War might be hell, but the game doesn't need to be.
Tony Horowitz's excellent book Confederates in the Attic spends a few chapters focusing on those committed Civil War buffs who take the concept of historical re-enactment to an entirely new level. For them, it's not enough to put on a uniform and enjoy a pot of chickory before lining up to shoot blanks at the opposing line. For the truly committed re-enactors (who prefer the term "living historian," thank you very much), it's about completely immersing yourself in the lifestyle, avoiding anachronisms from one-piece longjohns all the way to your fancy 20th century apples. They refer to this devotion as "super hardcore."
I bring this up because I think it applies to the mindset of most wargamers, both designers and players. When the "super hardcore" mindset takes over, historical accuracy becomes the sole yardstick by which these games are created and judged. But sometimes, in an effort to cram as much authenticity into the experience as possible, some game designers create so steep a learning curve that no one but Napoleon himself could find his way through the hard shell of the simulation to get at the tactical goodness inside.
In many ways, that's the case with AGEOD's American Civil War: 1861-1865 - The Blue and the Gray. The game is undeniably rich in details, but they sometimes obscure the gameplay, leaving the player unsure whether he's simply looking at a highly accurate but unfriendly model of the Civil War, or actually interacting with a responsive and thrilling game system. The answer, of course, is a little of both.
This turn-based WEGO game itself simulates the entire war at an operational level. Covering an area from Florida up through New York and extending to the area west of the Mississippi, The Blue and the Gray touches on every significant theater of the war. There are even small breakout maps for locations as far afield as California and France. The map is divided up into discreet regions with an abundance of settlements and cities, an extensive rail and river network and numerous tactically significant terrain elements.
Players take control of either the Union in the North, or the Confederacy in the South and are tasked with breaking the other side's morale. The most direct route is to capture certain key cities that the other side relies on. Richmond and Washington DC are obvious targets here, but there are plenty of other cities that are tactically important to either side. You can also destroy an enemy's morale by wearing down their forces and forcing them to replenish them with unpopular tax increases and drafts. We love that the game models these factors because they accurately reflect the reality that armies and wars require the support of the people back home.
There are a couple of different campaign options here. The first and most obvious choice is the full campaign that sees you through the entire course of the War, but there are later starting dates that you can select if you'd like to shorten the time investment. The longest campaign is indeed a real bear and will take several days to finish. There are even some very small battle scenarios, lasting just a handful of turns, but these aren't really satisfying when balanced against what's possible in the rest of the game.
Playing five turns around Shiloh or Gettysburg just doesn't give you a sense of what the game is really all about. We were definitely disappointed that the game didn't include longer campaigns set in more limited theaters. Having to choose between the blink-and-it's-gone approachability of Bull Run or the sprawling chaos of even the smallest theater-wide scenario just doesn't give the player enough options.
To help orient the player to the game's finer points, of which there are many, The Blue and the Gray comes with a lengthy pair of tutorials. The first explains the basic mechanics of movement and core game concepts. So far, so good. The second starts to get into one of the more complicated aspects of the game, establishing command structures. Here's where things start to get messy.
The Blue and the Gray gives players a tremendous amount of freedom to set up their own chain of command by placing specific generals in charge of certain regiments, divisions and battalions and to subordinate those generals to one another to create entire armies. It's a core concept and one that has obviously important implications, but it just far too cumbersome to manage. Trying to figure out who's high enough in rank to manage certain units and whether or not they'll fit under another commander's umbrella is a huge pain.
On the plus side, there are a wealth of tool tips here that give players access to loads of important information on armies, cities and regions. It can be a bit tough trying to make sense of it all right at the beginning but you really do have a lot of information right there at your fingertips. This can become particularly useful once you start trying to make heads or tails of the dozens of units found in the game. Telling the difference between the zouaves and the skirmishers, for instance, is well worth your time.
Grabbing and moving units is as simple as clicking to select the unit and then clicking to select their destination. A variety of standing orders help you to set up the right type of attitude for your unit. You might want them to avoid railroads, or to assault enemy fortifications, or to avoid battle altogether. To the best of their ability, the units will try to carry out your orders, but, as in all wars, plans rarely work out you way you intended.
When your units engage in battle, you'll be presented with a green and red meter that bounces back and forth to show you just how well you're doing in the battle. There are tons of factors that influence how battles play out -- things like unit cohesion, terrain, frontage, army composition, etc -- but none of them are really ever explained in a way that makes the player feel like they have a handle on why they're winning or losing.
Here's where the gameplay of The Blue and the Gray gets lost in the simulation. It's all well and good to model each and every aspect of Civil War strategy, but the actual presentation falls short. Sometimes the player is bombarded with an avalanche of numbers for things like transport capacity, supply limits or unit cohesion. Other times, the player will fail in actions (or even be unable to undertake them at all) with no real explanation of why things aren't working clearly.
There are some other interface issues that make the game less than friendly, even to the super hardcore crowd. To begin with, there's no convenient way to keep track of which of your units have already been given orders, which still need commands, and which are recently unfrozen. It's not a big deal in the battle scenarios but once you try to tackle the larger campaigns, you'll spend less time strategizing and more time just perusing the battlefield, trying to spot units that haven't been touched yet. It's equally confusing trying to figure out where your newly conscripted units appear.
The Blue and the Gray looks like a highly polished board game, complete with unit cards and illustrated maps. There are a few special markers that identify broken railroads and such, but the map is relatively static. You will see your units sliding around the map in between turns but that's it. It certainly looks impressive for a board game, but it doesn't really take advantage of the PC in terms of its overall presentation. In particular, we'd love to have seen clearer markers for tactically significant features for the units.
Sound effects are thin and weak overall with forgettable weapon effects. The music is good overall, but there's so little of it and the games drag on for so long that it can't help but get repetitive. The developers missed a real opportunity here to include more of the rich and varied music from the time period.
Closing Comments
If you're read this far, there's a good chance that you have the patience and interest to appreciate the depth and accuracy of The Blue and the Gray. There's no denying that this is the most comprehensive and realistic simulations of the American Civil War that we've seen in a long, long time. But, as a consequence, it's also a remarkable impenetrable, laborious experiences, even by wargame standards. There are rewards to be found here, particularly with regard to creating your own command structure and mobilizing your economy and population to support the war effort, but they're fairly buried under an avalanche of statistics and uncooperative interface elements. Only the hardest of the hardcore need apply here.
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