The rules for Army Status and Panic in CWB combine to form a two-tiered abstraction of the very real chance of one army or the other deciding a battle is lost long before most redblooded players would be willing to throw in the towel. They are an essential part of Essig's sophisticated design. These rules, however, suffer from two problems.

First of all, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to use in solitaire play. Furthermore, apparently many players have trouble rationalizing the luck element of the Army Status die roll, and ignore the rules entirely.

Here follows a modification aimed at overcoming these problems, both real and perceived. The process is still very random, but at least in the open-a boon for those playing alone or with opponents not quite trusted. It also removes the "guessing game" from the Army Status and Panic Demand phases, removing one layer of abstraction from the process. By this I mean a player no longer needs to guess when his opponent's Army Status might be low in order to force the chance of Panic.

The Army Status of each side is no longer recorded. This is now a completely random number, rolled anew each turn. The procedure is as follows. During each Status Change Phase, a die roll is made to determine the Army Status of each side. During daylight turns, two dice are rolled; at night, just one die. The resulting number is the current Army Status. If the Army Status is "1" or "2," that side will usually have to roll for Panic as per the normal rules ,just as if a Panic Demand had been issued by the opposing side.

Players who wish to include a "viewpoint" variable may want to use the following die roll modifiers. A player should add "1 " to his roll for Army Status if his assessment of the last turn was positive' subtracting "1" if it was negative. These modifiers should only be used during daylight turns, and I suggest that players openly and mutually decide the viewpoint of the respective armies. The only time either army's viewpoint should be negative is when the other army's viewpoint is positive. If the players do not agree, assume the viewpoint of each is neutral with no die roll modifier resulting. Panic Demands are now limited only by the following rule. On each day of battle, no side can "issue" more than one Panic Demand at each level (1 and 2) where Panic is possible. For example, if a side has already checked for Panic at Army Status"2," it is not forced to check for Panic again at that level for the remainder of the current day.

Under these changes, most Panic Demands will occur at night, since a roll of snake eyes is required to trigger a panic Demand while the sun shines. This is intentional. During the Civil War, armies would convene Councils of War at night to determine a plan for the next day of battle. At these meetings, the decision to withdraw from the field would also be made-as such, "panic" in these cases is something of a misnomer. Should a freak daylight Panic occur, this can be thought of as representing the kind of general collapse of morale that occurred at Chattanooga.