This Accursed Civil War is a game of five battles of the English Civil War designed by Ben Hull and published by GMT Games. The English Civil War is not a period much covered by wargames, Charles’s King’s War is the only one that springs to my mind, although personally I have played some good figure games (my valiant Scots once being ridden down being a recollection). But enough of that, what about the game?
The contents of the box are very good and well worth a look at. Two double-sided map sheets cover the five battles, and very fine they are. Nice plain maps with big hexes, they give a great look to the game. The counters are also very good and cover all the normal villains of the piece; infantry, cavalry, cannon and leaders, along with the information counters. The larger infantry Regiments cover two hexes, all the rest just the one. Most but not all the Parliamentarian infantry are double, whereas the poor Royalists are normally smaller. Infantry and cavalry have their strength and morale shown: artillery have morale, grazing fire length and fire range, leaders have only their command factor which ranges from 0 to –2 for the really good ones.
All counters have a pretty picture on them (I like them anyway) which shows what they are even if you could not read the top of the counter. So at a glance you can tell which are dragoons and which are detached musketeers. All in all when the battles are set up they look very impressive. Just a personal plus point each Infantry and Cavalry unit is named and are not generic, so now you can have the Lord General’s Regiment holding off the band of Royalists. This obviously means that the cost is higher as only a small portion of the units are used at any one battle, but I like this and GMT get a gold star from me for it.
At this point I suppose I should mention the battles that are included. These are Edgehill, 1st Newbury, Marston Moor, 2nd Newbury and Naseby these are probably the most famous of the battles of the 1st Civil Wars and are a good choice if uninspired. Edgehill and 1st Newbury share a sheet; the others are all full sheet battles.
You also receive a Rulebook, Scenario Book and one Player Aid Card. The Rulebook is 16 pages long and well written I have no problems with the rules, although looking at Consimworld on the Internet this is not true of some people. Then again it seems that a lot of people do not really read the rules, or do not use their common sense. There are many examples of play and explanations within the rules which make the rules very easy to follow. The Scenario book includes the setup and an account of each of the battles, designer's notes and tactics. The Player Aid Card includes all the charts needed during the game and is well laid out, one bugbear of mine though is that you only receive one card; why can’t they include two? All in all the physical aspects of the game are first-class.
The game uses the wing activation system that seems to be getting more common these days. Basically each wing, of which normally each side has three, has an order given to it. The possible orders are Charge, Make Ready, Receive Charge or Rally. These allow only certain actions so to close with the enemy you need to have Charge Orders but then you can’t rally or reform; whereas if your orders are Make Ready you can only move one hex but can rally if adjacent to your Wing Commander. You can change your orders but only on a dice roll which can be hard to change. So if you decide to charge whilst you have been previously rallying you only have a 0-1 on a d10 to do it. There is also the possibility the activated wing being able to continue, or in fact being pre-empted by one of you opponent’s wings. Both Continuation and Pre-emption are diced for and are easier or worse to gain depending on orders, so a Charging wing has more chance of success than a wing Receiving Charge. A wing that is rallying can not pre-empt. Of course for a failed pre-empt there is a penalty when that Wing activates, so you have to take the risk. All orders changes, Continuation and Pre-emption rolls are modified by the Wing Commander factor as well as the Army Commander if stacked with him. This makes leaders very important, and a good leader is very useful. The Army Leader can also Rally or Reform units adjacent to him for free whatever the order is; the Commanders are kept very busy and proper use of them goes a long way to success.
Each wing is activated in a set order unless pre-empted. All wings under Charge orders go first, then Make Ready, Receive Charge and Rally in that order. So, for example, at Edgehill if all the Royalists have Charge orders and the Parliaments have Receive Charge all the Royalists will go before any of the Rebels move. Of course it’s not as simple as that as Parliament could pre-empt or their cavalry could intercept. Just note that with the possibility of each wing moving up to the allowed three times a lot can happen in one turn. Can a wing activate three times, well yes! Let’s have an example. At Edgehill we have Rupert as a Wing Commander with a factor of –2 so to continue he would need 6 or less the first time and 5 the second; all dice rolls are d10. Of course to pre-empt him mid between rounds is possible, but let’s say that Ramsey wants to charge him first and attempt to pre-empt him. Ramsey has a 0 command factor so would need a 3 or less, this would stop Rupert from continuing but failure would mean that Ramsey would not be able to continue during his turn, if he survives!
Formation status and morale are very important. Both formation and morale have three levels of status; Normal, Shaken and Broken. Formation can be degraded due to combat, artillery fire and rugged terrain, or not so rugged as you will see. Shaken formation can move at half rate, and broken not at all; both lose out during firing and combat. Morale is lost be failing a morale check, being a dice roll higher than it’s current morale. Losses, salvo fire, and forming Hedgehog in reaction all cause a morale check to be taken. Shaken morale units have a morale level one lower than the norm and broken units rout away. Each unit has a Threshold Level which depends upon the initial morale and size of a unit. Once this level is reached that that unit counts as permanently shaken and takes a morale check on every fire loss, and so is very brittle. Both systems work very well and are very simple to use.
As one would expect movement is very burdensome and not much in the way of manoeuvre goes on, except for the cavalry sometimes if you are lucky. The Pike Blocks can only move at four hexes per turn, with the cavalry speeding along at eight and the “light” infantry jogging around at six. It costs to change facing, or go over/through terrain of which there is plenty. Most terrain will also cause formation deterioration, unless the unit is in Open Order. Open Order can be formed at the beginning of the game or through a Reform Action.
In this is one of my major faults with the system. My “beef” is that for all but Open Order units or the lights a Slope causes a Formation Hit and as most of the battles take place with one or both sides on opposite hills it is very difficult to get units to the action in a formed condition. If charging, which is required if you want to close with the enemy, you can not reform. I have no problem at all with formations being affected by going through hedges or through a village, but having visited all the still existing battlefields several times and taken part in a re-enactment on Marston Moor I can safely say that none of them have any hill on them that would have much effect on formation. Of course one could do as we did and just ignore the formation hit on slopes, this makes for a more realistic feel in my view.
Combat, both fire and hand to hand is very deadly and if you like games where there are no casualties and no one runs away then do not play this. In fact to be honest it is just too deadly as I will explain. All units have some firepower from the skirmishers to the heaviest horse, and all fire is done by each hex separately, so a two hex pike block fires with both its hexes when it fires. There is a lot of fire in this game. Except for the cannons fire is only into the adjacent hex, but each time something happens in that hex the opposing unit gets to fire. Cannon can only fire once per turn and cavalry have only two shots until reloaded, but otherwise infantry can fire many times in one turn and they will. The problem is that infantry fire is far too deadly and you will begin to think you are at Mons and not Naseby. As I stated each hex fires, but the size of a unit doesn’t matter, so a seven strong unit fires at the same strength as an eighteen strength one.
As an example let’s say that an eight strong unit marches adjacent to a identical sized unit, the defender fires a salvo and unluckily for you throws 4+ for both hexes. This will leave you with four less strength. In other words a relatively primitive musket armed unit has managed to kill half its own strength of opponents. This will work out at about 100% fire when one takes into account the actual number of the unit that had a musket as opposed to a pike. This is just plain stupid and really for me makes it a most unrealistic simulation. In the designer’s defence you can only Salvo once a turn and all future shots that turn are –1 on a lower table, but then again the damage is already done.
Combat is clever and quick. Unit adjacent and active can fight and in a clever touch two hex sized blocks can only melee into the centre hex as it were. Combat will only last one round, either one or the other retreats, routs or just is plain destroyed. So one has to be careful about it, but then again you do not really have any choice. Be very careful with cavalry as in the best English cavalry tradition they are very prone to chasing the defeated enemy of the field and not being seen again.
One note here about markers, there are a lot of them. There are markers for losses, pistol use, morale, formation status, shot salvo, and your present formation. You will often find your units piled high with markers, although to be fair the designer does include some dual markers which do attempt to alleviate the problem. The shame is that the map and units look so good, but when in use the markers detract from this.
How do the battles play? The system is quick and rules are easy to follow, and despite wings often moving several times a turn the game plays quickly and moves along quite sharply. You have the cavalry battles on the wings, often most of the cavalry disappears and then the infantry get to grips and before you know it you are left with a fairly empty battlefield. We tried Edgehill four times and each time the winner was the one who had any troops left on the field, if you had troops left you won. The battles are very deadly, or put another way troops often realise they have somewhere better to be. The five battles are all interesting if some off them are very similar and often a bit one sided, but this off course this is not the designer’s fault. One interesting thing I found playing though is that units have to be beaten in this game and the only way to do that is to move next to them and try your strength against it and there is the risk. When playing Marston Moor as Rupert one looks at the setup and quakes, you have a lot of one hex infantry and it looks as though the Rebels only need to blow and it will be all over. But no, the small units are no walk over and as noted above can happily give out some damage.
My personal favourite of this set is 2nd Newbury. Short and sweet, the Royalists in a strong position but outnumbered although they only need to hold out for a short time. The Parliamentarians really need to get a move on to win this, which of course they did not! It also has the advantage of being different in not having an infantry centre flanked by two cavalry wings.
So what are my final impressions of the package. Presentation is excellent and the rules are very well written and present no real problems, (Consimworld questions aside). Play is also quick and exciting. It is very possible to play a battle in an evening, and if you are especially quick two are a possibility. So far so good and for many this would be enough, if you are more of a gamer than historian there is no problem and you have a good game here. The problems for me are the command rules that to my thinking are too artificial. The main problem though is the fire power of the pike blocks, and as this is fundamental to the game system is not good, and hard to change. If you can look past this there is an excellent game here, unfortunately for me I cringe every time I fired my pike blocks. As always you have to take your own chances. A good game, but not perfect. I come away from the game with a sense of frustration, whilst the problems are not paramount they do spoil an otherwise excellent game and it’s a shame.
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© Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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