American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I wouldn't be surprised to know that many of this club's membership are familiar to some degree with the old SPI (Simulations Publications Inc.) Great Battles of the American Civil War, the paper and cardboard counters, tabletop version of what we all now play. As my wife and I are packing things up for a turn-of-the-year move into new quarters, I ran across my old collection of these games, which I haven't opened for some 15 to 20 years. I regarded this series, created by Richard Berg and developed by various designers throughout the 1980's as one of the best of its kind, and can recall spending many hours in solitaire play, just marveling over the detailed counters and the wonderful maps.

Each volume came, of course, with a complete set of Standard Rules for the system and then a set of Exclusive Rules for that particular battle. The Exclusive Rules sometimes made interesting reading, like this little tid-bit from the Wilson Creek edition.

"[21.23] If the Union Player decides to detach Sigel he must secretly write on a piece of paper the entry hex and Game Turn of entry for Sigel's brigade before the game begins. Once the entry has been decided, the Union Player may not change his mind. For purposes of this rule, Sigel's brigade consisits of: 3 Mo, 5 Mo, 1 US Ic, 2 US Cc, and Backoff's Battery. Note: The cavalry units are independent and are called Sigel's brigade for purposes of entry only.]

Good Lord, what we used to invent in the name of realism and then spend hours of minute concentration in following through! Now all of these things have been digitized and programmed in ways that we never imagined.

A big <SALUTE> to Richard Berg, Redmond A. Simonsen, Richard Wright and all of the playtestors, production staff and rules editors who brought these paper classics into the real world for our enjoyment.

Now, back to packing!

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

I have got all the Regimental Civil war series - SPI, TSR and one other - got both versions of the Terrible Swift Sword. Damn fine games - they got me hooked on the ACW

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General Cam McOmish

Brigade Commander
Alabama State Volunteers
Cleburne's Division
Hardee's Corps
(1/1/1)
Army of Tennessee
Confederate States of America

I have those games as well............and a few more.

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

I too owned a bunch, and my second boardgame I had was the Gettysburg game with SQUARES, not hexes!

MG Elkin
AotT

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I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies. . . . Let us look before us, and not behind

Great memories. I still play the SPI Quad games FTF once in a blue moon. The ACW titles were fair, but the Nappys and WWIIs were quite good. Decision Games is re-releasing some of those in the Folio Games Series, although I have to warn you that the rule revisions are a bit uneven. Be prepared to fill in some gaps, or play with an old SPI set if you have one.

I have recently been comparing the CRTs from Terrible Swift Sword to the parameter modifiers in the HPS series. Does anyone happen to know if the BG/HPS CRTs are in fact direct descendents of the SPI/TRS game systems? The similarities are certainly striking. If they do not share a common creative hand, they must certainly share common sources. A few examples from the TSR tables:
Change formation: Infantry 2/Artillery 4
Range Effect: Napoleon x 8 at 1 hex (you still gotta love those multipliers)
Density Adjustment: +1 700-900
Morale Class: A to E

I kind of miss the Brigade Combat Effectiveness table and of course the Seeing the Elephant table. I also think the concept of Artillery Overshoot is sadly missing in our current games. A little misdirected fire here and there adds a certain amount of realism.

Those were the good old days, at least for gamers with no cats or small children in the house.

Respectfully,

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General Prax Swan
1/3/III ANV

While I don't think BG was a copy of SPI it was definitely a continuation of the design. It used similar combat and movement tables. Basically a digitized version of the board games. The HPS version is the first true move to taking advantage of the computer to track details rather than a digitized equivalent of the strength chits.

But there was also a loss in translation. The one advantage the cardboard games had was you could fix errors, change rules, and even implement complex structures like the entry rule mentioned just by printing it on some paper. While this isn't impossible with the computer games it is difficult. The computer format as currently implemented is very rigid. But email of turns spelled death to the board game.

And thought for the day: Did anyone ever finish a game of SPI's War in the West?

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Any of you guys tried the Cyberboard or ADC2 versions of these games? I am toying with the idea of doing some kind of pc version that allows the pc to do the actual mechanics like combat and movement.

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General
Frank (Old Banshee) Mullins,
2nd Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps.
Army of the Tennessee.

The early version of BGG used the same strength types as the original TSS (I don't know if they literally matched in every case as naturally I did not check every single unit in both games) - where 1 sp = 100 men. It was changed with a patch later on after the series progressed a little bit, to 25 men increments.

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~Retired~

Started trying to use both at different times but they just can't automate all the actions required to complete a turn. The result is it takes a lot of emails to get through a turn and a lot of die rolling. You don't realize how much the HPS game is doing for you until you start trying to manually figure out who can fire, at what strength, with what modifies, and how to implement the results. These email support programs help a lot but they still leave you with a lot to be done by hand. Some games systems just can't be done by email. "Three Days at Gettysburg" being one. The interlaced movement just plays hell with PBEM.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

I have been a wargame addict as far back as I can remember, starting with setting up toy soldiers and knocking them down with pebbles or something.

Met many wonderful people playing the paper games of the seventies.

Still enjoy the social aspects of board games on those rare occasions when I get to play them.

The computer, though, pretty much spelled the end of board wargaming for me. Nevertheless, I still check out these sites regularly.

http://www.consimworld.com/ http://boardgamegeek.com/wargames http://grognard.com/

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Your consimworld brought back memories.............the article on replays of Aleasia and Siege of Jerusalem 70ad were great..................two of my favorite games........thanks mike

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Lt. Gen. C. N. Matthews
Pickett's Infantry Division, I Corps,
Army of Northern Virginia, CSA