Battle Cry by Avalon Flill/Hasbro is designed by Richard Borg. The game comes with a battle board and 46 double sided hex tiles with terrain features (hills, woods, rivers, buildings, fields, rocks and a bridge). The playing pieces are 112 figures in blue or grey, cast as infantry, cavalry or artillery, as well as generals. Your group the figures into units of 2-4 figures. The rules are simple, only about 10 pages with many illustrations. The game is driven by a deck of command cards that regulates what you can do. You activate a number of units on one or more sections of the board. An activated unit can then move and combat. Combat is very simple. The attacker rolls a number 6-sided combat dice, depending on the unit, distance, terrain and leadership. The results can be a loss of figures and/or forced retreats . When the last figure in the unit or a general is lost, the opponent gets a 'flag' stand. You win by collecting 6 flag stands from your opponent. The scenarios (15 with the game and many more available on the Internet) are easy to set up and can be complete one in an hour or two, even if you play both sides solo. The scale of the game is not defined. The Antietam scenario covers the whole battle. The Shiloh scenario only covers the battle for the Hornet's Nest. Battle Cry is more than just a beer and pretzel game. It does not give you the detail of more detailed ACW games, but the use of command cards represents the command and control problems and uncertainties very well. The combat system is elegant. The use of the combat dice is a very simple way of representing a much more complex combat results table. One of the things, I think is so great about the game, is that I, as the commander, cannot depend on my generals following my great plan (because I might not get the command cards I need, and the combat dice can go wrong). So I have to make my plan flexible, so that I can take advantage of the flow of the battle and overcome the set backs. In the old SPI Blue & Grey Antietam scenario there were rules limiting the Union side to activating only one or two corps at a time (or something like that). In The Gamers great Civil War Brigade series game on the battle there are the command rules. In Battle Cry there is the command cards. Back to MWAN #110 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Hal Thinglum 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