri-Pack release. While Norman Conquests, because it has the Tri-Pack rulebook, does include this option and comes with a handful of Engaged counters in the mix (although not many of them), it still feels a little weird that it didn’t choose to either adopt them, modify them, or simply ignore them. The other entries in the Tri-Pack rules were designed before the engagement rule and so that rule was backdated to them as an option for fans who liked it. Surely since Norman Conquests was designed after Arquebus the designer could have made a clear choice to integrate them or not instead of this halfway solution.

The CRTs from Norman Conquests, Blood and Roses, and Arquebus. While I adore Arquebus for my money Blood and Roses probably has the best CRT in the series. Norman Conquests’ is identical to the original Men of Iron.

I’m also on the fence about the length of the battles. The flight points for battles in Norman Conquests are quite low – several are as low as 15. The end result is that these battles came to an end very quickly. This has the benefit of meaning that the scenarios are quick to play, which I am a fan of. However, I often found that the scenarios ended before I was ready for them to be finished. Things would be getting really exciting and then one side would collapse, and the game would end when I really wanted to play a few more activations. Now, I absolutely prefer for games to finish early rather than for them to overstay their welcome, but I can’t help but feel like the scenarios would be a little more satisfying if the flight points values were 5-8 points higher. It just felt a little off, the endings just that smidge too abrupt. It left me wanting more.

These are minor criticisms and didn’t ruin my enjoyment of Norman Conquests. However, they did seem to indicate a lack of ambition in the design choices and that is not something I would ever have credited the Berg designs with (or maybe any Berg design really, he certainly had ambition you have to give him that). For Norman Conquests itself this was far from a deal breaker, but I hope it is not an indicator for what the series looks like going forward. I really like Norman Conquests as a slightly simplified and smaller entry in the series, but if volume VI is like this, I don’t know that I will be as interested. I love these bite-sized scenarios but going forward please give me more Arquebus style madness!

Case Study: Hastings

Unfortunately, the history in Norman Conquests is not stellar. Men of Iron is not a series I would describe as having particularly deep historical context – you usually get some paragraphs describing every scenario but not much more. Norman Conquests continues this tradition, although to my eyes the paragraphs seem a little bit shorter and less detailed. Other entries supplemented this background with the individual rules for the scenario and optional variants, each of which usually contained a few nuggets of history. What I would say about the history in previous Men of Iron titles is that while I wouldn’t always agree with the historical version on display, I did always feel like I was getting a very specific Berg-ian take on the battle and I respected that. Those games felt like arguments Berg was making whereas the versions in Norman Conquests without those extra bits of chrome and variants feel a lot more like reading the historical summary off Wikipedia. To hopefully show what I mean, I want to dig a little deeper into the battle in Norman Conquests that I feel the most qualified to discuss as a historian: Hastings.

Hastings set up with the traditional battle site (Battle Hill) chosen. You can see the large space to the right which will go essentially unused in this scenario.

There has long been an obsession among medieval historians, often rooted in early historians like Charles Oman and especially A.H. Burne, to focus on medieval battles as decisive clashes in medieval military history. In reality, sieges were dominant and few battles, no matter how famous now or at the time, could truly be said to be decisive. However, among the rarified group of truly decisive medieval battles Hastings stands at or near the very top – truly a day when history bifurcated. It should be no surprise that 1066 and Hastings have been defining moments in English history ever since and arguments over the narrative of the battle a major part of English historical writing. As with all medieval battles, pinning down exactly what happened at Hastings is a challenge. As a major battle there were several key accounts written soon after – nearly all by the Norman victors – but they are generally not as detailed as we would like and in the way of medieval sources sometimes contradict each other.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t not here that Norman Conquests uses the labels Norman and Saxon for the two sides in Hastings, which is a very old-fashioned terminology. Modern scholars would almost universally label Harold Godwinson and his supporters the English, not the Saxons. Even those who wouldn’t use English would use Anglo-Saxon – the separate label of Saxon has been out of favor for decades as overly simplistic and failing to appreciate the mixed cultural status of the English monarchy at this stage. However, while it remains common in popular and academic works, even the term Anglo-Saxon has been challenged recently. This is still very much an ongoing debate that is a bit outside my traditional area of expertise, so I don’t want to weigh in on it definitively, but there is certainly a taint of nineteenth-century race science to the label Anglo-Saxon, and as such it has a lot of cultural cache with modern white supremacists, which has led some scholars to argue that since it is rarely attested in medieval texts we should be using English instead of Anglo-Saxon. Regardless of where you fall on this debate, the term Saxon on it’s own (without the Anglo-) is very dated and points to the age of many of the sources listed in Norman Conquests bibliography.

To give credit where it is due, the scenario in Norman Conquests gives two alternative set ups that let you fight the battle on either of the hills generally accepted as the battle site. This is great and is the kind of detail that has made me a fan of Men of Iron. However, it does come with a bit of a cost. By including both hills on the map there isn’t a lot of spare room and in practice with the scenario set up these play like two smaller battles that happen next to each other and not two very different experiences on the same shared geography. It would be far preferable if the map covered more area to the south (there is some empty space on the far right of the map sheet that could have been adopted for this purpose) so that the set ups could have allowed for more approach to the battle. Beyond my own preference for having more of an approach, this tight framing to the history does not really allow for the difference between the fairly static English army to be contrasted with the more mobile and elaborate movements of the Normans.

The alternative set up on Caldbec Hill. I think I slightly prefer this one, the curved lines and the swampy terrain make for a more interesting battle.

Here is where we get into the meat of things. The narrative of Hastings is open to some interpretation and has been pretty widely debated for centuries, so I am by no means declaring an infallible analysis here, but it is worth considering generally how most people reconstruct the battle. I would point people who are interested in this subject to Stephen Morillo’s excellent book The Battle of Hastings which includes key primary sources, interpretations of those sources, and a range of excellent articles on the history of the battle. It is far from a new book, and I think it is an oversight that it is not included in the game’s bibliography. While I don’t expect every wargame designer to be a master of primary source material, the core primary sources for Hastings are incredibly accessible to non-academics and books like Morillo’s make them very approachable and affordable. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in studying Hastings in any detail.

The bibliography from Norman Conquests. Kudos for including one, although some demerits for not including publication dates for the works (a huge pet peeve of mine). There are some good books on this list, but many older works that have long since been superseded.

In the battle of hastings the English took up a position on a hill (which hill we’ll ignore for now) and formed a shield wall to blunt the Norman attack. The Norman attack could be interpreted a few ways, but generally it is thought to have had three waves: first the archers lead the way shooting at the English, then the infantry attacked and were largely ineffective, and finally the cavalry charged in. However, it was certainly more complex than just that. Some sources suggest that Norman wings were routed, and William had to rally them himself – removing his helmet to prove he wasn’t dead by some accounts – while others describe the Normans engaging in feigned retreats to pull the English out of formation before wheeling their mounted troops around and attacking the weaker formation now. This idea of multiple waves of mounted charges is one of the most popular versions of Hastings even if there are some doubts about the veracity of the account that describes them. If we believe the story that Harold was shot in the eye, an open debate among historians, then clearly the archers continued to contribute to the fight even after the second and third waves engaged with the English lines.

What disappoints me is that the Hastings scenario does not take many steps to incorporate the specifics of the battle – for example, rules around a potential feigned retreat by the Normans or rules for the English housecarls acting as a special bodyguard for King Harold. Instead, it has mostly generic units, nearly identical for both sides except that the English get a few axmen and the Normans have some mounted men-at-arms. I would also, because I am who I am, note that the Normans have no crossbowmen despite the fact that William of Poitiers, probably the main source for the battle, clearly states “In the vanguard [William] placed infantry armed with bows and crossbows”. My point is not so much that the Hastings scenario does not have crossbowmen, but that there is a vast potential for alternative interpretations and interesting twists on the Men of Iron formula to be used in Hastings and what Norman Conquests chooses to do with it is far less ambitious or exciting than I would like. It includes the alternate battle site, albeit without any approach to the battle, and it includes rules for a Norman initiated lull if things go badly for them (and I want to emphasize that I do like this rule even if it didn’t come up in either of my plays), but that is all it does and there is potential for so much more. It doesn’t feel like a scenario created by someone working hard to untangle the primary sources – it feels too generic, like the version of the battle you’d read in a textbook. That’s not to say that Ralph didn’t read primary sources, but if he did I don’t think he committed fully to representing their complexities in the design.

The thing is, Hastings is one of the more interesting battles in the box, with many others having even fewer twists on the core model. Overall, what this does is make the battles feel far more generic than they should. All that weird Berg-ian chrome and variants were not superfluous but in many ways were one of the ways that Men of Iron engaged the history in interesting ways. Without that chrome the scenarios in Norman Conquests, while still fun, feel a bit bland and don’t teach me very much about the history. The version of medieval warfare shown in these scenarios are just two lines smashing against each other and one side winning, it lacks the nuance of a serious attempt to engage with the history and it leaves me disappointed. Even when I disagreed with Berg’s interpretation, I knew that he at least firmly believed in it. I’m less sure of that in Norman Conquests.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a lot of fun with Norman Conquests and all my complaints, criticisms, and nit-picks should be seen as a sign of my love for this series and how I want it to be the best possible version of itself. Norman Conquests is an excellent entry point for Men of Iron if you have been interested in the series but haven’t taken the plunge and it has a lot to offer series veterans looking for more medieval warfare in their life. Its greatest flaw is a lack of ambition, particularly in its scenario design, and I hope that going forward Ralph Shelton (and anyone else who may come along to design for the series, I personally would love to see a variety of designers continue the Men of Iron legacy) lets his inner Berg out a little more. I love that there is now a lighter and smaller Men of Iron entry, but here’s hoping the next volume includes some truly phenomenal Berg-ian indulgences as well!

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.

Since I started my dive into American Civil War gaming it was inevitable that I had to tackle this series at some stage. While the game I have on my shelf is Stonewall in the Valley, a 1995 release that hasn’t been redone by MMP, and I have pushed some counters around on that map solitaire, I chose the updated new edition of the first game, now called Stonewall Jackson’s Way II, as the first title I would sink my teeth into. What I found was an unorthodox and intriguing system that was far easier to get into and quicker to play than its reputation would have you think. However, it is also not without fault and after three games, including a play of the advanced campaign, I’m still on the fence about how I feel about the series in general.

The core is strong, there’s no denying it

The central loop in a turn of Great Campaigns of the Civil War (GCACW from here on) is incredibly satisfying and smooth, although describing it might make me sound like a lunatic. First, both players roll a d6 to determine initiative, highest wins, Confederates win ties (we’ll talk about that later). The winner can choose to activate some units, or they can pass, giving the chance to their opponent. If both players pass, the turn ends, we do some bookkeeping, and we start again.

If you choose to activate units you have essentially three options: you can activate one unit on its own, you can activate a leader and move any number of units under that leader’s command within his command range, or you can activate a leader and all the units in his hex to attack an adjacent hex. This latter choice is the only way to attack with more than one unit at a time, single unit attacks are resolved as part of movement. There is more nuance to this, including how attacking from multiple hexes is handled, but this is the core of the game.

Let’s say you chose to activate some units to move. You roll a d6 and this is how far your units will get to move this turn. You get +1 to the roll if you activated a leader and had him activate the unit, and you get +1 if you’re a Confederate (again, more on that later). If you happen to have activated cavalry, roll 2d6 instead. Now you get to move your units, it costs one movement point to move along roads (unless it’s raining) but the cost for moving off-road starts at 3 points and only goes up depending on the terrain, so you probably want to stick to the road.

Some people will balk at this level of randomness (and we’re not even covering how initiating assault combat with a leader requires more rolls). I, however, love chaos in my games and GCACW certainly injects a desirable amount of uncertainty, but it also creates interesting decisions and a whole hell of a lot of tension. See, I kind of skipped over the most important thing. Every time you activate a unit, that unit gains a Fatigue. If a unit has 4 Fatigue, it can’t activate anymore. If a unit exceeds certain Fatigue thresholds it will become exhausted and may also become disordered or suffer losses. And, lastly, you only refresh 3 Fatigue between turns, and you need to be below certain levels to restore disordered or exhausted units to fit and fighting shape again.

So yes, the game is roll and move, but it’s also a game of trying to figure out how much you need to push this unit right now. What are your chances of winning initiative next, and being able to go again? How much can you hedge your bets on having a series of activations before your opponent has any vs. going all out right now? It is tense and every moment of your turn is exciting. It is also incredibly quick and clean to resolve, you roll a die, pick some units, roll a die, move some units, repeat. Even combat, once you learn a few of its idiosyncrasies, resolves remarkably smoothly.

The only game I’ve played before that kind of reminded me of this system was Shakos Games’ Napoleon 1806. That game is very different from GCACW, it applies different solutions to similar ideas – your units’ movement is determined by the random drawing of a card and fatigue is as much a threat, if not more, to your armies as damage in battle. These games feel like two different approaches to the same design goals, and both are excellent implementations of those ideas.

I’m going to cover some things I like far less about GCACW in the sections below, but before we go there, I want to reiterate how much I like this core gameplay loop. I think it’s incredibly clever and something that more game designers should experiment with. When I was in the zone in a game of GCACW it was incredibly exciting, but sometimes I couldn’t help but be yanked out of that zone and then I found my feelings to be a bit messier.

The cost of victory

Victory conditions are a crucial part of any design. They not only set the stakes and provide a clear target for players to achieve in the game, but they also say what the designer thinks the objectives of this historical event were. They set parameters for what the historical actors needed to achieve to be victorious – they are, in effect, a commentary on the history. For this reason, I have never been particularly fond of victory points in wargames. No historical actor thought in terms of abstract VPs when they were making their strategic decisions – they had clear goals in mind and those goals had tactical and strategic implications. Often, when playing games solo, I will cast off the victory points entirely and simply play the game with general goals in mind and then at the end judge how well each side performed. I find this far more satisfying than rounding out a nice evening of gaming with bookkeeping.

VPs at their best are simply an abstraction of these historical goals, a measure of how well the player did against the history with the potential for more granularity than “did the same or better as the historical event” or “failed to do the same as the historical event”. Since wargames live in counterfactual, these latter metrics would not be useful. Still, I prefer VPs (if they must be present) to be simple and with the parallels that can be easily drawn between what the VPs represent and the historical outcome that earning those VPs is meant to align with.

I bring this up because I hate the victory conditions in Stonewall Jackson’s Way II. The scenarios have many VP metrics to consider, often a dozen or more, and they are frustrating to keep track of and not always entirely intuitive. At first blush they are straightforward, such as a goal for the Confederate player to occupy Culpeper and have no enemy units adjacent to it. That’s simple, but that is two separate VP totals (one for occupying Culpeper with enemies adjacent, one for if no enemies are adjacent), and then there are VPs for casualties, number of enemy units routed, and other factors and at the end of the day the Confederate player (only the Confederate’s earn points in this game, the Union merely subtracts from the Confederate total) must achieve a certain number of points to win. On the final turn of my second scenario whenever my opponent passed, I found myself counting up the VPs to determine whether I could win the game if I simply passed now and ended the game. I don’t even like doing this kind of points counting in Eurogames, I really dislike it in wargames. Combined with the need to remember so many potential victory point sources to play effectively, this repeatedly pulled me out of GCACW’s excellent narrative flow much to my own frustration.

The Vassal modules do help with this by highlighting victory point areas - hexes in blue are worth the VPs written next to them, yellow circles are train depots that the Confederates can destroy for VPs. Very helpful, but not available when playing physically.

Now, I should say that the victory conditions seem to be very well balanced and maximally designed to suit a competitive play experience. These scenarios have clearly been tested many times and the final product is a game that will be a tense game for both players. However, I don’t really care much about balance, and I find the victory conditions soulless and tedious. Others with different taste will have other thoughts on the matter, which is fine.

Actually, it’s a dexterity game

My initial experience with GCACW was playing a scenario of Stonewall in the Valley solo on the little wargaming table I have in one corner of my sitting room. When it came time to play Stonewall Jackon’s Way II, I played it on Vassal with my friend and podcast co-conspirator Pierre. These experiences were very different. The Vassal modules for GCACW are incredible and remove a huge amount of bookkeeping from the play experience. They also eliminate one of GCACW’s most challenging mechanics: stacking.

The maps are gorgeous and the unit count blessedly small here, but each of these stacks could balloon to be quite large indeed over the course of a turn.

To understand what I mean, let’s talk a bit about how GCACW tracks unit status. Each unit has a counter, so far so standard. Each counter has a strength printed on it, but should they become disorganized or suffer damage they will need a separate strength counter to track their current effective strength. Units also gain Fatigue, which is tracked via counters. Units can also become demoralized, another counter, or dig breastworks/trenches, which is yet another tracker. On top of that, leaders must always move with units under their command, and you can have multiple levels of leaders (e.g. Corps and Army leaders). So, each unit counter will in practice be between 3 and 5 counters with the potential for 1-2 leaders in the same hex as well. On top of that, GCACW has no real limits on stacking – there is a movement penalty for entering spaces with units, but that’s a hindrance not a ban.

In our first game of Stonewall Jackson’s Way at the end of the scenario the Union had piled three units and a variety of commanders into Culpeper to stop the Confederates from taking it. They had two units, two leaders, and two entrenchment tokens. On Vassal, this was only 4 counters because the module tracks all the other statuses on the unit counters in clearly readable graphics. If we had been playing in person this stack would have been 14 counters high.

And here’s the kicker: you will need to frequently adjust these counters – swapping Fatigue in and out for example – and it is incredibly important that you not mix up which counters go with which units. We ran into this in our first game of the first learning scenario of one of the smaller and simpler entries into the system – I cannot stress how little I would want to play any of the bigger campaigns of the late war in person and deal with this upkeep.

I’ve seen some players use separate sheets to track things like fatigue, strength, etc. off the map. This is a reasonable solution to the problem, although it does make a large footprint game even larger, but I find it a bit frustrating that this is something left entirely to players. This is a design challenge and something that I would expect a still ongoing series with quite a few talented designers working on it to attempt to come up with their own solution. At the very least, I would expect that games that cost as much as GCACW does (more on that later) to include these kinds of unit tracking sheets for players rather than offloading it entirely to fans of the series.

The thing is, though, that on Vassal all of this is super clean. The Vassal modules are amazing and the best way to play. The end turn button even does all the upkeep for you in terms of removing Fatigue, switching units to exhausted or back, etc. It takes all the tedium out of the game. But then, that does raise a minor question: should this even be a board game? I honestly don’t know, and I’m sure some people with a far higher tolerance for manipulating stacks of counters with tweezers are happy with the game the way it is, but to me this is the element of GCACW that feels the most dated. This part of the design feels like something that predates the modern computer gaming industry and so was the best solution available to this design problem in the early ‘90s. It is also a huge barrier to me when it comes to wanting to buy into this series. I know several people who own multiple entries in GCACW and leave them in shrink on their shelves as they play exclusively on Vassal. I’m not judging those people for that decision, I arguably do the same thing with Levy and Campaign games, but I am kind of judging GCACW for making it such a good idea.

For many people, this won’t be a problem. In fact, for me in some ways it isn’t. When I play wargames against a human opponent 90% of the time I do it online, so the fact that the series is so amazing on Vassal is a huge bonus. However, I also really enjoy playing wargames solo and on paper GCACW is an amazing system to solo. It has buckets of randomness and while longer term planning is key to success it also throws enough wrenches into the works to force you to adapt and mix things up as you go. However, the tedium of the stacking and the constant bookkeeping with physical components does not really appeal to me. Maybe if I print off some status tracking sheets I could get over this, but again that’s me having to provide a fix for something that the game should have already addressed.

That Smooth Basic Flavor

I think GCACW has a reputation for being a particularly complicated wargame, and I’m not sure that it is entirely warranted. The Basic Game is fairly straightforward, I would categorize it as solidly mid-weight in terms of wargames. There are a few wrinkles to process, like the flanking and entrenching rules, but for the most part if you’ve played a few wargames then you should be able to pick up and play the basic scenarios of Stonewall Jackson’s Way II (or most GCACW titles).

I think the title “Basic Game” might be something of a disservice. GCACW titles include far more “Basic” scenarios than they do “Advanced”, another series might classify these as “Scenario” and “Campaign” options and avoid any stigma that might come from not playing the “Advanced” game. You can have a lot of fun playing the basic scenarios, and I don’t think there’s any shame in just playing the size of game that you’re interested in playing – if you just want to play Basic games that is a totally acceptable way to engage with GCACW. The barrier to entry is not nearly so high as it might appear. Many of the basic scenarios are even laid out such that they slowly introduce players to key concepts over several games, easing them into the rules as they play.

The Basic scenarios that I played were all very clean (excepting maybe the victory conditions, see above) and presented interesting puzzles to the players. These could be something like “the Confederates must take X hexes in Y turns” and the players have to manage their tempo (no small feat with GCACW’s random movement) and plan around the chaos the system throws at them. These were easily playable in an evening on Vassal, and I had good fun with them. We didn’t feel bogged down in rules complexity and only once hit a bump where we had to flick through rulebooks for a few minutes to figure out a rule.

The Cedar Mountain scenario is pretty simple, the Confederates have to get to Culpeper and the Union (who have reinforcements off the top of the screen) have to stop them. Very clean and quick to play.

At the same time, while I enjoyed playing these short scenarios I didn’t get particularly sucked into the narrative and I don’t know how eager I would be to play them multiple times. They are by their nature a snapshot of the campaign. I felt like I had turned on the TV and watched an action sequence to an exciting film but saw nothing that came before or after. The individual moments were exciting, but my emotional investment was low. For players who are more interested in a good puzzle that they can test their tactical acumen against this won’t be a problem, but for me it meant that I had fun but wasn’t in love.

Overall, I liked my time with the basic game of Stonewall Jackson’s Way II, but I also found that with every game I was less interested in playing another. I can’t see myself owning a copy and getting it out regularly to replay basic game scenarios.

Advanced Union & Rebels

I only played the shorter of Stonewall Jackson’s Way II’s advanced scenarios, which lasts for eight turns. This entry has probably the simplest “Advanced” game of any entry in the series – it adds less than a dozen pages of rules to the game many of which are pretty straightforward. If I’m honest, an experienced wargamer could probably just skip straight to the Advanced scenario – although in doing so they would miss out on how the Basic scenarios can help to teach the system’s quirks before the campaign is played. The main additions the “Advanced” game adds are longer scenarios, random events, supply, and a few bits of chrome like railroad movement, detaching small forces from units, and rules for random turn end and Confederate leader death. Of these, we kind of ignored the detachment/attachment rules - I’m sure they offer a lot to expert players, but I didn’t miss them here - but we did use pretty much everything else.

Of these extra rules, the most impactful was the greater length of the game. GCACW is an experience that is defined by tempo, and having more time to explore and adjust your tempo really opens up the decision space. Eight turns is not very long – Stonewall in the Valley has basic scenarios that are longer than that – but even still I could feel the difference having those turns made when compared to a two or three turn scenario. GCACW demands that you think several turns in advance, and so the more turns you have the more room there is for making plans and, importantly, for changing those plans when the dice gods punish you for your insolence. I can definitely see the appeal in those big 20+ turn campaigns, even if the time required to play them is very intimidating. Let us not even contemplate the campaigns that approach 100 turns, magisterial and terrifying.

Advanced Game, Turn 3: I somewhat foolishly let myself get stuck in this pocket, and then rain and a turn ending early made it nearly impossible for me to get out of it. A mistake I would hopefully not make on a subsequent play.

The rules I thought would have the greatest impact, but which ultimately didn’t, were the Supply rules. Don’t get me wrong, these definitely have an impact on the game, but I guess I imagined that supply would be incredibly punishing. Instead, Supply is only checked on certain turns – just once in the 8 turn scenario – and it mostly forces your units that are out of supply to become disorganized (weakening their combat value) and to stay that way. There are ways around it for both sides and ultimately while it seems like something that you really should consider, this is not one of those systems where you will be calculating supply every turn and thinking of it as a strategy defining element of the game. I expect in the longer campaigns included in other GCACW titles it is more important, but still, you shouldn’t expect OCS level supply rules in this series.

The random event table also proved to be quite interesting – or at least the rain proved to be interesting. We rolled rain twice at exactly the worst times for my Confederates. Rain stopped my divisions from crossing the rivers at key fords, hindered their ability to fight, and slowed them to a crawl along the muddy roads they were on. In hindsight, I should have planned for it better. You can’t know exactly when it will rain, but the rain turns absolutely redefined how we played the game with relatively little in the way of extra rules. The other events, which sped up or delayed reinforcements, were less impactful but still interesting. The event table uses 2d6 so there is an interesting probability distribution to consider. Overall, very cool. It’s the kind of thing that I would almost like to see just included in the basic game except that I imagine it ruins the carefully tuned scenario balance.

The remaining rules were interesting but didn’t have a defining impact on our game. The random chance for a turn to end was really interesting, and completely screwed me at one point, but I can’t say it felt like a major change to how the game played. Rail movement is interesting as well, but in the eight-turn scenario it didn’t come up because the campaign ends before the Union reinforcements arrive outside Washington. I believe in bigger and longer campaigns it could be a defining aspect of the experience.

I eventually got Jackson around the Union position but it was too little too late - without Lee he couldn’t do enough to secure victory and he was badly out of supply.

Overall, the Advanced game of Stonewall Jackson’s Way II is not very much more Advanced than the Basic game and it was very easy to adapt to it but it certainly offers a deeper experience. While I am not overly eager to revisit any of the basic scenarios we played, I could see myself trying new strategies in the campaign over a few games. Honestly, the greatest hindrance to my replaying the Advanced scenario is simply that I don’t find the Northern Virginia Campaign to be all that interesting so I don’t know how much time I would really want to devote to replaying it before I got bored.

We cannae take much more, sir!

Before I get on to talking about the elephant in the room, I want to consider the... I don’t know, longhorn bull in the room: the cost of these games. A lot has been written about whether reviewers ought to factor in the cost of games in their reviews. Dan Thurot has written a very thoughtful piece on the matter, and I agree with many of his points. However, sometimes I cannot ignore it. GCACW games are very expensive, and the physical game material you get for that cost is kind of low. Stonewall Jackson’s Way II retailed for $120, and for that price you got a rulebook, a large playbook, two maps, three counter sheets, a handful of charts, and two tiny dice that I (personally) hate. I put that in past tense, because Stonewall Jackson’s Way II sold out some time ago and copies on the secondhand market easily run for $200+. That’s not a lot of physical game for your dollar.

I hear fans repeatedly say that if you evaluate it based on how much gameplay you could get out of that box then the price per hour of game is very good, but that has never held much water with me honestly. Wargames are not made by full time development teams working 9-5 salaried jobs with benefits that the company has to pay, meaning that the company has to recoup extensive development costs for the games. I don’t want to undervalue the design and development work that went into these games, but unless MMP is paying a far higher share of the game price as royalties than most in the industry I can’t imagine the extra cost is explained by the development time. There’s not much more physical game in GCACW than there is in many similar games on the market right now that cost far less. If you compare the costs of something like On to Richmond II with the latest Library of Napoleonic Battles game from OSG (hardly a cheap title from a small publisher) the contrast in cost vs. what is in the box is stark. If you compare it to something like the Men of Iron Tri-Pack from GMT Games the disparity is mind blowing.

I want to emphasize that I’m not accusing MMP Games or the designers of anything untoward, I don’t think this is some evil scheme to rob wargamers of their precious money. I’m sure they did their price analysis for printing costs, print run sizes, and warehouse storage and this is where they landed. Nobody is making billions in the wargaming industry, but I am also allowed to voice my own opinions on the matter just as they are to justify their decisions. What I’m saying is that I’m not convinced that it’s very good value for anyone who isn’t a huge fan of the series – especially if you consider my earlier experience that says that playing these games on Vassal is better anyway. I don’t see the value in spending hundreds of Euro to put games on my shelf so I can play them on Vassal.

The high cost of each entry in the series makes it very daunting to experiment. You cannot dabble in GCACW unless you have a lot of disposable income. If GCACW titles were $60-$90 each I would be tempted to grab a few to try them out until I found one that hit the right balance point for me, but I’m not likely to find it because I’m not buying three GCACW titles to hope that there’s one there for me – it would cost my gaming budget for the next few years! I suppose I could just play them on Vassal until I find one I like, but that almost feels like it defeats the purpose of these being physical games in the first place.

On the whole, I think GCACW is a series that could have a much wider appeal but its high price point and the frequency with which titles are out of print serve to erect a significant barrier for anyone who might be interested. These are pretty hardcore wargames more from how accessible they are to physically acquire than from anything in their rules or mechanisms, and I find that a little disappointing.

We have to talk about the Rebs

If there is one element of GCACW that leaves a sour taste in my mouth it is the decision to make the Confederates so powerful, particularly as a core game mechanic. I want to stress from the outset that my objection here is not one of game balance, these games seem meticulously balanced. Rather, my objection is based on what the game implicitly says about the Confederates with its design choices. I have a lot of respect for how games can say things beyond just what they have written in their rules – the feel of a game can convey a message, whether intended or not, and that message carries weight. To me, the systems of GCACW embrace a flawed sense that the armies and commanders of the Confederate States of America were in nearly all cases superior to their Union opponents. This is dangerously close to ever popular neo-Confederate notion that the CSA was the superior fighting force and was only defeated due to lack of numbers and industrial capacity – a popular but erroneous narrative of the war. The Union won the war in the field of battle, and they did so thanks to the bravery of their soldiers and the competency of their commanders. With my cards on the table, below are the mechanics in GCACW that I find objectionable.

The one that I mind the least is the fact that by default Confederates win ties for initiative. In Stonewall Jackson’s Way II this is always true, but in some of the games set in the western theater there is a more complex set of rules that will sometimes allow the Union to win ties. I’m not fundamentally opposed to this – someone has to win ties and picking one side for consistency helps speed the game along. Still, I wish this was on a game to game or scenario to scenario basis and not a core rule. That would also allow for more nuance in the scenario design, I think.

The second rule is more objectionable, and that is that the CSA gets +1 to all their movement rolls. There is a slight exception to this in the form of the All Green Alike scenarios, but besides that it’s pretty much true for every game. I don’t understand this one. Plus one movement is incredibly strong and it makes the CSA feel so much better. Playing as the CSA with this rule you just feel more competent and powerful than the Union – you can run circles around them, especially since you win initiative more often than they do. I could see an argument for this rule in certain campaigns – I didn’t hate it when I first encountered it because in Stonewall in the Valley it kind of makes sense to have Stonewall’s “foot cavalry” be faster. But the fact that this is a series wide rule is a bit gross.

I also could not find a single reference to slaves or contraband (the Union code word, of sorts, for runaway slaves) in the GCACW rules or in the selection of Advances Game rules I looked at. I found only brief references in the “The Game as History” sections as well. In a game system that gives a +1 bonus to the Confederate mobility and often imposes penalties on the Union when the extended march it is a bit hard to swallow this absence. The Confederate army ran on the backs of slave labor, often literally. Teamsters, cooks, and general labor were all performed by impressed slaves. That the system effectively rewards the Confederates for this exploitation but does not comment upon it is not a good look. I don’t know that the game needed a whole system for slavery, but it should be putting this fact front and center.

Runaway slaves (or Contraband as they were known) also posed a significant logistical and political challenge for the Union on numerous campaigns - particularly on McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign - and I think some rules to incorporate that would not have gone amiss. Slaves fled Confederate lines and the Union had to find ways to accommodate them - with individual generals differing significantly on the degree to which they made an effort. This was a war about slavery, and it seems weird for one of the flagship games on the topic to seemingly not have any rules covering the role slavery played in the war - especially at an operational scale.

The final part of this CSA trifecta is the combat bonus that certain Confederate leaders receive when initiating an Assault. In the core rules, “Stonewall” Jackson and James Longstreet (but only in late war games for some reason) both receive a +1 combat bonus when they initiate an Assault while Lee grants a passive +1 to any Assault beginning from the hex he is currently in – although he does lose this during his campaigns outside of Virginia. Game specific rules for some entries include further bonuses for Confederate leaders. While some Union leaders do get combat bonuses, none are included in the base series rules and the number who do in game specific rules are vastly outnumbered by their Confederate opponents. A +1 modifier in combat might not seem like much, but I would stress that the bonus you receive for outnumbering your opponent’s army 2:1 is also only +1. What this tacitly says about men like Lee or Jackson is that they effectively double the strength of the soldiers they command merely by their presence. While there is no denying that these men had their moments of tactical brilliance, they also made tremendous mistakes in their careers and ultimately lost the war they were fighting.

Jackson and similar Confederate commanders also tend to have amazing command stats that make them far more likely to succeed when rolling for an Assault. If the game wanted to reflect the capacity for men like Jackson to effectively coordinate and initial a major attack with the men under their command, then this stat achieves that. There is no need, or I believe justification, for also making their assaults somehow universally more effective than anything their opponents can achieve.

As the final layer on top of everything else, I couldn’t shake the feeling of that old fashioned Confederate worship that praised these men for their military brilliance while downplaying or outright ignoring their repugnant politics and the ultimate outcome of their rebellion. I’m not saying that GCACW is neo-Confederate propaganda or that the designers are hanging rebel flags in their basement and drinking to John Wilkes Booth, but these elements of the design feel like they are uncritically taking on an older version of the American Civil War that was deeply infected with Lost Cause romanticism to the detriment of the stories they tell. For all that I enjoy GCACW’s mechanisms, these rules and the way they make the Confederates feel so powerful and superior really put me off the series in my core – I’m not sure I can ever love a game series that contains this version of history.

Concluding thoughts

I have to confess that I’m still not entirely sure where I sit with GCACW – I know that must be a little frustrating to read if you made it this far in this probably too long review. The core mechanisms are phenomenal and when the game sings it is pure platinum record stuff. When I’m in the zone with GCACW it is a gaming experience unlike any other and one that I would heartily recommend people experience. At the same time, the high cost of these games, frequency with which they aren’t available, the frustrations of its physical design, and the unsettling ghost of Lost Cause-ism present in some of its rules really prevent me from embracing the series with my whole being. For the time being, I am still on the fence about GCACW. It intrigues me enough that I really want to play some more of it – and I absolutely intend to do just that – but at the same time I won’t be rushing off to fill my shelves with multiple entries. Maybe GCACW is just too much of a lifestyle game and I don’t have the lifestyle to accommodate it, I don’t know. Further experimentation is required.

In the end, I would recommend Stonewall Jackon’s Way II as a way to learn the series, and I would encourage people to not be intimidated by its legendarium – you can learn to play this, I promise. However, this is not a game that I personally would be interested in owning and I don’t know if I will ever return to this entry in the series. I live in hope that like with Blind Swords, I may not have loved the first entry I played but I may eventually find a title (or two) that I truly adore. We shall see.

Triumph and Illusion: The Hundred Years War Vol. 5 by Jonathan Sumption

First, a confession: I have not read volumes 2-4 of Jonathan Sumption’s staggering multi-volume history of the Hundred Years War. I read and reviewed volume one over a year ago but with the release of volume five last year I decided to skip straight to the end. Since I’m currently writing a book on the end of the Hundred Years War this was the volume most relevant to my current research and I wanted to get right to it. This is also the part of the war that has received the least coverage in English, so I was very excited when I heard it was finally coming out. Most English language histories of the Hundred Years War skip over the very end of the war with only the lightest of detail – everything that comes after Jeanne d’Arc is summarized in just a few pages. I was keen to read Sumption’s lengthier take on both la pucelle and what followed.

I have previously been on record as not being the biggest fan of Sumption’s work. I believe his commitment to providing a strict narrative of the history of the war puts his work in an awkward middle space. It is too long and dense to be desirable or suitable for most general readers, but it doesn’t really engage in historiographical analysis or other scholarship to really be an academic reference work. While I preferred Triumph and Illusion to Trial by Battle, I still think these critiques remain relevant. Triumph and Illusion is purely narrative history, and as narrative history it’s pretty good and certainly very detailed, but it doesn’t put forward much in the way of interesting theories or arguments, and it certainly isn’t a useful introduction to wider scholarship. Triumph and Illusion can also more easily stand out as an important work on the Hundred Years War because this is a part of the war that has been crying out for a more detailed study. Trial by Battle covered the start of the war, an area where there are many other histories that can compete with it in terms of quality. While I think in some ways this book is too narrow, I do have to credit Sumption with providing a relatively clean narrative of an extremely complex and chaotic period in Anglo-French history and as a guide purely to the chronology of this period it is excellent.

While on the whole I liked Triumph and Illusion and I found it to be quite informative, there were some parts of it that I was less than impressed with. Sumption’s depiction of Charles VII and Jeanne d’Arc particularly underwhelmed me. While Sumption manages to be mostly non-partisan in his writing, which is appreciated and not a universal trait of historians of the period, when writing about Jeanne d’Arc he clearly aligns himself with an older school of scholarship that is far more hostile to her and presents her as entirely a pawn of wider forces. This is where I think you can see how Sumption is writing primarily from his reading of the primary sources with less interest in the wider scholarship. Jeanne d’Arc is one of the most written about people of the Middle Ages and there are numerous ways to view her short life. However, Sumption doesn’t really present any of them to the reader. He provides a very narrow view of her that I found rather underwhelming, repeatedly emphasizing the moments when she was excluded from key decisions and reliably presenting very hostile views. He quotes hostile accounts of her, sometimes without mentioning who the author was or even providing a citation, which I found incredibly frustrating. He is of course allowed to provide his own interpretation of Jeanne but I don’t feel like he does due diligence in explaining his position - he is telling you his version without feeling an obligation to justify it.

King Charles VII is one of the most impenetrable French monarchs. He spent much of his time in isolation and did not leave a large body of evidence describing his opinions, plans, or even his general mannerisms. This has made understanding him and interpreting his tumultuous reign very difficult. Sumption chooses to take the line that Charles was a monarch largely moved about by forces beyond his control. This is hardly an indefensible position, but I don’t think Sumption does enough to really dig into who Charles VII was and to consider the various ways we can interpret his life. As with Jeanne d’Arc, there is no variety present, Sumption has his quite narrow take and does not do very much to justify it.

This one is really just a pet peeve of mine, but Sumption also makes some very strange choices when it comes to name spelling, often using the spellings one would expect from a book written nearly a century earlier. This gives his writing the feeling that it is much older than it is and reinforces the idea that he is trying to be to the Hundred Years War what Gibbon is to the fall of Rome. It made me feel like I should have blown a layer of dust off the book before I started reading it, even if in many ways the actual evidence within is quite modern. The style and attitude feel very old.

I would be more inclined to recommend Triumph and Illusion to people than I am Trial by Battle, but that is largely because there is so little else that competes with it in this space. If you want histories of the end of the Hundred Years War in English, you really are starved for choice. Juliet Barker’s Conquest covers this period, but only for Normandy. Malcolm Vale wrote on several related topics but usually only in specifics and most of his work is long out of print and very academic. I still find Sumption to be at times tedious and not as deep as I would like, but at least in this case he is probably the best available option for reading about what is a genuinely fascinating period in Anglo-French history.

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!

Tanto Monta: A Story of Disappointment

I think it is safe to say that Tanto Monta: The Rise of Ferdinand and Isabella by designer Carlos Diaz Narvaez was my most anticipated game of the year. I adore Here I Stand, and Tanto Monta took that core system and applied it to the years right before Here I Stand. This includes the Italian Wars, a period of history I’m fascinated by. It also decreased the player count from six to four. Getting six people together who are all willing to spend a day playing through the Protestant Reformation is probably the single greatest barrier to playing Here I Stand, so this was really promising. The back of the box promised the same complexity as Here I Stand and a play time of 3-7 hours, which we should always take with a grain of salt but still it looked good for this being an excellent way to get some of that Here I Stand style action to the table more often. It also came out at the perfect time – my copy arrived right before a gathering of myself and my fellow We Intend to Move on Your Works partners in crime. The four of us convened in Pierre’s house for me to teach them all Tanto Monta, expecting a day of epic gaming with great friends. To quote a somewhat infamous review of Virgin Queen: it was a fucking disaster.

It Takes Two to Tanto

I want to start with what I liked about Tanto Monta. The core systems from Here I Stand all function just fine, albeit with more exceptions and variations than I feel is strictly necessary, but to focus on those would be to simply damn with faint praise. If the only nice thing I could say about a game is how mechanisms it borrows from another game are good, that wouldn’t be much of a compliment.

Instead, the most interesting addition that Tanto Monta makes to the system is that every player controls not one but two major factions. The Spanish player controls Aragon and Castile, the two most stable major factions that will endure for the entire game. Meanwhile, the French player also controls Catalonia, the Muslim player controls the Nasrids and an alliance of North African sultanates, and the Portuguese player controls the Beltranejas, a faction actively pursuing an alternative heir in Castile. In these latter three cases, one of these powers may be functionally eliminated from the game due to the Spanish player consolidating power over Iberia and creating modern Spain out of the political chaos of the peninsula.

Controlling two factions works really well and is achieved with relatively little complexity. For the most part you can’t intermix units or commanders between the two, but you can generally use cards to affect both, with the notable exception of home cards. As the French player I was more interested in the future of France, but I was also very invested in keeping Barcelona independent and committed considerable resources into resisting the attacks of the Spanish player. The siege of Barcelona was one of the defining narratives of our game, as it slowly ground on turn after turn.

The fact that I was immediately bogged down in two foreign wars, including one with the future Holy Roman Emperor, really prevented France from getting too involved in Iberia at the start of our game.

It was in the tensions within Spain between all of these factions that Aragon-Castile was trying to subjugate that Tanto Monta was at its finest. Constant combat as the Spanish player had to put out fires in all directions defined our game and made for many exciting turns.

The game’s aesthetics are also absolutely stunning, which isn’t really a surprise given that Ivan Caceres did the art. I actually have quite a soft spot for the old school look of Here I Stand but I cannot deny that Tanto Monta is a much prettier game. Ivan’s art is some of the best out there at the moment and, while Tanto Monta isn’t my favorite game he’s done, it is an excellent example of his work. I would love to see him apply his skills to the other games in the series.

Seeing it all set up is almost enough to make me want to play it again. And yes, I remain eternally cursed to only play these games while looking at the map upside down.

The map itself is also really well laid out. When moving armies around the Iberian Peninsula we found a lot of opportunity for interesting positioning and maneuver. Some point-to-point maps can be very bland and that is very much not the case here. The most fun we had in Tanto Monta was in moving big stacks of troops around and trying to trap enemy leaders in unfavorable battles.

So, I’ve been positive, there are things to like about Tanto Monta and I can believe that there are people who genuinely like this game. However, this design has too many flaws, and I don’t believe it can have more than a very niche appeal. Some fans of the system will still enjoy this game, but for me it just made me want to play Here I Stand (or to finally try Virgin Queen). I had fun on the day I spent playing Tanto Monta, but it was despite the game not because of it. Let me try and explain.

No, it’s too much, let me sum up.

There is just too damn much Tanto Monta. I think a lot will be made about Tanto Monta’s complexity. I have heard (only after it came out) that it is a more complex game than Here I Stand or Virgin Queen, but I don’t think that is strictly the case. No single system in Tanto Monta is all that complicated. I have played my fair share of complex games, and usually the challenge with complexity is wrapping your head around some key mechanism(s) that then causes an uphill struggle towards actually playing the game. That is not true of Tanto Monta, I fully understood every system in the game – even if at times the rulebook made it harder than it needed to be.

The problem with Tanto Monta is that there are so many rules and, even more importantly, so many exceptions to those rules that the final product is a convoluted mess. There are 64 pages of rules before you begin factoring in the large deck of cards, each of which has its own effect and rules. I was the person in charge of teaching the game, and I’m good at remembering rules, and I frequently found myself having to stop players to inform them of some key exception that prevented an action or cut short a strategy or that they had to keep in mind when making their plans for this turn.

On top of this, the game includes quite a lot of tedious admin that doesn’t really seem to make much of any difference. Why does the Spanish player need to roll on half a dozen separate tables to determine their card draw, and why are some only used on even turns and some on odd? The statistical difference is negligible. Add to that the fact that the French player is doing the same basic thing but with different parameters and you get a very boring start to every turn. Also, why does the French player want to roll low and the Spanish player high when resolving these very similar systems? There doesn’t seem to be any concern for consistency in Tanto Monta, no desire to make the game easier to learn and remember because there is a core mechanism that can be applied across several different parts of the game. Instead, the game wants to carve up Here I Stand’s core into even more niche applications and specifics – this is a collection of rules, not a game system.

Tanto Monta also commits the cardinal sin of card driven game design – the rules are not always on the cards. Since Mark Herman invented the modern card drive game (CDG) with We the People, the greatest benefit of the CDG has been that it allows you to offload rules onto the cards. Instead, several cards in Tanto Monta refer players to a specific section of the rulebook. The mandatory event that triggers Emperor Maximilian’s intervention against France redirects to nearly a page of rules. On one turn nearly half of the Spanish player’s hand was cards that required him to look up paragraphs of text in the rulebook. This is incredibly tedious and grinds the game to a crawl. This is also poor design that completely fails to take advantage of the CDG’s greatest strength.

A sampler of what I felt were some of the more egregious cards in Tanto Monta in terms of sheer density of text and/or redirecting players to the rulebook so they could look up what the card actually does.

I found that every turn I would spend more time looking in the rulebook than I spent playing the game as I was constantly tracking down the exact text for some exception to a key rule that applied when this event had been played (or when X event hadn’t been played). The rulebook’s lack of an index made this even more tedious as I had to memorize where in the rules such an exception was likely to be. The play aid also skipped over a few key admin steps so I inevitably had to track those down every turn. My time playing Tanto Monta consisted of me flicking through the rulebook and essentially acting as a game master for the other players, and then when my turn came around suddenly having to make a decision on what I was supposed to do before burrowing back into the rules to make sure we were actually playing correctly. I always thought that next turn would be the one where all this effort would pay off and we’d be in the flow of the game, but it never came to be.

Tanto Monta also refuses to trust its players to have fun in its history. Here I Stand already had elements of being on the rails – leaders will die at key times, certain events must happen, etc. However, Tanto Monta takes even more control from the players. This is most noticeable with the game’s diplomacy. Here I Stand’s diplomacy is not strictly essential to the game, you could play an entire game without ever making a deal and the game would still work, but it is one of its most enjoyable elements. Tanto Monta completely neuters it – we never once used our agreed full ten minutes of negotiation time and often barely made any deals at all. This is because the game doesn’t let players act freely. On turn 1 the Muslims and Spanish cannot go to war – they must wait until a key event triggers by the end of turn 2 which will then place them in a state of war for the rest of the game. The Spanish and Portuguese cannot agree to peace until a certain event card is played which will bring them to peace. That event card in turn has its own set of requirements that must be met to even play it in the first place. The effect of this is that there is very little deal making to be done between the players, they either have nothing to talk about or have their hands bound by the game’s rules.

My two least favorite diplomacy events - the Peace of Alcacovas is not mandatory but must have been played for the Treaty of Tordesillas to resolve, and the latter is mandatory. I couldn’t find anywhere in the rules that explained what to do in what must be an incredibly likely outcome of someone drawing Tordesillas without Alcacovas having been played.

Similarly, there are quite a few events that just cause a historical outcome to come into being – events that give control of a location to one player without them needing to lift a finger. The Treaty of Barcelona card causes a mandatory peace between two players and the handing over of key territory from France to Spain – this is not left up to the players. This idea is hardly unheard of in CDG design, legendary title Twilight Struggle has certain events that players must memorize because they will automatically shift a space between the two players. I’ve never liked that aspect of Twilight Struggle, and I like it even less in a big multiplayer game like Tanto Monta. I wish it gave players the tools to effect this history in the course of play rather than forcing a historical timeline onto the game and narrowing the space that players can explore.

Why let players negotiate their own treaties when you can simply have a card do it for them?

All of the exceptions to the game’s rules and strict event cards exist to enforce a historical outcome and can result in an experience where it feels like the game is playing itself. Sometimes watching a game pretty much play itself can be fun, but it is better as a solitaire experience and much better if it doesn’t involve an endlessly frustrating series of looking up rules and telling your friends that they can’t do what they want because the game says so.

A result of all of the rules’ bloat in Tanto Monta was that we, as players, basically didn’t use half of the systems in any given turn. Some turns we would engage with Minor Factions, but sometimes none of us had any cards to trigger them so we just ignored it. The one turn where players did make alliances with the minor powers came to a sudden end when the Lorenzo de Medici event simply broke all those alliances in one fell swoop. The papacy was rarely high in our thoughts, which was a blessing given that it is an incredibly tedious faction and even has its own flow chart in the rulebook.

The rules for exploration came up more often but they were often inconsequential and it was hard to get excited about them. The Portuguese player rolled on tables with little to no effect every turn and did not have a particularly fun time doing it. Then there are also events that will bring Columbus and de Gama into play, with their superior stats, and players can even get more VPs for achieving their historic voyages with those pieces than with others – another example of needless on the rails play. Why does it matter that Columbus sails west first? Why is that worth an extra victory point?

The Spanish player never used the marriage table.

Presumably for optimal play mastery of these systems is key, but many of them are not interesting in their own right. They are essentially variants of spend Command Points to get DRMs for dice rolls that hopefully give you points (in many ways Tanto Monta resembles a point salad Euro game), so as we played more we let them slide to the side and just focused on the parts of the game that were actually fun.

The Essential Developer

What this game really needed was more development. A really good developer will take scissors to the designer’s original vision and help them see what needs to be cut and refined – like a good editor, they enhance the overall work by showing what needs to be trimmed and what needs a little more polish. This game is a kitchen sink design, it feels like every idea the designer had was thrown at it and nothing was left on the cutting room floor.

This comes back to why I don’t think Tanto Monta is complex in the same way that something like 1914 Nach Paris is complex – the latter game doesn’t have that many systems, but each system is very involved and takes a while to wrap your head around. The core of Here I Stand is not that complicated (for a wargame, at least) and most of what Tanto Mont adds is not complicated if you take it on its own. What Tanto Monta does is sag under the weight of all these additions and, even worse, exceptions. Rules cannot be taken as universal truths in Tanto Monta, because lingering somewhere in the hefty 64 pages of rules is something that tells you no, you can’t do that, because of X, Y, or Z.

The solution that Tanto Monta seems to propose is that you simply memorize all of these additions – read the rulebook a half a dozen times and play the game 2-3 times and you’ll know it. This is an unreasonable stance, especially for a game where your first play could easily take you 10 hours and see you only reach the halfway point. The back of the box says this game is as complex as Here I Stand and takes 3-7 hours to play. This must be a joke. We played for nearly nine hours and only finished turn three, and we are hardened wargaming veterans.

Tanto Monta would be a better game if it had sought out more opinions beyond a core group of players and testers and if it had been prepared to kill its darlings. I’m sure every mechanic and exception felt important to the designer to achieve his vision, but many of them are a detriment to the game and he needed a developer standing over him forcing him to justify every piece of bloat and every exception. Every card that redirected players to the rulebook should have been an argument about efficiency in design.

Weird History

Some of the history on display is also a little confused, if I’m honest. I’m very familiar with the events in France preceding the beginning of Tanto Monta, and quite familiar with what was happening in France during the game, and I don’t really recognize the France that is described in this game. The opening of the rulebook says that France is an “emerging power”, as if it is the new player on the European scene. Of all the factions in Tanto Monta, France is the oldest and by this stage the most secure in itself. Charles VII had completed the transformation of the French monarchy over two decades before the game began, before Ferdinand of Aragon was even born.

From the opening of the rulebook. Not sure why France is emerging but Portugal is already described as a maritime empire.

Tanto Monta does the fairly common thing of applying years to each turn, so players can know approximately what time each turn of play covers. This is always fun. What’s weird, is that it then makes it very obvious when odd historical events take place. The first turn begins in 1470, but Maximilian Hapsburg can show up and join the Burgundian Wars against France from Turn 1, but he won’t be the heir to the Duchy of Burgundy until 1477 when Charles the Bold died, and Maximilian married his daughter and sole heir. The playbook tells us that 1477 is in turn 2, so why is Maximilian able to show up in turn 1? It’s a small thing, but in a game where you are adding and removing cards from the deck based on what turn it is, something showing up impossibly early (or late) really stands out.

Normally I would be fine with cutting a game like this some slack. Games like Here I Stand are not meant to be strict simulations; they are an invitation to play in history not a rigid guide to it. Besides, aligning the disparate histories of multiple regions of Europe into a set of coherent boundaries within which you let your players explore is challenging. However, Tanto Monta is a game that is determined to put up rails and fences throughout its design, forcing players onto a clear path and not letting them explore alternatives. This makes it all the weirder when the game itself deviates from history in key moments or elides over key shifts in the status of major powers.

Perhaps the most bizarre is the card for the Peace of Étaples, which says that the treaty marked the end of the Hundred Years War. The Peace of Étaples was made in 1492 between Charles VIII of France and Henry VII of England – neither of whom were even alive when the Hundred Years War actually ended nearly forty years earlier in 1453. The Hundred Years War is a modern historiographical concept with a fairly fixed set of dates, 1337-1453, you can’t just add another 40 years on the end.

This card just boggles my mind - it’s not even the first treaty between France and England that occurred during this period. Edward IV invaded France in 1475 and I couldn’t see any rules for that in Tanto Monta!

The thing with a mistake like this is that I spotted it immediately because I know the history of the end of the Hundred Years War incredibly well, but I don’t know the other history covered by Tanto Monta as well. When I spot an error in my area of expertise it makes me wonder if there are other errors in the history that I can’t see because I don’t know that subject as well. It shakes my confidence and causes me to worry about what else might be wrong, which is disappointing.

To Conclude

I probably enjoyed the game more than everyone else at the table, and I had a pretty bad time. We all finished with a newfound excitement to play Here I Stand, because the core system is still amazing, but the tedium of Tanto Monta had us never wanting to open this box again. I had plans to play Tanto Monta some more, I was already scheduling a second game before I had played my first, but I cannot face the possibility of teaching and playing this game again. I played it under optimal conditions: I had four of my best gaming buddies for a whole day. We have all cut our teeth on much harder games than Tanto Monta and after nearly ten hours of gaming we decided to pack it up and never play it again.

I’ve left out huge amounts of detail about the game from this review. Things like the changes to combat (not too complex, but also not very impactful we thought), the needlessly involved Venetian-Ottoman War event (so many rules for what could have been a single die roll), the increase in the average CP value of the cards (makes turns longer), or the pillage rules (genuinely never came up, not sure if we made a mistake or not) are all areas that I could have tried to have something to say but honestly after a while it would simply have been me listing mechanisms and saying that there are far too many in this game for its own good. The problem is more the number of needless mechanisms in the game and the failure for the design to present them to players in a uniform and universally applicable manner, the specifics are simply symptoms of the larger disease.

I think this comparison neatly summarizes Tanto Monta - on the left is the Arquebusiers event from Tanto Monta, on the right is the same event from Here I Stand. Tanto Monta’s version is at least twice as long and far more involved for, I would argue, little gain.

I’m sure this game is for someone, I expect the designer genuinely really enjoys it, but I will die on the hill that this is not a very good game and that most people will not enjoy it. The good news is that you don’t have to – go play Here I Stand or Virgin Queen instead. Both of those games should be getting reprints soon, the first in far too many years, and I highly recommend that you try them. I’m incredibly excited to play more Here I Stand and to finally play Virgin Queen, but Tanto Monta will be leaving my shelves at the first opportunity. I so desperately wanted to love Tanto Monta, but I just can’t.

Learning Musket and Pike by Ben Hull

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the Musket and Pike Dual Pack by designer Ben Hull as part of the BoardGameGeek wargame Secret Santa this past Christmas and I am very excited to have it. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for this era of warfare and the GMT multipacks are a great way to get a big helping of a system for not too much investment in money or space (the former obviously wasn’t really a concern since this was a gift, but the latter always is). On top of that, the Dual Pack is a stunning production. The maps all have this lovely linen finish, and the counters have new art in a woodcut style that I adore. Also, there are double size counters and I love double size counters. It’s just a very nice object to hold and manipulate, always something I look for in a game.

The system itself has something of a reputation for being on the heavier end, certainly heavy than my main Hex and Counter squeeze Men of Iron but lighter than some systems I’ve played. I had an interesting time learning Musket and Pike and I wanted to share my thoughts on getting into the system and trying to come to grips with it before I write any sort of review. I’ve muddled my way through about two games so far and I don’t feel like I have anywhere near enough of a grasp on the system to be writing a review, but I hope that my thoughts on learning it may be of interest and/or help to people who are similarly interested in this system and setting.

Learning the Rules

The rules for Musket and Pike are a mixed bag. I found the actual text of the rules very clear, there were a good number of examples. It was easy to read while also providing the necessary clarity to ensure that I felt like I understood what the game’s intentions were. The problem lies in the order in which the rules are introduced. I don’t really understand why the rulebook is laid out the way it is, and I found the way key concepts were introduced confusing. For example, the rules for movement only appear halfway through the rulebook – you learn all the rules for Reactions before Movement, which just felt very backwards to me. I’m sure this order makes sense to some people and once you know the system and are only referencing the rules it’s not a big problem, but it was a barrier for me.

The stacks can get pretty massive when you add together formation hits, damage, morale hits, whether the cavalry has used their pistols, etc. Thankfully this seems to be more the extreme than the norm.

Musket and Pike includes a lot of elements that were new to me, or that I had very little experience with. The rules for unit formation, where combat and terrain can degrade a unit’s capabilities until they are rallied, are really interesting. The impact of terrain stretches beyond just a higher movement cost and makes each feature on the map impactful. It also raises some pretty significant tactical challenges.

I haven’t played a game with this many options for Reactions. Men of Iron lets archery units shoot during the opponents turn and has some limited counter charge ability, but Musket and Pike has more of both as well as reaction moves and withdrawals. This makes the play feel much more fluid, where you can swap freely between the active and non-active player. It also takes a bit of time to wrap your head around all the implications of what moving a unit somewhere could be, as it could trigger any of a number of reactions from the other player.

Musket and Pike does not have Zones of Control. I have technically played some games without Zones of Control (Men of Iron claims it doesn’t, but it does), but nothing on this scale or of this complexity. Particularly when combined with the rules for units in Charge orders and how they must prioritize their movement, this required a new mental map of what a good unit formation looks like.

Lastly, Musket and Pike has a much more involved Orders system than I’ve usually played with. The nearest thing I can think of is Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW), but even that didn’t seem to place quite the same emphasis on changing orders. Musket and Pike even determines initiative based on what orders your formation are in, and orders are on a Wing level so there isn’t a lot of granularity available like in GBACW. Switching orders is also quite hard, so there’s a lot of thought required when it comes to picking what orders you want to be in as that will play a huge role in determining what you can actually do on your turn. Once you commit to a certain order you may be stuck in it for the rest of the game, so you really need to be prepared to make that commitment.

Putting it Together

After reading the rules I thought I knew how to play Musket and Pike. How foolish I was. Once I set up my first scenario, I realized that I had no idea how to actually play the game. This is an experience I strongly associate with the designs of Volko Ruhnke: understanding the rules is only the beginning, putting it together into actionable gameplay is an entirely different matter.

This really doesn’t look like it should be so intimidating and yet I had it set up for days before I managed to actually make a move.

It’s not that I’m worried I will play badly, I just have no grasp of what even basic tactics look like. With no ZOCs and various options for orders, what does a good formation for my units look like? How far should I move these units forward? What reactions will I trigger if I move that far? This is before we even think about things like Continuation rolls or the potential for interrupting an opponent’s activation or continuation attempt. There are so many decisions to make and I’m struggling to grasp even the most basic ones.

Take, for example, a unit that is deployed behind terrain that will give it formation damage when it advances through it. How should I manage their advance? If they are in Charge orders, because they started the scenario that way, then I can’t have them recover that disruption unless they change out of that order and stop their advance, but is slowly advancing across the map two hexes at a time and desperately trying to reform my lines a good tactic? Should I rush across the terrain and just commit to a messy attack? These decisions can leave me paralyzed.

Usually once I commit to actually moving the pieces the game smooths out and I have a better idea what I’m doing when it comes to reactions and counterattacks, but I still have no idea if what I did made any sense. This is compounded by the fact that the battles I played seemed to have far more turns than were necessary for my slipshod tactics. If a battle can last for twelve turns, but by about turn three I’ve already destroyed half of my army, it’s hard to not feel like I’ve made some kind of catastrophic error in my understanding of how the game plays.

The aftermath of two Wings colliding - a mashup of formation broken units and counter charges. I’m less certain of what to do at the top of the map where the hedges will disrupt units that pass through them.

None of this is strictly unique to Musket and Pike, it has just served as a reminder of how learning the rules to a game and knowing how to play that game are two very different things. I feel like I need to be coached through a game of Musket and Pike by a seasoned veteran to really understand what I am doing. I have tried watching some playthroughs, and I will probably try some more while muddling through a few more scenarios, but it can be hard to find the time to watch hours of gameplay videos and still manage to actually play the game.

Playing Solo

I’m also not sure about Musket and Pike as a solo experience. I think it’s perfectly playable solitaire, and I know people do play it this way, but with all the reactions and the open-ended nature of the decision space I find myself trapped in an endless ouroboros of indecision, planning turns within turns for both sides. Games that do this to me tend to not be my favorite for solitaire play, I want something with more immediacy. I prefer experiences like Blind Swords, where I draw a chit and just resolve that chit to the best of my ability in the moment.

The scenarios I’ve played so far also had an element of free deployment to the set up, which I can manage when playing solo but always makes me feel like the game is better with an opponent.

I will probably continue to experiment with Musket and Pike more as a solitaire game, as I become more competent, I’m hoping that this problem will decrease, but to better grasp the game I think I need an opponent. Unfortunately, I have far more time to play games solo than I do two player, so it will take me longer to dig through the many scenarios in the box if I’m playing it two player.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Musket and Pike is a really interesting system and one that I am very keen to explore more. I think once I can get the experience of playing it to feel like second nature I will have a lot of fun with it, but at the same time reaching that point will be a long journey. This is far from the most complex hex and counter game I have played in terms of just the rules, but the tactical implications of these rules have made it a much tougher game to wrap my head around than I had expected. Still, I love a challenge and this kind of complexity is preferable to me than a game that just dumps a load of systems and rules exceptions on you and claims to be superior because of it. Also, did I mention that it has double sized counters? I love double size counters.

2023 in Review - Top 7 Favorite Books

Every year I set myself a target number of books that I want to read before the year is over. For the past few years, that target has been 50 books and with only one exception I’ve managed to exceed it. However, while I managed to meet my target in 2022, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with how I did it. Reading 50 books didn’t leave much room for the kind of doorstopper reads that I enjoy from time to time. So, with that in mind, I decided to lower my target for 2023 to 40 books - and at the same time to be less stringent on what constituted a book for the purposes of recording my reading. I managed to read exactly 40 books, just barely making my target, but I also read some hefty tomes so I’m pretty happy with the result. Just like for 2022, I’ve decided to pull out some of my favorite fiction and non-fiction I read last year and discuss them, in brief, below.

Non-Fiction

For anyone who has been following my other projects, especially We Intend to Move on Your Works, this will come as no surprise, but 2023 was really the year of the American Civil War. My non-fiction reading was dominated by research for this project as I desperately tried to bring myself up to a tolerable standard of knowledge on a subject outside of my professional expertise. Besides that, work continued apace on research for a medieval history book I’m working on and I very occasionally got to reach outside of those two subjects for something a little more unusual. My favorite non-fiction books of last year were:

Battle cry of freedom by James Mcpherson

One of the first books I read in 2023 and exactly the kind of massive history I had avoided in years past due to wanting to hit that 50 book milestone, Battle Cry of Freedom absolutely lived up to its reputation. A thorough, deep, and engaging single volume history of the American Civil War. It’s remained the gold standard for thirty years and with good reason, it’s a masterful piece of scholarship and writing.

Robert e lee and me by ty seidule

Ty Seidule’s deeply personal history of growing up in the Lost Cause mythology and idolizing Robert E. Lee before learning how flawed his past beliefs had been and preaching with the fervor of the converted makes for a fascinating and totally engaging read. Seidule does an excellent job of showing why history matters and how it can be powerful and dangerous, especially when it is abused. An excellent book.

Race and Reunion by David Blight

David Blight’s account of how Civil War memory was formed in the decades after the war and the tensions of the Lost Cause, the Reconciliationist, and the Emancipationist narratives helped immensely to deepen and expand my knowledge of how the American Civil War has been remembered by both its participants and their descendants. This is a deep and dense history, but it is also engaging and absolutely worth a read for anyone interested in the legacy of the American Civil War.

Hundred Years War by anne curry

With my main writing project being the Hundred Years War, I of course had to read more Hundred Years War history. I read a lot of books, but Anne Curry’s excellent survey history (the Routledge one, not the Osprey one) does a great job at covering the historiography of the war as well as the narrative while remaining approachable and engaging.

Fiction

I didn’t read as much fiction in 2023 as I would have liked. I got absorbed in various historical research projects and didn’t quite leave myself enough time for fun. One of my goals for this year is to read more fiction. Much as I love reading history, sometimes I need a good story to give my brain a bit of a rest. My favorites last year were:

Akira by Otomo Katsuhiro

I’m a huge fan of Cyberpunk and I’ve loved the film version of Akira for years but I’d never managed to read the original manga. In 2023, thanks to my local library, I finally corrected this oversight. I’m not sure if I prefer the manga to the anime, I think both tell really interesting versions of a similar story, but I’m so glad I’ve read it now. After years of only knowing Akira as a background narrative device in the films, it was really interesting to see the character himself exist so prominently in the manga version.

Looking Glass sound by Catriona Ward

Looking Glass Sound doesn’t always work, but I have to really admire its ambition. A deeply meta murder mystery, where the solution is revealed at the end of the first act but the narrative continues to swirl and add weirder and weirder layers after that. It lost me a bit in the middle, but it came together surprisingly well at the end. I can’t say that I love Looking Glass Sound but I have thought about it a lot since. A really interesting read.

All Sinners bleed by S.A. Cosby

The perfect cross section of my reading this year: a murder mystery novel that includes as one of its themes the long shadow of the American Civil War and Lost Cause mythology on the American South. To an extent I think the core mystery is the weakest part of the book - it’s perfectly adequate but the mood and character work are far superior which means that the book’s solution is a little bit disappointing as you’ll have to say goodbye to this place and the people who live there.

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:

Most Anticipated Games: 2024 Edition

I have been hesitant in the past to write about my excitement for upcoming games, partly out of a fear of getting absorbed into the Cult of the New but more so because it can be very hard to know when a given game might come out. The publication pipeline is at best vague and there is always the risk of delays or unexpected interruptions to production. I find it easier to not get too excited about games until I can grab them with my spindly hands. Still, I am not immune to hype and this year I thought I’d indulge myself a little and write about the ten* games I’m most looking forward to that should be coming out in 2024. As an addendum, to show that I’m not all about that new cardboard smell, I’ve also added a list of the five games I already own that I am the most excited to hopefully get to the table this year.

This list is ordered by how confident I am the game in question will actually come out in 2024, from “already shipping and arguably published at the end of last year” to “BGG says 2024, so fingers crossed!”

Most Anticipated Games 2024Tanto Monta: The Rise of Ferdinand and Isabella by Carlos Diaz Narvaez (GMT Games)

Here I Stand is the only wargame to survive my multiple previous attempts to get into historical gaming, which were ultimately abandoned with the games sold off. I clung to it desperately even though it was the least likely game for me to play. I think it was worth it, though, because my eventual two plays of Here I Stand have been glorious. The release of a prequel game that only requires four players, not Here I Stand’s overwhelming six, has me more excited than maybe any other game this year. I cannot wait to get this to the table. The amazing art by Iván Cáceres is a real cherry on top of what looks ot be a very promising cake.

Banish All Their Fears by David Fox and Ben Hull (GMT Games)

The promotional material for this one remained pretty quiet right up to its release but despite a lack of information my excitement has grown, much to my own surprise if I’m honest. The system seems to promise a focus on army formation and limited maneuver, trying to represent the restrictions that tactical doctrine of the time dictated. While its approach is very different, I have a similar excitement for it as I did for The Flowers of the Forest with its command restriction imposed by limited movement and written orders. I guess I like the misery of trying to make an early modern army do what it’s supposed to.

Norman Conquests: Men of Iron Vol. V by Ralph Shelton (GMT Games)

We don’t need to linger on this one. I’ve written more about Men of Iron than I have literally any other game. Another game in the series was always going to have my attention.

Sedgwick Attacks by Claude Whelan (Revolution Games)

I’ve said before that Blind Swords is a series that is quickly growing in my estimation and rising to the top of my pile of favorite systems. The two entries scheduled to come out in Q1 2024, this and Prelude to Vicksburg by Stephen Oliver, have caught my attention. Prelude to Vicksburg is on a rarely covered battle, which I always like, but Sedgwick Attacks’ choice to cover a less glamourized part of Chancellorsville and to do it in one counter sheet means it has a slight edge in terms of my excitement. I am really looking forward to both games, though.

Halls of Montezuma by Kevin Bertram and Gilberto Lopez (Fort Circle Games)

Kevin Bertram’s The Shores of Tripoli is my most played game of the last two years. It’s a satisfying and quick playing card driven game and a really excellent piece of design. Halls of Montezuma is a sort of sequel, taking the core of Tripoli’s systems and adapting them to another period in American history that deserves more attention. It also adds more of a political dimension, which is always great to see. Given Fort Circle’s consistently great production and thorough development work, how could you not be excited?

Seljuk: Byzantium Besieged by Justin Fassino (GMT Games)

I have an obsession with Levy & Campaign so obviously at least one game in the series had to make my list. I am also interested in Joe Schmidt’s Henry, but Agincourt isn’t my favorite campaign, and it is the potential changes introduced in Seljuk that has me the most excited at the moment. The asymmetry of Byzantines vs. Turks and the difference that conflict offers from existing L&C subjects makes it look like a very promising entry in the series. I like it when people take an established series and twist it into something new and it looks like Seljuk will be doing that.

Cuius Regio: The Thirty Years War by Francisco Gradaille (GMT Games)

I have a long standing interest in the Thirty Years War that has long lingered in the background of my life as I remain unable to indulge it as much as I would like. I enjoyed reading Peter Wilson’s history of the war some years ago, but I have yet to try any games on the topic. Cuius Regio looks like a really interesting take on the whole war as an operational hex and counter game (both things I like), plus it has gorgeous art. What’s not to like?

1812: Napoleon's Fateful March by Brian Berg Asklev Hansen (Vuca Simulations)

There is a real risk that this year is the one where I finally get sucked into Napoleonics. I’m resisting it in no small part because I already have too much on my plate. At the same time, Vuca is a publisher who I’m always keen to see what they’re making. Their focus on 20th century conflicts has meant that I’ve rarely taken the plunge to play their games, though. With their upcoming trip back to the Napoleonic period I’m finding it increasingly hard to resist the twin siren calls of Vuca’s production and Napoleon’s campaigns.

Libertadores del Sur by Keith Hafner & Matt Shirley (Legion Wargames)

I know very little about this game if I’m honest, but an operational game about wars of independence in South America just sounds really interesting. I love to see more games important topics that wargaming has often neglected. The latest Legion Wargames update said that they hoped this game would come out in 2024, so I’m taking their word for it. Hopefully it’s good and does the subject matter justice!

1066: Year of Destiny by Geoff Noble (Legion Wargames)

One of my eternal gripes with games about the Battle of Hastings is that I don’t think you can really understand what happened in England in the year 1066 without factoring in the earlier invasion by Harald Hardrada. 1066: Year of Destiny takes what is usually portrayed as a two sided conflict and splits it into three players and I couldn’t be more excited to see how it turned out.

Edit: Pax Penning by Matilda Simonsson (Milda Matilda Games)

OH MY GOD I FORGOT PAX PENNING! I don’t know how I forgot this one. A lovingly made and very interesting looking game in the neat package that somewhat defines the Milda Matilda aesthetic. I’ve not always been the biggest fan of Pax games - I admire the design but don’t always click with them - but when I heard about how you can steal victory from another player I saw this game jump up several steps in my anticipation for games this year.

Top 5* Most Anticipated Games I Own

These are all games that I already own but for one reason or another I haven’t played them - or even read the rules. I’m not making any sort of new year’s resolution saying that I will definitely play them, but if I don’t play at least half I will be quite disappointed in myself.

Give Us Victories by Sergio Schiavi (Dissimula Edizioni)

Give Us Victories looks like it is composed of at least three games, but the classic hex and counter two player game of the Battle of Chancellorsville is what I’m most excited about. It’s a gorgeous product and one that has clearly received a lot of love and attention from its designer, who also did the art and published it. My playing this will be contingent upon how much progress we make in We Intend to Move on Your Works, but I’m optimistic!

Musket and Pike Dual Pack by Ben Hull (GMT Games)

My most recent acquisition, I received it as part of the BGG Wargame Secret Santa this year, so it has barely sat on my shelves but that only enhances my enthusiasm. I’ve already expressed my excitement about the Thirty Years War as a topic and my interest in early modern tactical warfare, I feel like this is kind of a no brainer. Add on to that my love of double wide counters and it’s practically boiling over. I’m optimistic this will see table time this month.

OCS Korea: The Forgotten War by Dean Essig and Rod Miller (MMP Games)

One of my projects planned for Q3 this year is to play several operational games on the Korean War. I’ve bought a few in advance which will form the core of a fairly narrow study of the conflict. Much to my own surprise, OCS Korea is the one I’m thinking about the most. I never thought I’d play an OCS game, and I still have no interest in the many WWII entries, but something about this one calls to me. I’m as baffled as you presumably are.

Granada: Last Stand of the Moors by Jose Antonio Rivero (Compass Games)

The top of my shelf of shame - I’ve owned Granada since 2022 and still haven’t played it. A gorgeous production that adapts Sekigahara’s system to medieval Europe? I’m just embarrassed I haven’t played it yet and I really need to fix that. Part of my barrier is that I really want to play it in person - blocks online are never as good and it feels like sacrilege to do it to a game this pretty.

Glory and Glory II by Richard Berg (GMT Games)

Richard Berg is a divisive designer, but I maintain a general fondness for his work. I’ve adored Men of Iron but last year I bounced off of GBACW really hard. Glory is a much simpler take on the American Civil War from Berg and I’m really hoping it offers me something closer to the “Men of Iron but the Civil War” experience I was hoping for than GBACW did.

That’s my list, let me know what games you’re most excited for this year. One game that I didn’t include on my list is Field Commander: Robert E. Lee, because I’m not excited about it, but if you are interested in seeing me play and review that game as part of my series on solitaire games where you play the Confederates you can help make it a reality by supporting me on Ko-Fi at:

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.

These events collectively have brought new attention to symbols and memories that for a long time a section of society have tried (and often succeeded) at arguing were benign. The toppling of numerous Confederate monuments in the aftermath of these violent episodes is a clear testament to how America’s feelings about its Confederate past have shifted and how they will continue to shift under sustained anti-Confederate pressure.

I bring this up because within this modern context it is a fascinating and surreal experience to read Tony Horowitz’s Confederates in the Attic, a book that feels like (and practically was) written in a different age. In his book, Horowitz, a highly qualified journalist, toured the American south sampling various flavors of Civil War memory and, in particular, neo-Confederate obsessions with that memory. The book is wonderfully written and engaging, filled with curious characters and entertaining anecdotes. Horowitz shows his knack for conducting interviews and brings in a dose of personal reflection on his own obsessions with the Civil War. Together, this makes the whole book feel particularly human.

However, Confederates in the Attic is also very clearly of its time. This was an era when there was significant argument around the use of symbols like the Confederate battle flag, but a both-sides, “can’t we just move” on attitude was still prevalent and compromise was the order of the day. This is best summed up by t-shirts that were emblazoned with Malcolm X and the battle flag with the slogan “You have your X and I have mine.” This sentiment of compromise bleeds into the book as a whole. The notion that these neo-Confederates are just wacky weirdos, people with odd beliefs that we all know are wrong but isn’t it just wild that they have them, pervades large chunks of the book. This makes for very odd reading now, when recent events have reminded us all that these are white supremacists clinging to their own positions of power and largely supporting a return to an old racial order.

I do not come here to condemn Confederates in the Attic. It is a product of the time it was written and must be understood that way. Horowitz provides an extremely valuable portrait of the many varieties of neo-Confederate belief that dominated in the 1990s. It is a window back in time, and a thoroughly engaging one at that. But it is also a window with limitations. The first is the lens that it understands its key characters through. Horowitz is not entirely ignorant of the malignant beliefs of these people, but the idea that they are largely harmless and that their beliefs are as well is not something that recent experience would sustain. At the same time, while Horowitz is at his best interviewing people and encouraging them to share their thoughts, personal history, and beliefs, he is not a historian and on the history he can be quite weak. He knows his big picture history of the Civil War, but he’s as liable to quote Foote as McPherson and has no real concept of how historical consensus is reached or what implications that has. He also does not always know enough to push back on the lies spewed forth by certain erratic individuals he interviews, and thus runs the risk of printing their lie as they said it without any counterpoint to indicate that they were wrong.

These limitations are not so significant that I would discourage people from reading Confederates in the Attic. I really enjoyed my time with the book and I learned a lot from it. I was alive during the 1990s but I was young and not fully aware of all that was happening around me, and Confederates in the Attic provides a lot of very useful context for the time as well as for the decades that followed. At the same time, this cannot and should not be your only stop when reading about Lost Cause memory. A book like Ty Seidule’s Robert E. Lee and Me or Karen Cox’s Dixie’s Daughters would make a great pairing with it and fill in a lot of the context that Horowitz missed.