I recently bought Q.E.D Games' Blue vs. Gray, from Leisure Games in the U.K. It a strategic-level card game on the American Civil War. It is not a collectable card game. You get all the cards for your side (Blue or Gray) in the pack you buy. You can get both packs together for about £15. It is a 'card driven' game system, where everything is in the cards. The rules, the map, the leaders, the units (brigades (CSA) and divisions (USA)) and the events (Enigmas) are cards. The only exception is a set of markers (Union or Confederate) that comes with the game and two different coloured dice, that you need to provide. It owes a lot to Mark Herman's 'We the People' series of games, but the rules are simpler, than his 'For the People' ACW game. There are about 30 cards with rules and tables on them. Including 3 scenarios: the standard and the historical games, both running from 1861 to the end of the war and the Gettysburg historical game, starting in July 1863. Then there are 11 map cards giving you the map streaching from just west of the Mississippi to the east coast, and from just south of the Canadian border to the Gulf. The rest of the cards are either Leaders, Units or event (enigma) cards. Not counting the rules, the South gets a deck of 80 cards and the North 76 cards. The cards in the decks are numbered in their historical sequence. Ex. Union General McDowell is number 8 and the 1864 elections enigma card is number 72. When setting up the standard game the North starts with 5 cards (2 maps, The Dept. of Washington unit card, the Porter Naval unit/leader card and an enigma card). The South starts with 4 (2 maps, the Tidewater Militia unit card and an enigma card). Each side shuffles the rest of their cards and place the stack face down. The cards will then get drawn and enter play during the game. The 4 map cards start on the table, giving you a playing area covering the central parts of the Eastern theatre of war, including the Shenandoah Valley, and part of the Union states west of the Appalachians. The rest of the map gets added on, when the cards are drawn, if they can fit onto the current map. The sides take alternating turns starting with the North. The game ends when one side has gained a certain number of victory points or the turn after the northen player's deck is used up. Each turn you draw cards (minimum 2) or supplies. You then activate leaders and assign combat units to them. You can also subordinate leaders (ex. Longstreet) to some of the other leader (ex. Lee) building up armies (CSA) or army groups (USA). But not all leaders will subordinate. That can give the North a lot of headache early on in the historical scenario. Each leader has a command rating that defines how many units and/or subordinate leaders he can control. The leader also has an initiative rating. All leaders and units have a strength rating, which are added up to the army's combat strength. The Northern divisions are normally more powerful than the Southern brigades. The cards are assigned to either the eastern or western theater. They can later transfer between the theaters. Assigning units and leaders to units and moving them between commands, are an important part of the game. You do not move units on the map. You use the markers to show control of points (typically cities or ports), connected by road/railway, rivers or sea-movement (USA). After having organised your forces you declare attacks against adjacant enemy controlled points, perhaps by way of an invasion. Each attack costs a supply point. You assign a command from the theater to the attack and your opponent assigns one to defend. You then take turns adding or withdrawing units and playing enigma cards that could influence the outcome. The battle is resolved by rolling a d6, modified for fortification and army strength. Another d6 is rolled for the severity of the losses. Depending on the dice you might also have to roll on a leader loss table. Losses depend on the number of unit cards in play. So building up a big army will cost you. Units have 2 steps, so they deplete before they are destroyed. After the battles are over, you get a chance to undeplete units by paying supply points. There are also rules for bringing back lost units and leaders, for supply, cavalry raids, politically favoured leaders and lots of enigma cards. It is also very well supported on their website: www.qedgames.com. You can find the rules there, lists of cards, extra scenarios, Q&A and more about setting up the game. I have played it many times solo and I have enjoyed it very much. It gives you a fast, yet complete strategic ACW game. I will write more about playing card driven games solo, in a later issue. Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #130 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2000 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