Test of Fire: July 21, 1861

Played at Uptown with General Kurticus commanding the South and yours truly commanding the North. We used an enlarged map with Battlecry pieces. Very nice looking game. Not a big fan of the pieces that come with the published game, but they're generic so you can substitute almost anything for them. The map and cards are very nice.

PLAY: I plunked a ford down on the Stone Bridge and spent the rest of the game slamming my head into the stone wall of Henry House Hill. In retrospect, it would have been better to have put the ford on one of the river sections beside the bridge, allowing me to get in around him to cut off the hill and allow my boys to cross the bridge in peace. As it was, I was only able to wrap around him very late in the game, and ran out of time.

DESIGN: The defense is very strong, as is appropriate for a Civil War game. I think it's important, as the attacker, to sequence your movements and attacks to stop simple retreats and convert them into kills, otherwise, frontal assaults are more or less useless if your opponant has 3+ men defending. I'm looking forward to playing again, to try to crack the code.