#UnboxingDay! US Civil War

Billy Riley, 17 December 2020 ~ #UnboxingDay

Seems I’m becoming a fan of GMT Games.

Anyway – this one. I am very, very interested in the US Civil War much more so than any home conflicts of our own over here – like The War of the Roses, The Civil War, the battles between Scotland and England.

There’s something about the Civil War that intrigues me. I have a game detailing Gettysburg and Pea Ridge…but I wanted something that covered the entire conflict. And here it is. I got this second hand off BoardGameGeek so it’s already punched and clipped – so not so much of an unboxing writeup as it is a revealing writeup.

click images to enlarge

Game design is by Mark Simonitch – and he did the super fantastic Holland ’44…so I’m in. Anyway – to the components!

Box Art

Unbox-USCW-1 — I love the box art. Depicting the Battle of Gettysburg I believe.

Box – Rear

Unbox-USCW-2 — The back of the box shows the entire map (which comes in two pieces in the game) and details your components

Rules

It’s a thick manual on decent shiny thick paper. It’s quite text heavy and is 39 pages (feels thicker than that) but at the end of page 21, it says you’ve read enough top continue playing…page 22 to 26 are Advanced Rules, page 27 contains Optional Rules, pages 28 to 29 have the scenarios

There are 4 scenarios – 1861 (3 turns), 1862 (5 turns), 1863 (5 turns) and The Campaign (20 turns)

There are 2 setup sheets for the Union and the Confederates – 1861 and 1863 for each side

Player Aid Cards

There are 2 double sided, folded Player Aid Cards.

Army Display

Unbox-USCW-14 — A couple of handy cards to hold your Armies – preventing the need to fill the board with counters I imagines

Dice

Unbox-USCW-15 — 2D6 – of appropriate colours

Player Cards

Unbox-USCW-16 — These provide a special action for the phasing player in the theatre the card states. Special Actions are things like Force March, +2DRM for the attacker etc

Counter Sheet

Unbox-USCW-17 — Not so much sheets as baggies full of them. As I said I bought the game used so most were punched and clipped anyway…there’s plenty

The Map

There are two maps – both mounted. One depicting the East Coast and the other depicting the area to the west as far as Missouri

It’s a great looking game and I am stoked for it…like I said, I’m fascinated with the US Civil War and a strategy game that allows for supply, training and naval aspect gets my money. I’m hoping this might be a “light” version of that great computer game Forge of Freedom.

Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
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