Stonewall's Sword, published by Revolution Games, is a tactical recreation of the Battle of Cedar Mountain from the American Civil War. It is the first game in the "Blind Swords" system, a relatively light, chit-draw activation set of games where the basic units you control are regiments. The game system implements events to simulate the "fog of war" as well.
Stonewall's Sword is, I believe, the smallest of the games that have been released so far. I bought it back in 2017 or so at a gaming convention. It's just taken me years of procrastination and a pandemic to finally get me to punch and clip the counters, read the rules, and attempt a solo play.
When I describe it as being relatively light, I'm relating it directly to The Gamers' Civil War Brigade Series system (as an aside, recently I messaged a friend of mine who lives in New Mexico that we should play something PBEM, and he suggested ITQF 2. Admittedly I was drunk at the time and had no idea what he was talking about, so I said "Sure!" The next day he sent me the links to the rules and VASSAL module, and at some point I wound up telling some other friends of mine who were talking about how complex Vital Lacerda's games were and I was like "Uh, I just read six pages on how to issue orders in this Civil War game I'm playing!").
If you've never played a chit-draw game before, basically this it how it works. You have a cup filled with a bunch of counters representing the various commands. In this system, there are chits for the divisional commanders (Ewell for example), which, when drawn, allow you to activate one of that division's brigades (such as Early's). Along with the divisional commands there are chits for the commanders-in-chiefs (Jackson and Banks) and a multitude of events, which can either help you or hinder your opponent.
At first, I thought that maybe there were too many events. Maybe the game was too chaotic. But after several turns the game is really delivering a great "feel" of what I imagine a Civil War battle would be. Some of the complexity with this game comes in just when you can play an event that you've drawn.
One thing I really like about the game is its combat results table. It's based purely on strength points (SP), as in you count up how many SP you have and do some column shifts and you're done! Personally, I dislike having to do ratios in games. The only time you have to do that with these rules is when determining column shifts in close combat; and that is limited to 3:2, 2:1, and 3:1 only. Admittedly at first I thought that maybe this was too light, but once I played a few turns I started to see how the designer had worked in a good simulation of plausible results while not overtaxing the player.
One of the best things about this game and this series is the beautiful artwork by Rick Barber, arguably the best map artist in wargames.
Next post, I will delve deeper into the game and my first solo playthrough.
