The Seven Days' Battles were almost certainly the most important battle Lee ever won - and it was also, without a doubt, his clumsiest victory. The Confederate Victory before Richmond in 1862:

a) saved Richmond
b) lengthed the war by three years
c) assured Lee the command of the Army Of Northern Virginia
d) made Emancipation necessary as a a matter of politics and military strategy (much to the relief of those who already saw it as a moral necessity).

Yet most of the Confederate glory, the brilliance and the fireworks, lay in the future. Those later battles are testaments to genius and valor, a fine legacy to all Americans. At the Seven Days there was little of this legacy. There was just victory for one side, the side that eventually lost the Confederacy. The battle, though filled with valor, was without genius in its execution, and in the end it had only one point - to save the Confederacy. When the Confederacy was lost, the battle lost most of its meaning.

Like Chickamauga in the West it was not a popular battle after the war. Like Chickamauga, it was a vital battle for the Confederacy's survival, and like Chickamauga it was clumsily fought for the sole purpose of dividing the nation. When the nation was not divided, the battle lost its meaning (Although one can think that it would have been a mighty holiday in the Confederacy, if the Confederacy had survived).

It was at the Seven Days that the Army of Northern Virginia was born. Lee had just taken command of the forces before Richmond, and he had not even had time to shake the bugs out of his command. Famous Generals who had not fought together yet were leading their first major commands - A.P. Hill given his light Division a day before the battle, Jackson arriving from the Shenandoah with what had been an independent army, but which would fight with Lee from now on, and Longstreet, still commanding a division and about to step into the corps command that would make his name.

Jeb Stuart's cavalry was only a brigade, but he had the nucleus of men that were to make their legends in the years ahead Wade Hampton, F. Lee, Pelham and others were in that brigade. It was the muster of the Confederacy to save Richmond, under Lee, and the war would be very different from the time those troops got together - at the Seven Days' Battles.

The Game

SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES is a tactical level game covering the area before Richmond where the battle was fought. (from Richmond to Harrison's Landing). The smallest units are regiments of 1 combat factor, and the largest in the advanced game are brigades (there are divisions in the basic game); All artillery is represented in lumped-together brigades for each division (which is unfortunate, since in the real campaign the batteries were assigned individually to brigades, except for the reserve artillery on each side, and as a result the artillery was much less effective.

This particularly plagued the Confederates, and in fact it was the early spring of 1863 - six months later - before they came up with the superior organization that is so blithely represented in the game.), and cavalry appears in the same fashion as infantry in the regiments and brigades, Each mapboard hex represents about 1/2 mile, so that the whole thing works out in pretty good scale - 1/2 mile was about the right front for a division, which is all you can pile up in one square. There is morale, road movement, attrition combat, command and control units, and a well- terrained mapboard.

The physical quality of the name is quite good (excellent for a small company). The manboard is 22" x 28" and has been cut and prefolded so it lies FLAT when opened up, and folds nicely into quarters. It is made of lightweight cardboard and the folding edges have been reinforced with tape, resulting in a game that should stand up well to the battering of repeated use.

The printing on unit counters and mapboard is clear and large enough to be easily read. A little of the printing is not perfectly registered, so that a few roads run along the edge of a hex, or part of a unit counter designation is chopped off, but all of the mapboard terrain (there's a lot of terrain represented) stays inside its own hexes (in the review copy we got, anyway).

The rules are short and easily used, but they are subtle, containing traps for the unwary and opportunities for the wily. All the rules are contained in a twopage rules folder (four 8.5 x 11 sides), two attrition tables, a terrain chart, and some examples of play. The rules are so short NOT because they are simple, but because they have been well thought out. They have been written in clear, terse language that goes to the point of each rule, and each rule is explained by itself in its own little section (so you don't find two rules intertwined in the same sentence, nor do you find part of the movement rules hidden in the middle of the combat section).
In other words, the rules are well organized, and this, along with the fact that they are so short, makes it easy to refer back to them in case of a rules dispute during a game, so you won't have to spend half you time preparing arguments, or trying to remember just where you saw that rule ... )

There are some very fine rules here. The road movement is as easy to use and as realistic as I've seen anywhere, and there is a two-phase movement system that works out very realistically, paying each player to keep a reserve for exploitation and future commitment.

There are few ambiguities and almost no clashes in the rules. A few obvious rules seem to have been left out. (for example, nowhere is it explained how a headquarters unit can be destroyed), but common sense can resolve these easily.

The historical accuracy of the game is very good also - clearly, the designers did a LOT of work here. The Order of Battle is very nearly perfect (once you ignore the ridiculous numbering scheme imposed on the units of the Confederate Army - I think they just wanted to print a "II" rather than try to fit "Magruder" onto the edge of a 1/2" x 1/2" unit counter.
Incidently, the command structure implied by this numbering scheme is flawed - Magruder never commanded more than his own, D. Jones', McLaws', and Huger's divisions in the real campaign).

The strength of the units in the game is basically representative of their manpower strength in the battle: in the basic game one combat factor for 1000 men, in the advanced game one factor stands for 333 men or three guns. I quibble a little with their strengths for Jackson's, A.P. Hill's, and Holmes' divisions, but who knows? Maybe they threw in a morale bonus for the Stonewall Brigade.
Most impressively, the attrition table seems to have been especially designed to create the proper quantities of casualties (point losses) for a Civil War battle!

Tedious and Unrealistic

So, with all this, it is a shame that the game is basically tedious and unrealistic.

Above I have been talking about the details of the game, and as I have said, those details were generally well handled. The problems with the game have to do with how the game plays as a WHOLE, and there are several such problems.

First Problem

The first problem is that there is just too much game for the rules. In the advanced game each side has nearly 300 points, and each point can be moved or lost individually. This is almost as bad as Blitzkrieg, as far as sheer size goes.

And the initial deployment of the two sides runs along the diagonal of the 22 x 28 mapboard - an awful lot of front to have to worry about. Too many units, too much front... and too little interest. Other games of comparable size such as Blitzkrieg or Strategy and Tactics' USN - have a diversity of rules, a lot of nifty little diversions that you can pull out of your hat when things get dull (like invasions or strategic bombing). This means that there is more than one way to threaten your opponent; conceivably, you could have threats coming at him from all angles, threatening supply lines or threatening to get a decisive superiority in one type of specialized troops or another...

In SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES the only thing you can do to your opponent is chew his masses of infantry down a few points at a time. And when you net bored with one section of the game, there's just more of the same, on and on down the line and on into the future. It takes discipline to finish a game, when the game SHOULD be FUN.

This brings us to the other reason for the game's dullness - despite the technical "historical accuracy" of the combat rules, the game AS A WHOLE is NOT historically accurate. The real campaign just didn't fight like that! The game has lost a lot of the flavor of the real campaign by ignoring different methods of attack -- different factors that the real commanders had to contend with that dominated the outcome of the real Seven Days' Battles.

Federal supply lines were a major concern of both sides during the battle Lee was actually trying to bag the whole Union Army by cutting the supply line that went to White House at the start of the campaign. McClellan's greatest achievement was the skillful way he had this supply line shifted down to Harrison's Landing, and Lee tried in vain during the rest of the Seven Days to cut down and cut this line, too. (I know of one Civil War student who will never forgive this game simply because White House is not even on the map!) This entire area of concern, vital in the real campaign, is virtually ignored in the game - the only supply rule of any type is optional and deals primarily with Corps HQ units.

Other vital factors were left out of the game, ruining it as an overall simulation. The Seven Days' Battles were without parallel in the sheer confusion that existed in the armies of both sides. Both commanders had to run their armies with, at best, sketchy information about where the enemy was and about where his OWN troops were! The Confederates had superiority in reconnaissance because of Jeb Stuart and the Confederate cavalry (a fact that is totally lost in the game, inasmuch as cavalry is treated simply as fast infantry, and the Federals have more of it to boot!) so that the Federals were astronomically off in their estimates of Confederate strength (this is the campaign where McClellan made a permanent name for himself by thinking the Confederates had 300,000 men.

Actually, Lee had under 90,000, and he had that many only when Jackson came force-marching up with 15,000 from the Shenandoah Valley). On the other hand, Lee was always trying to figure out where his Confederate divisions had wandered off to, and what sort of mischief their commanders might be getting them into, while Fitz-John Porter did excellently for the Federals by keeping a firm hand on the Federal rear guard throughout the retreat (this may just have saved the Union Amy, and the Union).

On the Confederate side, the confusion in the high command makes you wonder how Lee got anything done at all. Jackson, marching in on a vital flank that could destroy a whole Union Army was late three times! A.P. Hill nearly wrecked his mammoth Light Division by impetuously deciding that if nobody else was going to attack, then HE was, and Magruder, commanding a third of the Confederates during the pursuit, was so timid that empty breastworks held off his whole force for a vital afternoon when he could have cut off the Federals from their new base. This command and control confusion was virtually decisive in the real campaign, yet there is not a trace of it in what purports to be a simulation of the Civil War's most confused battle.

Need I go on? There hardly seems enough to keep a body interested. You can't get the feel of the battle because the muddle is missing, along with the desperate bluffs that depended on Confederate cavalry superiority, and the combat itself is missing the different kinds of threatsthreats against a supply line, for example that you could spring on an opponent who had gotten careless. There is just the tactical meat grinder, slugging away from edge to edge, turn after turn.

And yet, as you innocently shift your reserves down the line (and in this game uncommitted reserves mean a lot, your opponent had better keep up and keep deployed in just the right way...), or as you pound his artillery with your artillery at long distance, trying to get an advantage in long distance fire (incidently, the long-range artillery is far too powerful in this game. It could be very hard on a units' morale, but cannon fire couldn't produce anything like the casualties of an infantry battle line unless the enemy got into close cannister range) ...well, you know, this IS a pretty interesting game.

If only there weren't so MANY units. Or a few more dimensions of combat to worry about. Or just a FEW more GOOD rules, as well written as the rest are...

Recommendations

I recommend this game for:

a) players looking for a "clean" game with good rules, for use in competition (such as Spartans).
b) players who would like to see some well-written rules
c)players who have a lot of patience, time, or just plain lethargy.

I sort of recommend this game for:

a) players interested in excellent and subtle play - along only a few lines.
b) players interested in the Civil War and the way Civil War battles worked (the details of this game are extremely well done),
c) players who are interested in the Seven Days' Battles - as long as you're not too demanding, and realize that a few important things have been left out.

I do NOT recommend this game for:

a) players who want a short game (unless they'll settle for the basic game)
b) players who like lots of neat options tucked away everywhere
c) players who get bored with too many units of the same type (even the artillery fights like infantry, only at longer range)
d) players who demand that a game fight the same way the battle did.

Final note: I think this game takes some playing to appreciate. Within certain limits, it's certainly worth taking the time to learn.