by Richard Borg Battle Cry by Avalon Hill/Hasbro is an American Civil War (ACW) game designed by Richard Borg. The game comes with a full-color game board and 46 double sided hex tiles with terrain features (hills, woods, rivers, buildings, fields, rocks and a bridge). The playing pieces are 112 plastic infantry, cavalry or artillery, as well as general officer figures (25mm) in blue or gray. The rules book initially looks intimidating, but that’s because it also contains all of the scenarios. The actual rules are only about 10 pages and illustrations highlight the key points. The game is move, counter-move, but not so straight forward. Each player receives a number of cards from the activation deck. This gives the player a limited variety of actions that he can perform, such as attack right, move infantry, etc. After playing a card and performing an action, a new card is drawn and added to the player’s hand – this gives the player another option for next turn. Units are formed by putting together two to four figures of the same type. The General Officer is a key figure for the battle and can move fairly freely around the battle field in order to rally units as needed. Artillery is the king of battle, but extremely vulnerable to attack. Cavalry can maneuver around forces and attack weak points. Infantry bears the brunt of attacking and defending. All this is very realistic according to my limited understanding of the American Civil War. Combat is conducted upon the activation of an attack-type card. One or more six-sided die (provided with the game) are rolled, depending on unit, distance, terrain, and leadership. These dice will give a result of loss of defending figures and/or retreat. When the last figure in a unit or a general is lost, the opponent wins the flag stand. These flag stands are the key element in victory conditions for the scenarios. It is assumed that if you have seized a certain number of flag stands, without losing an equal number yourself, that you will also gain the ground that goes with this. Victory in Battle Cry is based to a certain extent on attrition. There are fifteen scenarios provided with the game. These are easy to set up using the terrain provided (these are cardboard and are simply placed into the hexes as shown on the setup map). Each game can be set up and played in about an hour or so, even if you play both sides solo. The scale of the game is not defined. The Antietam scenario covers the whole battle while Shiloh only covers the battle for the Hornet's Nest. My first exposure to Battle Cry was at Hurricon 1996. Richard Borg was putting on demo games of his newest game. This game was completely self-contained – it came with rules, figures, game board, scenarios, and playing aids. Richard put together some old 25mm lead ACW figures and used a fabric board with hexes imprinted. This would not be how the final product looked, but the play-testing phase had already ended since the game balance, playability, and general historical accuracy were solid. Richard had done a stellar job in creating this game, yet to make it to prime time. With the shake up of Avalon Hill and its subsequent purchase by Hasbro, Richard’s game was held up for a bit, but it has finally made it into mass production. I talked with Richard at Historicon 2001 and he said that Hasbro was not going to run a second printing of Battle Cry, so you must buy your copy while they are still available. 10,000 games is an incredible sale in this fairly small hobby of ours, but as Richard described it, Candyland and Monopoly sell hundreds of thousands of copies in a year. In the big scheme, Military historical games simply cannot compete. Battle Cry is a quick and simple game, but not a kid’s game (although it appears that the younger gaming crowd quickly grasps the concepts and learns basic command and maneuver principles). The ACW historian will have an appreciation for the historical accuracy and quality of the game. Overall, I give this game my highest rating and utmost support. Well-done Richard! Back to The Gauntlet No. 22 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Craig Martelle Publications 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