Brothers at War 1862

Brothers at War: 1862 is a fast-paced tactical war game exploring the command of a Civil War brigade. It is a quadrigame, or set of four games, each with one 56 x 86 cm game card and covering the battles of 1862: Antietam, South Mountain, Mill Springs and Bloody Valverde.

Here come the rebels! This is a year of crisis for the nation, as invading armies enter Maryland, West Virginia and New Mexico.

The rules of command are simple and abstract. There are no combat results charts. Combat and all tests are resolved with six-sided dice, in which the results are a success from 5 to 6 and a failure from 1 to 4. Brigades are activated by drawing tokens, with their constituent units moving and fighting individually. Stacking is limited to two units per hex. The massive 3.8 cm hexes allow two unit counters to be placed side by side... no information is hidden!

Distinctions are made between formed and unformed infantry, deployed and mounted artillery, mounted and dismounted cavalry. Unit orientation is not a game element. Instead, deploying units in adjacent hexes can trigger through fire, which simulates flanking fire, or fire into compressed lines (both dangerous situations for Civil War units).

Battle cards introduce an element of uncertainty and excitement to the game. Off-map cards track each brigade's reserves and losses. Once a unit's reserves are depleted, it becomes depleted and in danger of breaking up.

Four battles explore how the system can adapt to a variety of Civil War battlefields: the meat grinder of Antietam's cornfield, in which brigade after brigade clashes in a brutally confined area; the mountainous terrain of Fox's Gap, where a Union corps tries to break through a handful of Southern brigades; the soggy fields of Mill Springs, Kentucky, in which "blue" rebels with old-fashioned muskets battle the freezing rain as well as their northern foe; and an all-cavalry Texas brigade battling regular Union troops and blue New Mexico volunteers at Valverde in the far western territories.