On October 30th Osprey Publishing is releasing a new ruleset for the American Civil War. Let’s take a look at what we can expect from it!
Osprey Publishing has long been an indispensable resource for historical wargamers. They have been creating short form publications on military subjects for decades, with illustrations and color plates that have set the standard for the industry. In recent years they have been publishing wargames rules for a wide variety of settings, not just historical, but Fantasy and Sci-Fi as well. Some of their most popular titles are Frostgrave and Stargrave, Lion Rampant (and it’s Fantasy and Sci-Fi variants: Dragon Rampant and Xenos Rampant), Fighting Sail, Gaslands, Rebels and Patriots, and Last Days, but there are so many more!
With Hot Lead and Cold Steel is the newest entry in Osprey’s considerable library. It is a set of rules for the American Civil War, written by Arthur van der Ster. It is miniatures and scale agnostic, meaning you can use any minis at any scale, so long as everyone is using comparable stuff. There are no hard and fast rules about how miniatures need to be based, either, though the game does use the terms “base” and “stand” to mean a group of miniatures, and units will lose a stand of miniatures when taking casualties.
In a forum post the author described the rules as “a mass battle game aimed at speed and accessibility without sacrificing a sense of realism and historical accuracy.” Mass battle is an interesting way of describing the game, as that is a more common descriptor for fantasy games like Warhammer or Oathmark. Historical games are usually described as “Regimental” or “Brigade” level, referring to the smallest unit depicted on the table (is that group of minis a regiment or a brigade?), but the author is doing this on purpose, because the rules are meant to work at wildly different scales. They author intends them to work from the regimental level, all the way up to divisional level.
As with many ACW games, With Hot Lead and Cold Steel focusses on command and control. Players issuing an order to a unit will need to pass a check on a D10 that takes into account a large number of factors, including the commanding officer’s competence (or lack thereof), the difficulty of the order, and whether any Aides de Camp are available to assist with the order. The game aims to immerse its players in the historical setting with loads of period specific rules and depictions, such as rifled vs smoothbore muskets and cannon, period correct maneuvers and formations, unique events tables, and much more.
I am a huge fan of ACW games, personally, so I am happy to see that the conflict is getting a new interpretation. How about you? Do you think you will be checking out this latest offering from Osprey?
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