1864 Preview Video

Battle Report - Lee vs. Grant

1864 Generals Preview - McPherson

1864 General Preview - Forrest

1864 Unit Preview - "Heavies"

1864 General Preview - Early

1864 History

1864 Preview - Barlow

1864 Cover

Release of 1864 Might Be Slightly Delayed

I intended to release each expansion to Command Combat: Civil War on the 150th anniversary of the year it represents. That means 1864 would be released this year. Alas, it has taken me a bit longer to put it together than I expected. This is partially because of the plethora of books I've been releasing, but it's also because 1864 is going to have an almost entirely new game in it. As it will be introducing campaigns into the game, there will be rules for playing large scale actions that involve entire theaters of war, and how to integrate them with miniatures games. So, as such, 1864 might be coming out early next year. But it must be finished by the middle of February, as I'm scheduled to show it at Strategicon in Los Angeles. So that will probably be the release event for it.

In the meantime, I will be posting elements of the expansion here between now and its release.

Happy gaming!

War College at Celesticon

I was honored to be a spokesperson at the War College this year at Celesticon.  Thanks to Dana Lombardi, who invited me.  To be honest, I was nervous.  I had never done a presentation like this before, but Dana did a great job of putting me at ease.

The topic of the speech I gave was the personalities of the generals, since that is so much of what my game endeavors to reflect.  I focused on the generals most notable in 1864 since that's the expansion that's coming out later this month.  Those generals are: Joseph Johnston, William Sherman, Robert Lee, and Ulysses Grant.

I learned the most about Johnston as I did the research, since he was the one of whom I knew the least going in.  Dana also added to it after the speech was done, telling me a story about when Johnston went hunting and refused to pull the trigger until he was completely certain he had the shot.

Here is the link to the talks, though at the time of this writing, the links to the recordings don't seem to work.  Hopefully they'll get fixed soon.

http://www.celesticon.com/warcollege.php

Working on 1864

I have been working on 1864 and am slowly putting the thing together.  This one will feature not only generals from the last major year of the war, but also campaigns.  There will be special rules for generals moving around the board on a campaign, how to link them with battles, and will include the campaigns for the Atlanta and the Overland campaigns.

I also finished the cover when I built it for the talk at Celesticon.  Here it is:

Update to Website

Just as I've been neglecting the blog in recent months, so too have I neglected the website.  I just haven't been on the ball, have I.  Well, I'm working on 1864 now, so it's time to get things updated and moving again.  I've fixed up the website and it's looking better now.  The broken links are repaired, and a lot of typos are fixed.  Most of all, I finally got the 1863 history put up.

I'll be putting more up about 1864 as I develop it.

www.commandcombat.com

Celesticon

I was at Celesticon over the Labor Day weekend showing off Command Combat: Civil War, and giving a talk about 1864 called Clash of the American Titans.

The battle we played was First Bull Run/Manassas.  I hadn't played this one since 2011.  The idea had been to put on battles during their 150th anniversaries.  I had done First Bull Run the first year to go along with the release of the first book, then I did Fort Donelson in the first half of 2012 to coincide with the release of the second book and the 150th of that battle.  I then had 2nd Bull/Manassas run in the second half of 2012 to coincide with that anniversary.  This board was twice the size of First Bull Run and Fort Donelson.  I then did the epic-sized Gettysburg, three times the size of First Bull Run/Manassas, to coincide with the release of 1863.

This was as big as I would ever want to get.  The next book, 1864, will be released late this year, and will feature campaigns.  So rather than trying to outdo myself again, I went back to the basics, the first game that really revealed the dynamics of the game without overwhelming the players.  We had a very good time.

Below are some pictures and the Celesticon website.  As for the speech, I'll say more in my next blog.

http://www.celesticon.com/

A Soldier's Letter

7 Score 10 Years Ago continues to have fascinating articles.  Here's one of them that tells a lot about life between the battles.

http://7score10years.com/index.php/north/82-north/1275-january-27-1864-a-soldiers-letter

Miniature Reenactment - The Battle of Gettysburg, Day 1, Morning

This is a miniature reenactemnt of the morning of the first day from the Battle of Gettysburg.  We use Command Combat: Civil War miniatures to tell the story.  This will be a series, and we'll go through the entire battle... eventually.

The Battle of Fort Donelson Game

Here's a battle report of the Battle of Fort Donelson from our Youtube channel Command Combat Battle Reports.  Our last one done a year or so ago was a battle re-enactment showing what really happened.  This is a play-through of our game.

The Battle of Gettysburg to be played at Orccon

We will be doing the entire battle of Gettysburg at Orccon on Saturday, February 15th starting at 9 am.  Orccon is at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport.  The website is at: http://www.strategicon.net/

What part of the Battle of Gettysburg, you ask?  The whole thing!  We have a long table that will have the entire battlefield stretched out from Little Round Top all the way to Herr Ridge.  We'll basically be doing the fighting from each day in one big battle royale.  So come take the role of your favorite general and play the whole thing to see what would have happened if Lee had attacked on all fronts at once.