Age: 14+
Playtime: 60-240 min
Complexity: 8.5/10
Over the years, I played a lot of games covering the American Civil War. Many were excellent, but most proved too difficult to crack for the average boardgamer out there. (Hence my ongoing silence about those games in my flash reviews.) Brothers at War stands out in that crowd: not only does it run on an intuitive and exception-free engine, but it also features a host of short scenarios that will make newcomers feel welcome instead of sending them screaming into the night.
Those scenarios—there are 13 of them in total—pit Union and Confederate brigades against each other on four different maps: Antietam, South Mountain, Mill Springs and Valverde. The hexes are big, the counters on the map are few, and the whole thing is powered by a chit-pull activation system. This means that a cardboard chit is selected at random, and the identity of that chit determines which brigade gets to act. That brigade’s various units might move, fire at the enemy, or assault an adjacent hex—a dangerous proposition, but you know, desperate times call for crazy fools who get the job done.
One of the game’s innovations concerns that chit-pull mechanic. In classic chit-pull designs, each used chit is set aside before moving on to the next one, and once two Time chits (out of two or three in the pool) make an appearance, the turn is over. In Brothers at War, however, a turn starts with just one Time chit in the pool, and each chit drawn from the pool is placed on the next space of the activation track. Many of those spaces are blank, but some will grant players additional strategy cards (useful to surprise your opponent with a twist they were hoping wouldn’t come), while other spaces will throw an additional Time chit into the pool, increasing the odds of the turn screeching to a halt next time a chit gets fished out of the pool.
And the fact that each map comes with its own activation track really helps give each battle a unique vibe, with a distinctive ebb and flow. Have Time chits added lazily to the pool, and you get a drawn out engagement; but make sure the Time chits get thrown in at a furious pace, and you end up with that snowball feeling of a battle, where the end is always around the next corner—and will your artillery cross that river in time? (I’m looking at you, Valverde!)
Brothers at War doesn’t get talked about much, and it deserves a much better fate.
I heartily recommend it, whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a wet-behind-the-ears recruit still struggling to load their musket rifle.
Most easily forgotten rule: An attacked unit gets one additional save roll if its attacker moved before firing at it.
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