Civil War Stratego game

[Rob Weaver]

Photographs are a good idea, but will lead to a visually drab game. Unless those period photos are colorized in a way that's reminiscent of hand-coloring...
I just realized that we've been talking about the pieces and not about the board very much. The board has to have those two bottlenecks where the lakes are. How can we create that? Should the game have a map like the old Battle Cry? What battlefield would look good abstracted to form the board?

[DaveGink]

1) Flags (obvious)
2) Marshal - Rename as General (Grant and Lee)
3) General - Rename as Colonel (generic)
4) Colonel - Rename as Major (generic)
5) Major - Rename as Captain (generic)
6) Captain - Rename as Lieutenant (generic)
7) Lieutenant - Rename as Sergeant (generic)
8 ) Sergeant - Rename as Corporal (generic)
9) Miner - rename as Infantry
10) Scout - rename as Cavalry
11) Spy - keep as "Spy" but make female (or rename spy "Assassin" or "Sharpshooter" - since it kills the General)
12) Bomb - Rename as Artillery

This may be obvious, but if it hasn't yet been mentioned... Make Pieces Blue and Gray

[bmeagher]

Hi one and all,

I am overwhelmed by all your wonderful suggestions and advice. I am thrilled that you all have such a positive reaction to this game, and I hope I can do you all proud. A few answers to some of your inquiries...

1) I am familiar with the "BattleCry" game (in fact, I have a 1961 version of it here at my desk). The game I am creating will have the same look and feel as the classic STRATEGO game, with the same number of playing pieces and a game board covered with "squares" to allow players to move their pieces forward, back and side to side.

2) A few of you asked about the actual game board...Great! Once I get the playing pieces nailed down, that is my next component to tackle. In classic Stratego, the game board is a birds-eye view of a battlefield, with 2 lakes in the center that playing pieces must move around.

For this Civil War version, I would like the game board to represent a classic CW battlefield, and add 2 historically accurate elements to it instead of the standard lakes (i.e., a stone wall or wooden fence, a tree, boulder, etc.). My original thought was to actually name the battlefield - i.e., Antietam. What do you think?

Betsy

[RJSamp]

Well, the purpose of the lakes is to form an impassable, non fightable zone for both sides.....you can fight from a woods, cornfield, fence, town, big hill, et al.

And I don't off hand know of a battle field with two impassable obstacles in the middle of the field.....maybe PEA RIDGE and the approach from north of the Elk Horn Tavern.

But this is such an abstraction anyway, what does it matter? I wouldn't have bogus terrain and call it the battle of Gettysburg.....Just use a stylized battle map with hashers and some terrain features like a RR, fence, road, woods, etc. and maybe two large mountains in the middle.

Call it ACWGO

and away we go....

[bob 125th nysvi]

isn't anytype of walkable terrain that the CW wasn't fought over. Just examine the accounts of the fighting at Lookout Mountain, Devil's Den or the Wilderness to see the rotten types of terrain that the soldiers encountered. Houses/walss/fences barely slowed them down.

As I see it you can go two ways on the terrain issue.

Leave the lakes as they are to reflect the heritage of the game (Stratego) or substitute terrain that costs more (double or triple) to move over than regular terrain. Lots of wargames impose movement penalties for certain types of terrain or restrict the types of units that can cross the terrain.

If you go the second route you force a player to make a decision as to whether or not to use the terrain but you still leave them with the issue of guarding it to prevent the other player from using the terain.

I think that works better than, "it's there for decoration" type terrain.

As to what types of terrain you could depict, deep forrests, steep hills, swamp are pretty tought o work through but can't be ignored becuase you never know if the enemy is going to use them or not.

[tompritchett]

For this Civil War version, I would like the game board to represent a classic CW battlefield, and add 2 historically accurate elements to it instead of the standard lakes (i.e., a stone wall or wooden fence, a tree, boulder, etc.). My original thought was to actually name the battlefield - i.e., Antietam. What do you think?

One of the main advantages of the classical Stratego game is that there was no advantage to setting up on one side of the board or the other. Having the board represent an actual Civil War battlesite would almost always give one side or the other some type of terrain advantage. What you could do is instead of having two lakes, have a Civil War significantly important river cross the middle of the board and then use fords and bridges as the choke points. One such river could be the Potomic because of its significance in dividing the Eastern theater into Northern and Southern territory.

[Rob Weaver]

Fords or bridges in the center of the board to create the crossings of a river is exactly what it needs! One of them can be obviously styled on Burnside's Bridge. The other a ford (like MB put on the beautiful map that accompanied the 90s game BattleMasters). I agree that the terrain should not advantage either player, and should remain neutral as in "classic" Stratego.

[GaWildcat]

Ditto! When I was a kid I liked the original "Battle Cry" game which was simplistic but lots of fun. Maybe a more sophisticated version of it would be in order. (The new "Battle Cry" is a tactical, not a strategic game. It's OK, but the market is glutted with tactical level games.)


The Original Battle Cry

Scary thing is, I was given this game as a kid before I discovered reenacting, and I STILL have it!!!