Long and bloody (Battleground Antietam (PC))

Member Name: JonnyM79

Product:	Battleground Antietam (PC)
Date:	03/04/02 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Accurate, Detailed, Absorbing

Disadvantages: Slow, Tedious, No action

The battleground series of hex-grid turn-based wargames has been around for getting on for a decade. During that time it's been used to recreate conflicts as different as the Napoleonic wars, World War II and, like here the American Civil War.

First a quick (and I promise painless) history lesson. The battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg to the South) took place in 1862. The North had had a disastrous year in Virginia, being beaten back from Richmond in the 7 days battles and then whipped out of North Virginia at Second Manassas. The South's Army of Virginia had one of the most brilliant commanders ever to walk the earth in Robert E Lee while the North had the excessively cautious McClellan, who was unable to win battles despite having over 100,000 men to Lee's 50,000 (he was convinced that Lee had in the region of 200,000 despite all evidence to the contrary). Lee had decided to invade the North towards Washington and Baltimore to try and force a quick end to the war.

Unfortunately for Lee, McClellan had perhaps the greatest stroke of luck ever to befall a general when a full copy of Lee's plan of march was misplaced by one of his officers and ended up on McClellan's desk. McClellan could see that Lee had split his force dangerously, and if McClellan could strike vigorously he could destroy the Southern army peicemeal. He set off and managed to confront Lee's force (which was dangerously depleted with over 15,000 men detached to capture Harper's Ferry) along Antietam creek. If McClellan had attacked with all his force he could have destroyed Lee's army, but his excessive caution took over and he held almost 1/2 his army unused in reserve. Even so, Lee came within a whisker of destruction and it was only the arrival of A.P. Hill's division by a 24hr forced march that saved him. Lee limped away defeated but with his army intact. At the end of the day there were 20,000 casualties, the single bloo
diest day of battle in America's history, and more than in the whole Vietnam war.

Battleground Antietam is the game of this battle. It's a turn-based affair so action junkies will have stopped reading already. You can take either side in the battle, or a number of scenarios which either focus on one part of the battle or add a what-if element. For real masochists you can play Lee in a scenario where McClellan does what he should have and assaults with his whole army - try and beat off a 100,000 strong attack with 30,000!

The details of the battle are recreated with minute accuracy, the topography is nicely laid out - I know, I've been to the battlefield :-) - and all the regiments are represented in their actual colours. The commanders are even present standing on hills in the rear: if you're feeling exceptionally lucky you can take potshots at Lee with your cannon! When battle commences the sound effects are excellent with rippling rifle volleys and booming cannon blasts. The combat itself seems quite accurately represented with fatigue, orientation, disorganization, weapon type and unit quality just some of the factors taken into account.

This game has a major, major problem though, and that is the speed of it: it's just so slow. You control literally hundreds of units and have to decide what to do with each one individually. There are different phases for each turn so you decide how each unit moves, and then decided who it shoots at separately. You also have to watch the computer do this unit by unit. Actually fighting through the whole battle takes several 10s if not 100s of hours. What was really needed was a system of commanders where you could just (for example) tell one of your generals to assault the bridge with his division and only step in personally at the most critical locations and times.

This really isn't a bad game, and the detail and accuracy makes it a dream for
history buffs. However, for the rest of us we don't have time to fight a battle in a game that makes it last longer than the real thing did. Instead try titles such as Sid Meier's Gettysburg for the authentic civil war experience.

Summary: