Bloody Roads South
Game Review
by Richard Ayliffe
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The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5th - 7th, 1864
This is the fifth game in `The Gamers' Battles of the Civil War, Brigade Series and the first to use the 2nd edition rules - which have been considerably clarified and rewritten from the 1st edition. The game covers the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5th - 7th 1864. This battle was the beginning of a coordinated campaign lasting from the spring of `64 to the spring of `65 and which ended the Civil War in a Union victory. A confederate success here might have unravelled the Union master plan and sent the Union's leading general U. S. Grant back in disgrace. If Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia fail to win here, it will be the beginning of the end. `Bloody Roads South' comes with two 22" x 34" full colour maps, 560 counters a series rules booklet, a game rules booklet and seven scenarios. Approximately half the counter are for information - strength, morale etc. The unit counters each represent an infantry brigade, a gun battery or leader (no cavalry were present at this battle). Both the map and the counters are well designed, attractive to look and combine to give a colourful game - even down to the tiny Union or Confederate battle flags on the infantry counters! The bulk of the rules are included in the `series rules' booklet, which covers all of the games in the series, and includes the sequence of play, command 7 control, firing, movement, melee etc. The `game rules' cover the special features of this particular battle - including details of both armies and their commanders, wilderness terrain, the scenarios and historical/players/designers notes. As with all of the games produced by `The Gamers', `Bloody Roads South' concentrates on the problems of Command & Control. In keeping with this all of the various game functions such as firing, movement, melee etc are fairly simple and straightforward with no untoward surprises, thus making the game easy to learn. What makes this game `tick' are the rules covering Command & Control, Orders and Army Status. Each commander must write orders for his Corps (and sometimes divisions). Along with specifying what the Corps is to do, the delivery method (in person or ADC; written or oral), the type (simple or complex), the force (how urgently you want the orders to take effect) must also be recorded. When your order arrives at its destination its acceptance must be rolled for - this is modified by the ability of both the sender and recipient as well as the preceding attributes. The results can vary from immediate acceptance through various length delays to the order being distorted or misunderstood and thrown away! This means that the players can never be sure exactly when (or if!) their orders will be carried out. It can sometimes be quite frustrating to `see' opportunities to exploit success slip through your fingers because orders couldn't be issued in time! Individual Corps commanders can try and use their own initiative to change their orders, however, a clever rule prohibits too much use of this. If a Corps commander tries to use his initiative and makes a bad roll he can become a `loose cannon' which allows your opponent to issue an order of his choice to that Corps - usually to your detriment! This might all sound rather complicated and long-winded but in reality it is rare to have to issue or roll for more than one or two orders per turn so the actual process doesn't take very long to resolve. A second, rather unique rule is also worthy of mention - the Army Status. At the beginning of the battle each is army is assigned a status number from 1 (worst) to 5 (usually 3 or 4). At the end of every game turn, (which, by the way, represent 30 minutes each), each player has to make a totally subjective assessment of how well his army has performed during that turn, this can either be positive, neutral or negative. the player then, in secret, makes a dice roll to determine whether or not his Army Status has gone up or down. During the course of a game each army commander is allowed to subject his opponent to one or two panic checks - if this is done whilst their army status is low then their entire army runs a considerable risk of withdrawing from the battle and losing. Both the Army Status rule and the Command & Control rules require a high degree of honesty and integrity from the players and are open to exploitation, e.g. if you order a Corps to attack a weakly held position and the order is delayed for several turns you should still press home the attack when the orders are accepted even if the position has been reinforced in the meantime and your Corps attack is outnumbered! However, if these rules are followed played in the spirit they are intended then some quite `realistic' looking events can happen! I would recommend this game to anyone with a passing interest in the ACW or late 19th Century warfare. For those of you used to playing games where troops and commanders communicate telepathically and instantly respond to your every whim then this game (and others in the series) can prove to be quite an eye opener. `The Gamers' should be applauded for bringing these often ignored factors into wargaming with the minimum of fuss and complexity and I now find it difficult to play other games which do ignore these factors. this system is now being adapted and applied to the Napoleonic period and I believe the battle of Austerlitz is currently being playtested. I am eagerly looking forward to playing this! More Reviews
Elite 1813-15 Prussians (miniature figures review) Bicorne 25mm Mameluks and Brit Dragoons (miniature figures review) L' Armee Francais (Book review) Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #8 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com |