Mark Herman’s ground-breaking, innovative and thoroughly enjoyable game (insert any title of his here, but in this case, Fort Sumter) is the kind of game you can play over and over again and get a different outcome almost every time. It’s only failing, at least for me, however, is in its victory conditions. No matter whether you win a draw or score twice as many points as your opponent, it just means that you are better prepared for the upcoming war than the other side.

Really? That’s it? Really? As much as I love the game (board and the new computer version alike), that simple, single level of victory (or defeat) is something I find quite unfulfilling and unsatisfying. So much so that it seems anti-climatic. In order for me to better enjoy the game, and to increase the challenge in playing it, I have come up with levels of victory, and what each level means (at least for me).

Confederate Victory

Now, see how much better that might make you feel when you win as the South?  You may shorten or even prevent the Civil War! And it also presents a challenge to see how much better you can do the next time you play.

Just as the Confederate player now has something to aim for besides being  merely “better prepared for war,” so does the Union player, as the chart below indicates.

Union Victory

Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter, of course, assumes that war is inevitable, as it probably was, but it is tempting (and much more satisfying) to imagine that you, as the player, have the ability to prevent, shorten or in some other way change or at least affect the outcome of the contentious struggles of 1861.  The game’s victory condition that yields an advantage in the upcoming war is solid, and perhaps the best either side could do in reality.  Replacing that with levels of but victory that let you prevent, shorten or change the outcome of that war, however, keeps me coming back to the game over, and over again.

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