Larry Brom has written many rules sets during his long and illustrious career as a wargamer, including the classic British Colonial rules "The Sword and the Flame", which is so enjoyable and user friendly that it has been modified into an indeterminate number of variants through the years. "A Glint of Bayonets" is Larry's regimental level ACW rules set, and is, by Larry's admission, one of the last rules sets that he will write. Larry's goal was to write a set of simple, easy-to-play rules that didn't include a lot of extra rules provisions and complications for things that he didn't feel were important/decisive in a typical Civil War battle. Some concepts were left out of the rules just for simplicity's sake.

Therefore, AGoB does not include provisions for the following things: skirmishers, cavalry, pre-assigned commander ratings based on their historical performance, flank melee attacks, incremental weapons ranges and variable regimental strengths. Some concepts that Larry did include in AGoB are: simplified artillery movement, variable move distances, army morale checks and rear melee attacks. The individual gamer will have to decide for himself if Larry's compromises are acceptable to him. But please don't give up on AGoB without giving it a serious try. You can easily derive some house rules to fix anything that you consider a shortcoming in these rules.

Each infantry regiment represents 500 men at a 1:25 ratio: 20 castings, with 4 castings per stand, five stands per regiment. Each gun base and its two crew castings represent a section of two actual guns. The ground scale is 1 inch equals 22 yards. Larry gives some short guidelines on how to use figures mounted for other ACW rules so that remounting your miniatures to play AGoB is NOT required. The rules use ordinary D6s for movement and firing, and D 10s for command response checks and morale checks.

The sequence of play is basically as follows. Each brigade of troops on the table is assigned a movement card, made from a standard deck of playing cards, using for example red cards for Confederates and black cards for the Union. Add a joker and an ace card for each side to complete the movement deck. These cards are shuffled at the start of each turn and as each one is flipped over, that particular brigade can attempt to move. If a joker is turned over, one brigade of the commander's choice may attempt to move. If an ace is turned over, any unattached generals or batteries may now attempt to move.

After all movement is finished and all the cards have been pulled and acted upon, firing takes place, along with any resultant morale checks. Stationary units fire first, followed by moving units' fire. Units that do not move more than 3" are considered stationary for firing purposes. After all units have fired, morale tests are taken for units that are charging or being charged. If the units pass these tests, a melee is fought. After this, you have the morale adjustment phase, the rally phase and the major army morale phase (this is a morale check for the entire force each turn once it reaches 25% of its total stands lost, and it has varying effects depending on each unit's current number of stands lost, its morale grade, and the quantity of the army's stands lost from casualties, routing, captures, etc.). The more casualties that you have suffered, the more devastating this check will be.

A unit's ability to move each turn is predicated on first passing a command check, which is a D10 die roll based on the highest ranking friendly officer located within 12" of the testing unit regiment or battery. This forces you to be very careful about how far apart you are spreading your units and leaders out during the battle. If the command check is successfully passed, movement is accomplished by rolling a specified quantity of dice for the brigade's troops. One dice roll is made for the entire brigade and the resultant sum is its movement allowance in inches. However, this move distance varies depending on the regiment's current formation and the terrain that it is moving through. For example, if a brigade has 3 regiments in line and 1 in field column, the player would roll two white D6 and one colored D6.

The units in line formation will move the sum of the two white D6, and the unit in field column could move the sum of the two white D6 plus the colored D6. Units in road column and starting & ending their turn on the road get to roll four D6. Units moving through certain types of terrain can lose the high D6 or low D6 from their movement allowance. Artillery units can move two D6 & fire, or just move three D6. However, if they choose to just move, they must do so in limbered formation, which is susceptible to double casualties if fired on. The movement system is thus fairly unpredictable, which can make for some interesting and hairy tactical dilemmas during the battle.

Firing is accomplished as follows: A unit rolls a D6 for every full stand of troops that is eligible to issue fire. Ranges of small arms weapons is as follows: smoothbore muskets = 15", rifled muskets = 20", breechloaders or repeaters = 16". For example, a full strength infantry regiment of 20 figures, armed with rifled muskets, will roll 5 D6 (one for each of its 5 full strength stands) when firing, needing 4s, 5s or 6s to score a hit on a target in the open. If the target is in cover or is a gun crew, only 5s or 6s will be hits. If the target is infantry in column, limbered guns, enfiladed infantry lines or batteries, you would double the number of hits rolled.

As you can see, this can get pretty lethal in a hurry. Also, units that are following too close behind their front line friends will find themselves classed as a "mass target" and suffer higher casualties due to their being bunched up so close to their friends. Artillery can fire either canister or shot/shell, and rolls a D6 for each crew member. Cannister range is 15"-16" and shot/shell range is 48" for Napoleons and 54" for rifled guns. It is interesting to note that Larry does not consider rail/wood fences to be cover, so this will certainly have an effect on all the Johnny Reb rules users that play this game - no fence hugging here!

Morale is handled in a very interesting way. The morale value of a unit is never determined until it actually has to test its morale. Then you make a die roll to determine the parent brigade's quality, and then make another roll to determine the morale of each regiment as is required to check its morale. So, during play you will more than likely learn the morale of some of a brigade's regiments before you learn the morale class of the others. A unit's initial morale value ends up being 10 (worst), 20, 30 or 40 (best), and this is noted by placing an appropriately colored plastic ring on the unit. This morale value can also fluctuate during play, with some permanent and some temporary changes possible, but it can never go below 10 or above 40. A morale check is made by adding the unit's current morale value to a D10 die roll (counting the number rolled as 10, 20, 30, etc). Many of the checks require a sum of 80 or higher to succeed, so you need to roll high. Once a unit suffers more than 50% casualties, it has to pass a pretty tough morale check each turn, or be removed from the table. This concept of changing morale values takes a bit of getting used to during the first couple of battles, but I really like it and it really works well.

Once an announced charging attacker and its target unit have made contact and passed all of their premelee morale checks, a close combat occurs and is resolved. This is resolved as a stand vs. stand duel with both players rolling a die and adding any appropriate modifiers. Bases that lost with a D6 die roll of 1 or 2 will take 1 or 2 casualties and will then move to the rear of the combat temporarily. Bases that lost with a D6 die roll of 3 thru 6 will take no losses and move to the rear temporarily. Once one side has all of its engaged bases to the rear, it has lost the melee. A defender can additionally support a melee by adding certain qualifying units that are within 3" of his contacted unit. A contacted unit can attempt to withdraw before the melee if desired. Also, a victorious attacker can elect to 1) continue his charge, or 2) make a normal non-contact tactical move, or 3) occupy the enemy's former position and reform & reface.

So, these are the major concepts of AGoB in a nutshell. I have not been able to touch on everything in the rules obviously, due to space considerations. I was very impressed by the elegant simplicity of the rules compared to many other ACW rules sets on the market today. AGoB offers ACW gainers an excellent easy play option for simulating battles of this period and they have a good period feel to them as well. I strongly recommend that you give them a try.