Grognards who love tackling the American Civil War will want to take note of one the latest releases coming from GMT Games. The U.S. Civil War, designed by Mark Simonitch, will cover the entire duration of the War Between the States on a strategic level for two players. I will point out an early look reminds me a lot of the old Victory Games classic Civil War. The title should be available shortly and carries an MSRP of $75.00.
From GMT:
The U.S. Civil War is a 2-player strategic-level war game of the American Civil War. The game covers the entire war from 1861-65 on a large 30” x 44” map area (2 mounted maps) of the Southeastern United States. Turns represent 3 months during the winter and 2 months during the summer, with four Action Phases to each turn.
Military forces are represented by generals and strength-points (SPs). Each SP represents approximately 5,000 soldiers. Game mechanics stress strategy, maneuver and leadership but details like ironclads, naval battles, leader promotions, forts, and commerce raiders are included.
Shorter scenarios are included that cover just 1861, 1862 and 1863.
Players of Eric Lee Smith’s The Civil War (VG) and Mark Herman’s For the People (AH and GMT) will see many similarities between this game and those two benchmark games. Those two wonderful games inspired many of the rules and concepts used in this game.
—– [1] I have recently (Feb-Apr 2016) played both the new 2015/16 GMT Civil War and the 1983 Victory Games Eric Lee Smith Civil War.
—– [2] The GMT-CW is a pretty fine game. I have a few complaints about it, but it is a pretty darn good broad Civil War game.
—– [3] However, despite having complete, but near horribly written & and hard to understand rules (all due to terrible syntax within the rules) and despite being more complicated than the GMT-CW, the VG-ELS-CW is a better game & better simulation than the GMT-CW.