American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Is this a game worth buying? I haven't seen a whole lot of advertising for opponents. Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks in advance to all who respond

<salute>

Lt. Elkin
1/3/8/AOS

It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns

I helped playtest this one and it's a good game, fairly easy to learn but hard to master. To me it seems more of a beer & pretzel type game as us oldsters remember from the Avalon Hill days. For more detail see AGEOD's American Civil War. Doesn't seem to be a lot of players for the strategic games yet but they are out there.

General Mark Nelms
6/3/IX/AoO
"Blackhawk Brigade"
Union Military Academy Instructor
Union Cabinet Secretary

General <salute>

Thanks for the information. I do own AGEOD's American Civil War and have played with it a bit, but so far, it has seen cumbersome. Is the a lot of difference between the two games mentioned?

Lt. Elkin

It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns

War between the States is definitely the simpliest of the three Strategic games that came out. AGEOD's AACW is definitely the most complex treatment of the war to come out. Go over to the CSA War College and there is some information on them.

WbtS is turn based with one month turns which makes it a nice PBEM game. You can quickly go through the whole war in a reasonable time. All three are area based games but WbtS probably divides the US up into the fewest regions. This does create some problems handling the more contested areas like Virginia and Tennessee. The economy is rather abstractly simulated which make the game relatively easy to learn. It's biggest drawback is the flip side of simplicity. You very quickly learn the best strategy for each side so the game gets rather repetitive after that.

Forge of Freedom is in the middle of these two. It has been a while since I played it so I can't give much detail on it. It used turns of two per month which makes it take twice as long as WbtS to play. It's economy is quite a bit more complex than WbtS since they add Resource Production. To raise troops you first had to schedule enough resource production required for them to be produced. This mean you had to have long term plans. The interesting thing this game brought to the table was a tactical battle system that allowed you to fight out your battles on a brigade scale random map. The bad side was this only worked for games against the AI not PBEM.

AGEOD's American Civil War is the most complex with the map divided up into many more regions. Most of its detail is in the simulation of armies, navies, and logistics. It's economic system is pretty simple relative to FoF's. The game also has a more complex political and leader system. The other big difference is turn handling. It uses two turns per month system like FoF but executes it as a plot and go system. It's biggest drawback is how it presents this to the non-hosting player when doing PBEM. It doesn't have a very good replay feature. However, the game has tremendous depth and takes considerable time to master. The other drawback to the game is lack of documentation. They give you a manual that tells you how run the game but to find out how it works you have to search through the AGEOD's forums.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)

I'm really enjoying my first few tastes of PBEM with WBTS. Loads of fun. Got my fanny handed to me in my first game![xx(]


General Jeff Laub
Union Chief of the Army
ACWGC Cabinet Member
http://www.geocities.com/laubster22/UnionHQ/

LG. Kennon Whitehead <salute>

Thank you for your insightful comments! I have had some difficulty in mastering AGEod's game. I might take a look at FOF

Lt. Elkin
1/3/VIII/AOS


It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns

AGEOD's game is very difficult to master or even feel like you know what you are doing at times. But the flip side of complex is the game has depth and replayability because you are always learning something new each game. It also has a very active support group over on thee AGEOD forums adding content and mods.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)