PART 1: – Introduction and First Game Turn

Hammerin’ Sickles: Longstreet Attacks at Gettysburg recently “made the cut” on the GMT P500 and Fred and I are very thankful for the support from the gaming community. We thought it would be a good time to give a brief run-through of the game and show how a typical game flows. The tutorial scenario – “The Round Tops” – depicting the fight for both Big and Little Round Tops is a compact, quick-playing vehicle to help demonstrate the Blind Swords system in general and Hammerin’ Sickles in particular.

First, let’s do a brief overview of how the system works. Blind Swords is a chit-pull mechanic system with some interesting twists. Before each turn, players will “load” the chit-pull cup with Division Activation Chits (one for each Division involved in the game), some Event Chits (more on those later), a Fog-of-War Chit (which will generate forced random moves and leader casualties), a Fortunes-of-War Chit (which will cancel the next chit drawn from the cup) and the CIC Chits (which allow the player to select any Brigade to activate in his army, even for a second time). In the longer scenarios, there is also a Lull in the Battle Chit which will speed play and simulates the forces becoming tired and hesitant as the battlefield has evolved into a chaotic, smoky and unmanageably-tangled landscape. All these chits are placed into the same cup and drawn by either player.