Three separate campaigns are now under way in the Shenandoah PBM - a pair of two-player games and an additional game I'm umpiring for a group of players in Amarillo, Texas. In Game 1, the Union commander continues to hammer away at the Rebels and has pushed ever closer to the Confederate supply depot. Loss of your depot is an automatic defeat, so the depots give the games a definite focus. The depots must be protected at all costs and attacks on them are always a scary thing. The Confederate commander also has been struggling to consolidate his far-flung units so as to fend off Union attacks, but delays and stubborn subordinates have been hindering his efforts. All has not gone the Union's way, however. Two Confederate cavalry brigades have slipped all the way into the Federal rear and are now threatening the Federal supply depot. An all-out attack on the depot's garrison was repulsed, but the lurking troopers now have the opportunity to wreak havoc with the supply lines to the Federal army itself. The Federals have suffered heavy cavalry losses of their own and will be hard pressed to counter such a threat by the Rebel horsemen without exposing the depot to further danger. In Game 2, preliminary maneuvering continues as the armies grope for each other. Although there have not yet been any pitched battles, there has been considerable strategic action, with more cavalry operations in the rear and strikes being made against supply lines. That's kept the larger formations somewhat off balance. This game has armies more dispersed than in Game 1, so there is a lot more possibility of smaller units bumping into each other as the campaign moves along. Game 3 is a somewhat different kettle of fish. The Amarillo gamers wanted to fight a Valley campaign with their own variations of PBM rules, but they wanted someone to handle the administrative chores, which is right up my alley. Based on their available figures, they drew up their own Order of Battle, rather than me providing the commanders their OOBs. The opening moves of this game are now in progress and we've found a mutually agreeable system for resolving small-unit actions with a minimum of back-and-forth messaging. I'm looking forward to the major units getting into a good fight, which is the whole point - to give players a context for them to game out their Civil War Battles on their own table tops. In the other two PBM games, I resolve the battles, based on plans by the individual commanders. The players seem to be enjoying all this. One recently noted the "fun" and "tension" involved in his game. No commander has a helicopter view in PBM games. Everybody is operating in a lot of fog. It's not, as my correspondent pointed out, a gaming situation for everyone. But those who like some uncertainty in their gaming can get their fill in this version of Shenandoah. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #120 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Solo Wargamers Association. 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