By now, I have seen quite a few people play the Civil War Brigade System. As opponent or spectator, I have observed a variety of styles of play, and I conclude that achieving victory requires adherence to certain fundamental s---despite details that vary from game to game.

First, I do not believe that this is a system where victory can be had by blundering around smashing into the enemy (unless your opponent is even more a "bull in the china shop than you are). It requires some overall plan. The longer the game, the more critical it is.

Ideally, it is best to maneuver your for into a tight spot and get him to attack you even if you are the overall aggressor. Take advantage of the inherent bias towards the defense. For example, the wise Confederate player in Thunder at the Crossroads attacks quickly to seize the important terrain, and then switches to the defense, making the Union player pay to take those hills back. In August Fury, the Federal commander is well on his way to shortening the war by keeping the two Rebel wings separated, thus forcing Lee into costly unifying attacks. This works especially well with a sustained Union effort against Jackson designed to put even greater pressure on Lee to come to his isolated subordinate's rescue.

It is the CWB's command system that dictates the need for an overall concept. Settling on a general plan early and sticking to it helps to eliminate the curse of near-sighted commanders: a steady stream of orders pouring from the HQ countermanding the previous sets. This is just what you want your opponent to do. A subtle but effective tactic is to gain control of the pace of events quickly and use a little helpful misdirection. (Note that the second edition command system places a greater emphasis on orders, and substantially reduces the effectiveness of initiative.) The more times you force the other guy to change his orders, the better off you are as he incurs annoying delays, etc.

It is much like a tennis game with one stationary player forcing his opponent to run back and forth across the far end of the court frantically returning shots aimed where he is not. In the CWB this process accumulates into a significant amount of lag time between your action and his reaction, and forces him to spend most of his planning efforts meeting your threats. As a bonus, if he is worrying about plugging his own holes, he will have less time to notice and exploit your own small errors of placement, thereby preserving your reputation as a dreaded 'Master of the Game'.

Subtlety is required. Although usually a waste of time in gaming circles, feints do have a role here. Do you have a corps that maybe took some lumps and doesn't retain all that much offensive power? Send it on an extended tour of a far end of the field to menace his flank. It may provoke a suitable reaction. Once you have his attention there, hit him hard elsewhere with those guys who were just sitting there in line looking defensive. This would work even better when using the Hidden movement option which appeared in OPS #2. However, remember to send enough strength on a diversion to make him worry. An obviously impotent force will not get the job done.

Against an aggressive opponent, try to provoke an attack against a feigned weak spot, perhaps by leaving a battered command in the line but having another force standing by (with its orders accepted and ready to go) to rush over and reinforce the threatened point. Suddenly, the crippled duck he jumped scurries away to be replaced with well supported fresh troops. He finds himself pressing an attack he does not want. A couple of turns of useless assaults before he manages to cancel should brighten your day.

All of this shadow-boxing can also force an enemy to start relying more on initiative rolls, and you can take advantage of any fortuitous loose cannon results that come your way. It's been my experience that the loose cannon roll always occurs at the worst time, and while extremely frustrating, at least provides the loser with a handy excuse. "You know I'd have cleaned your clock except for that one roll..."

Troop Conservation

A second important, yet often neglected, aspect of good gaming in the CWB is troop conservation. The best scheming and fancy footwork comes to naught if you do not have the troops available when the time comes Combat uses up troops, attacking especially so (hence my preference for the defense). One should never fight just for the hell of it. The CWB rewards players who are considerate of the men represented by those little cardboard squares and deals harshly with wastrels. Generally, an unblooded command is a potent force and can sustain an attack for quite a few turns. However, the longer the blood flows, the more you mortgage that unit's strength in later actions. Usually, once a command (be it division or corps) reaches its breaking point, it needs to be withdrawn to collect stragglers. Pushing a unit past this point should be done only in critical circumstances, since you are rendering that force questionable later for even defending secondary sectors.

I use a rough rule of thumb for planning or when committing troops to battle in order to gauge their expected effectiveness. While fresh, a command is fully capable of either a major attack (6-7 turns, 50% or more of the sub-units engaged each turn) or a prolonged defense against all but the most overwhelming odds. Once broken and recovered, the average command has only 4-5 losses per brigade before it wrecks again. This 'second stage' command is still effective for more cautious attacks (2-3 turns now, and avoid close combats) and should be able to muster a pretty solid defense, especially if well supported by cannon. Even against a powerful enemy attack, expect these guys to hold for 3-5 turns. The second time a command wrecks, it is reaching the end of its effectiveness. Once broken, a 'second stage' outfit needs to be withdrawn as so-on as possible for recovery if you intend to pre serve any kind of fighting power at all. Now there is the danger of too many brigades being permanently wrecked. This condition usually starts incurring enemy victory points as well.

Still, a 'third stage' command, if extricated promptly, should be able to recover to the point that most brigades have 1 or 2 un-wrecked strcngth points. Attacking is out, since they will almos talways be a turn or two away from attack stoppage, but they should still be able to put in a couple of turns of credible defense. Artillery is a defensive must for troops in this condition. The good news is that, having reached this condition yourself, you may have dragged your opponent down as well, and his attacks are similarly half-hearted blows. Beyond this point, your men have little left to give, and it will take a long time just to reconstitute the command from stragglers. At this point, try to keep these guys away form any fighting. Any pan of the line they hold will be a juicy target for an alert opponent, and such a command will break at the slightest pressure. Besides, haven't they sacrificed enough for the cause by now anyway?

There are always exceptions to this measurement process, usually negative ones. A corps saddled with a "0" leader is definitely impaired any time a stoppage roll (or defensive orders roll, using optional rules, see OPS #3 or the 2nd Edition CWB rules) is called for. Any command whose average morale is less than C is in trouble, too. I consider these troops as 'second stage' right from the start.

Once you have recognized the process of continual degradation of commands once committed to action you should realize that any action (particularly of an offensive nature) in which you become involved must contribute towards your overal] goals. When you fight, make sure the price you are paying is buying something worthwhile.

Hold down the Losses

A third major consideration becomes apparent once you do decide to fight. You need to hold down the losses. There are both good and bad ways to conduct an attack, for instance. On the offense, do not commit every brigade in the command to action at once, advancing in one long line. This merely disperses the effort, and ensures that you will break as many brigades as possible in the least amount of time. Concentrate your men on selected points, bringing a local superiority to the ensuing fire fights. Keep some units back to exploit holes or fill in when you suffer your own repulses. A brigade, outside ofa ZOC, that can take advantage of a sudden flanking opportunity can really pay off.

Beware of close combats! While the chance to CC a flank o ra wrecked unit should not be neglected, a frontal CC can rack up losses quickly. Never frontally CC units stacked with guns, unless, like General Hood, you feel your men need a little "disciplining". Blood-lusted units are very useful in CCs, but I have noticed that they tend to get used until they are badly burned out. I also try to avoid using extended lines, since thcy just expose your brigades to twice the fire and hence, wreck them twice as fast. Use them sparingly to screen a flank as needed or to concentrate firepower on a worthwhile target.

Some sort of tactical superiority is a must. This system favors the defense. Simple one to one attacks are almost always unproductive, unless there is a significant morale differential. Whipsawing your opponent is always fun, and forces him to scurry about protecting his flanks. It has been my experience that if you can catch an enemy in such a situation before he can either extricate or reinforce the target, you can achieve a startlingly successful disparity in loss results. You can even knock a fresh command out of the game. If your opponent, through either need or callousness, has left a command in line as it nears its breaking point, hit it hard. A corps is particularly vulnerable at this point (negative morale modifiers, straggler modifiers, etc.), and damage you inflict now will come at low cost to your own men.

On the defense, you need to recognize that, while your line can usually out-last an equivalent attacking force, once it starts to break, it will crumble fast. The best way to suffer excessive losses among your troops is to leave them in a position too long. The best defense is a flexible one with enough room to fall back as needed. For instance, the corps IIQ should be sited well back from the front to allow five or six hexes of maneuve rroom. An HQ in the front lines can only extricate itself via an Emergency Corps Retreat and may be forced into one if overrun. "Alamo" style defenses make great copy, but usually only close out your other options. Save them for what they are: the last ditch. A good linear defense also has local reserves available for plugging gaps due to retreated units or for rushing to extend a threatened flank.

If everyone is in the frontline (or extended in the front line) you will not have enough depth to recover from what would otherwise be a temporary set back. Finally, having made your opponent pay for an important objective in plenty of blood, think about letting him take the position as you extricate your forces to recoup. Then counterattack with some fresh troops and try to do some real damage to his (you hope) already threadbare command. If you handle it well, you can cripple some of his force, and still retain the critical objective without completely draining your troops. This tactic requires some advance planning, so don't wait until the last minute.

Whether attacking or defending, the key point here is conservation of strength. You must be aware of how many men you are losing, and when to stop fighting. Strive to maintain the combat edge of as much of your army as possible. This attention to detail will bring about another benefit: the ability to preserve fresh troops well into the battle. Towards the end of a hard-fought struggle, nothing quite carries the day like a fresh, unblooded corps in reserve. Gauge each task carefully. Whcncver possible, avoid committing that unscathed unit. By maximizing the combat power of each command, you can make a numerically weaker force outstrip an opponent. However, the opposite holds true within a corps: spread the losses equally among all available divisions in order to stave off ineffectiveness. A command with one fresh and two wrecked divisions brings a much greater liability to the Stoppage Table than one with no wrecked formations. If the game allows, it is better to attach the unblooded division to a fresh corps, say for an important attack, rather than simply add in the entire second corps.

The pace of combat is more sporadic in the CWB than in previous Civil War games. There are distinct intervals of furious action followed by periods of exhausted recovery. The longer the game, the more important this conservation ethic becomes, since troops will be called to participate in multiple major actions. Straggler recovery needs to be undertaken whenever possible. In the midst of some of these lulls, a game may introduce fresh formations by way of reinforcements. Generally, I prefer to wait with these new troops so as to assemble powerful, multi -corps coordinated attacks, rather than maintain a steady but weaker pressure on my opponent by committing each force to battle as it arrives.

There is another danger in ignoring this conservation technique. The CWB's army status rules have been questioned quite a bit since we put out the first In Their Quiet Fields. I fear they do not get used often enough. Many players are uncomfortable with the thought that one die roll can end the game so abruptly, which in most cases a failed panic roll does. These rules are actually quite realistic, and go a long way in promoting a more accurate attitude towards one's own men. (See OPS #2 for a somewhat longer discussion of the rule's validity.) A player who aggressively pushes his men forward into constant effort will end up with a lot of wrecked divisions, a situation ripe for a deadly panic result. At the low end of the scale, a player has little to fear from panic, though there is always some risk. Wrecking out 2/3 to 3/4 fo your formations, however, will make a panic result a real danger. You must keep a close eye on the number of wrecked divisions and work towards reducing this number wherever possible.

Some gamers have indicated that maintaining the objectivity needed to effectively use the status rules is almost impossible when they play. I feel this problem has some merit. If this is a problem in your games, I urge you not to scrap the concept. Instead try one of the alternatives offered below. These are designed to Lake much of the individual judgement out of the process.

1. Simply roll for status normally each turn as indicated, but always use the middle or "none" table when selecting the viewpoint. This will make the actual status change totally random, an expedient compromise. Keep the actual result and current status level secret, to be revealed only as described during a panic demand.

2. For players unhappy with the random result above, at all times simply assume each army's status is two. When a panic demand is made, count the wrecked divisions and proceed normally. The main drawback of this method is that an opponent will always know that you are vulnerable, and the sole variable will be the wrecked division total. The net result here is to make panic somewhat more predictable and a little more likely.

No matter which version of panic you finally use, some variation should be employed. The player who slaughters his army in pursuit of victory has achieved no victory at all, and should pay the price. If some care is exercised, panic is an avoidable pitfall.

I think that the CWB offers some real opportunities for creative play, and reintroduces some of the uncertainties present historically. Played well, it can create a truly exciting gaming experience. I hope that you have as much fun playing it as I have, and look for many more encounters to follow.