Although this blog is generally focused on GMT Games’ designers and our products, I do occasionally make an exception, especially for our designers who have game designs produced with other companies. In this instance, designer Hermann Luttmann, who has both Hammerin’ Sickles and At Any Cost on our P500 list – both the beginning of series’ that we’re very excited about, produced a Civil War game on the Battle of Cedar Mountain with Revolution games. That game, Stonewall’s Sword,  uses essentially the same system as that used in both of our upcoming games/series’.

I had also met Roger, who runs Revolution Games, at a GMT Weekend at the Warehouse a couple years back, and was impressed with his vision for what they are doing at Revolution as well as his attention to detail. So, given their release of a game using a system that will be used in our two upcoming titles, that I would really like to help both Hermann and Roger sell their game,  and that Stonewall’s Sword offers you guys a very inexpensive way to try out the system to help you decide whether Hammerin’ Sickles and At Any Cost will be your cup of tea, I thought this might be an appropriate time and place to give Roger and Stonewall’s Sword an introduction to our customers. I hope you like Roger’s article, and his description of the game system. If so, I’d encourage you to support these guys by going over to the Revolution Games website and picking up a copy of Stonewall’s Sword. – Gene

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When Hermann Luttmann said he finally had a design to submit to Revolution Games I was excited, as I had been trying to get him to design a game using the popular system in our Celles and Gazala games for some time. Instead, however, he threw me a curveball and sent me a totally new American Civil War game called Stonewall’s Sword. The game was regimental level, 140 yards to the hex, and was a simulation of the battle of Cedar Mountain. My first reaction was a bit of despair as there have been so many regimental level civil war systems and this battle is both a difficult one to simulate and had just been done by GMT in the last year. Plus, a number of other publishers had told me that ACW games were not selling very well and I would be better off publishing other periods. However, once I started reading the rules, I realized that this would be both a fresh take on the battle and the period and well worth publishing.

The key design feature is a chit pull activation system that has a lot of subtle interplay. The chits are a combination of divisional leaders, army commanders, and events for both sides all thrown in one cup. When a divisional leader is pulled he rolls against his leader rating to see if he activates a brigade. If he succeeds, the player chooses a brigade that has not yet been activated. If he fails, the player chooses a previously un-activated brigade to perform a limited activation (no movement but allowed defensive fire). The army commander chits allow the player to activate a brigade without a die roll and they may activate a brigade that has already been activated or activate one that is fresh without causing it to be unable to activate later in the turn. So the order of activation of units is random and not all units normally activate in a turn, results I felt matched up with ACW history very well.

The event chits take this model to an even higher level. There are chits that make movement quicker, or slower, allow for fire or close combat attacks out of sequence, create uncontrolled advances or retreats, rally troops mid turn, move reserves, cancel enemy orders, and many others. These all add up to creating a more robust model of all the things that happened on the battlefield. They add a lot of player choices and interaction to the game.

Historically, the Union launched a spoiling attack late in the day against a numerically superior CSA force. In most systems this would be suicide, but Hermann’s model shines in this situation. The Union event chits are not identical to the CSA. They moved out quickly and handled their reserves better so they have a chit that allows extra reserve movement. The Union army commander Banks is available from the game start, while Jackson only becomes available later on. Winder, for the CSA, has quite mediocre leader ratings. All of these combined mean that Union forces move and fight more than their CSA counterparts in the first part of the game. The CSA player is forced to react to an enemy force superior in mobility and you can really see how getting to the right locations first and getting the momentum behind an attack is crucial in an ACW battle. Later in the battle the CSA leadership improves with Jackson’s entry, and more reinforcements give them numerical superiority, but if the CSA forces have been too disrupted by the Union attack they will have difficulty making that advantage count. In other words, the game does a really good job simulating a spoiling attack, something I have seldom seen.

So if you would like to see a fresh take on the ACW I suggest you try out Stonewall’s Sword from Revolution Games. Its sister game, Hammerin’ Sickles using 95% the same rules, is on the P500 list here at GMT and also well worth your attention and support.

– Roger Miller

Author: Roger Miller