Anyone remember that title? A truly awful alternative history genre effort, done long before Harry Turtledove arrived to show us how althist fiction should be written. It is perhaps the worst novel I ever read, certainly the worst I ever finished. The South won the Civil War, see, and the slaves were now waging a guerrilla war against the Confederacy, and had obtained a nuclear device from the other side of the Mason-Dixon Curtain ...

Well, you get the idea. Fortunately, that is not our next RSS title (A Fearful Slaughter is our name and we're sticking to it). Instead, we chose to do a game about the 1862 battle, oddly enough. I have to cop a mea culpa here: I was one of those originally dead set against a Shiloh game in the RSS, back when we were limiting the number of titles very carefully in this subseries. A number of passionate advocates for this one, however, turned the tide. Not the least of them is the guy now listed as co-designer: Boyd Schorzman. Boyd did a lot of the early grunt work here, drawing the map, assembling the COB, etc. All in all, at this stage of the game's life, I am amazed at how well it all hangs together.

Shiloh, fought April 6-7 1862, is an atypical battle in a number of ways. First and foremost is troop quality: the men who fought at Pittsburg Landing were often barely trained, with officers who in many cases knew less than their men. The result was a disjointed, chaotic affair that produced thousands of casualties but little else, at least tactically. Unit cohesion fell apart completely, units were ordered off the field in the middle of the fight or simply left, having done what they felt was their duty. Brigade and division commanders on both sides lost control of their formations, and by the end of the fight both sides were simply sending units willy-nilly towards the heaviest fighting. Making a historically accurate simulation might well rob the players of free will entirely, reducing the whole thing to a mechanical exercise. How do you make this mess into a wargame? Very carefully, as it turns out.

A Fearful Slaughter is really a couple of different projects in one. It is the smallest, most accessible RSS game so far, with two maps and about 1000 counters. Unlike the slow building of tension in both Gettysburg and Chickamauga, the battle here starts with a bang. Three Rebel divisions advance on the slumbering Federal army, and within a turn or two full-scale fighting erupts. Because of the relatively small size of both forces neither player is overburdened. The playtesters were all pleasantly surprised at how manageable the game is, and how quickly the situation develops. There is no dearth of scenarios, ranging from a handful of counters to several variations of the full battle.

Three full-game scenarios emerge as foundations of the game, each covering both days of the battle with the full OOBs. The first of these is simply the historical scenario, designed for two person or team player play. The second creates a plausible "full-option" scenario, including a number of optional troops, free deployments, etc. Given the large number of variable forces in the game, I opted early on to include a full-option scenario allowing players interested in that aspect of the game to jump right in. The third is a bit of an experiment: an "ultra-historical" scenario that sacrifices a great deal of player control for added realism. Several special rules covering retreats, command trace, and exiting ZOCs create more historical outcomes, but definitely limit your ability to completely control your units. Random events are present, both in the regular and limited control scenarios. These introduce more command stoppages and some degree of "march to the sound of the guns" type orders which sends brigades blundering around the map in a suitably historic fashion.

All told, the game has 12 scenarios, about half of them on one map. A number of opening actions are examined, as well as the two most critical moments later in the first day: the Hornet's Nest fighting, which consumed so many troops as it dragged on; and the question of the final drive on the Landing. When Beauregard called off the fighting for the night, he left hanging the question of whether or not one final attack on Grant's battered line at Pittsburg Landing would have flung the Union Army of the Tennessee into the river and given the South victory. We try to capture that moment as best we can, so that you can answer it for yourselves.

Optional forces abound, because there are in fact a large number of troops that could have been there, but weren't, on both sides. Of course, Van Dorn's Army of the West is around for the Confederates. Ever since Rich Berg put them in Bloody April years ago, they have shown up in just about every Shiloh game. There are two other major Rebel forces, however, that make the cut: the garrison of Fort Donelson, which should have escaped that trap, and the troops lost at Island No. 10, another 5,000 or so men. The Donelson garrison is a large force12,000 men, amounting to another full infantry corps-but stuck with some leaders of dubious renown. Both Pillow and Floyd remain in command of their men, for example, which might well make adventurous Rebels seeking that extra advantage think twice before taking them.

A Fearful Slaughter adds depth to the RSS line, not the least for at last giving the series a two-map game to tangle with, instead of yet another five-map behemoth. At the same time, I feel that this game holds to the same high standards of historicity and game play that both This Hallowed Ground and This Terrible Sound set. As for the final title selection, well, let us just say that rumors of This Indian Mound are greatly exaggerated.