Bob Hurst and I visited the BATTLE CRY (BC) web site, dedicated to Hasbro’s board-game-with-miniatures American Civil War release of a couple of years ago. Reviewing the site’s contents, it reminded me of all the furor devoted to DBA when that set of rules first appeared. "This rules set reaches the never-before attained heights of realism!," the DBA players would shout. "We can re-create any battle in all of history with just 12 tokens per side!," they would cry. "We can match up any two armies of antiquity with our 12-token forces!," they would exclaim. The BC site showed evidence of similar fervor. Many rules variants, many scenario suggestions, and several adaptations to different eras other than the ACW. BC is an extremely enjoyable game played on a hex field (either 2- or 3-inch hexes) about 10 hexes deep and 20 wide. Four 15mm figures (plastic figures are furnished with the game) fit nicely within a hex, and the BC booklet lays out several ACW scenarios which, because BC is, in essence, a simple "game" game, bear no resemblance to history whatsoever. Bob and I thought it was time to emulate the procedures of BC, and we chose to call our version BATTLE SHOUT (BS). We had on hand, not a table-top hex map, but a large table-size area map, approximately the size of a ping pong table. The areas, randomly drawn in, were about 4 inches across, easily handling 4 stands of 15mm figures, plus one General. We first laid out the map, and using it as a guide, began to draw up our rules. Looking at the map, it appeared that a 2-area move for infantry and a 3-area move for cavalry would suffice. We would use Bob’s 15mm Franco-Prussian War figures, thus obviously relegating us solely to reproducing battles circa 1870. BC is designed to be a 2-player game. Each side is given a tactical deck, and the player selects cards which state which sector of the field (left flank, right flank, center) can be activated. Only one card at time is played, i.e., only one sector is activated, so that some two-thirds of the field always remains immobile during the movement and combat phase. A couple of months ago, I tried to expand the sector technique to make the game a multi-player game, and had little success. In our BS version of BC, since only Bob and I were at table-side, we went back to the 2-player version. In addition to the sector movement cards, we tossed in a couple of special cards, one, for example, permitting a unit to make a "long march." Infantry normally move 2 areas, and this card enabled a unit to move 10 areas, allowing it to switch flanks quite rapidly. So as not to make too much of a good thing, a unit taking advantage of this card was not permitted to engage in combat after making the "long march." BC uses 6-sided dice, and because the cost of the game is about $40, Hasbro gives you ‘special’ combat dice… instead of numbers, the dice display crossed swords or other icons, and whichever icon shows up tells you if you’ve scored a hit on a particular target. BS tosses aside those rotten, antiquated 6-siders and reverts to 10-sided dice, as is right and proper. As we perfect BS, we’ll keep the readership informed. We intend to sell the full rights to Hasbro. And we’ll donate the profits to our favorite charity. Back to PW Review January 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon 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