Antietam is one of 8 battles presented in the recent boardgame release, Blue & Gray Deluxe, which combines and reprints the old SPI quads, Blue & Gray volumes I and II. A look at what the box offers was discussed in an earlier post (see link at the foot of this page)
Anyway, today we are concerning ourselves just one of those battles - Antietam.
The system gives the original 8 pages of rules, but also has optional and variant rules that can be added for extra depth / flavour. For my first game, I will just use the original core rules and then do follow on games with bits added.
The core rules themselves have one optional rule ….. ‘Combat Effectiveness’ This requires that any attacker that gets an ‘Attacker Retreat’ result in combat, not only retreats, but flips to their effective loss side. This maintains the combat value of the unit for defence purposes, but stops it from attacking or moving adjacent to an enemy.
This is an important and impactive rule. It represents the nature of ACW regiments and brigades pretty much being burned out by casualties and needing fresh formations to move up and maintain the attack momentum.
This is essentially a simple system. The engine has two important concepts a) Zones of Control are ‘sticky’, so once you move adjacent to an enemy, you cannot voluntarily move away - it needs a combat result of retreat to disengage. b) attacking is mandatory and that means even if you would rather not attack because you have a low odds chance of success …… you must still attack. There is that old thing of artillery at distance being able to bombard and make ‘soak off’ attacks.
The marriage of sticky ZOC’s, mandatory combat, some terrain types doubling the strength of the defender and losing combat effectiveness if the attacker is forced to retreat, which is more likely on low odd attacks, makes this game for all its simplicity, very nuanced, with multiple decisions taken every turn on how best to engage or whether to engage at all.
The Antietam scenario last for 10 turns. The large Union Army is hamstrung by not being able to use the army to its full potential at any one time. On Turn 1 it is allowed to move 15 units and thereafter, this drops to 10 units per turn. This is representing Mac’s (Union Commander) hesitancy and cautious nature. This penalty is removed if the Confederates cross Antietam Creek, though I can’t see them doing that!
One way or another, most Antietam boardgames have a similar rule doing the same thing. The last Antietam game I played was by Worthington Publishing and they allowed the Union to just activate two corps per turn for similar effect.
In the system, once a unit loses effectiveness, it does not regain it back until nightfall, so, slowly an army on the attack will lose momentum. However, in this scenario, this rule is modified and units can test before each of their Combat Phases, needing a ‘1’ on a D6 to recover, keeping it unlikely, but nice or frustrating when it happens, depending which side you are on and where the unit is.
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| Map |
The terrain drives the battle. Most of the Union Army needs to get across Antietam Creek, which is governed by bridges and fords. A couple of corps are already across the creek and threatening the Confederate flank in the area of Dunker’s Chapel.
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| Note the Middle Bridge above in the centre. Burnside Bridge is off to the right. |
The town of Sharpsburg comprises of 4 hexes and sole ownership of the town will give the owner a significant 15 Victory Points, so this part of the map will hold the attention of both sides. Aside from that, there is a respectable spattering of ‘rough terrain’, which doubles the strength of defenders.
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| Set up is fixed |
In replaying this game, I will offer the reader just a general overview, but I will go into a bit of detail for turn 1 by way of explaining some system features along the way. The reader can bypass this exploded turn 1 commentary and go straight to the ‘Early Game’ paragraph if the wish.
The Union go first in each turn, followed by the Confederates. The sequence of play is simply Movement followed by Combat.
Turn 1 - The Union are allowed to move just 15 units and per chance (or not!), they have 15 units already on the Confederate side of the creek, in the forms of I and XII Corps, so it seems sensible to activate these and get an early start for attacking.
The Confederates have the brigades of Semmes and Cobbs with their back to the Potomac River, the Union move down and trap them. If their attack is successful, they will not be able to retreat and will be removed from play. They attack with a ratio of 2:1, on a D6, this gives the attacker 4 chances out of 6 to inflict a Defender Retreat result …. But it caries the risk of a 2 out of 6 chance of the attackers getting an Attacker Retreat result and that would not only allow the Confederates to escape, but all four attacking units would lose their attack effective status. They are successful and Semmes and Cobbs are removed from play - that was a worthwhile risk.
Next up, 8 Union strength points from 2 x 4 strength point units will attack a lone Confederate artillery at strength 2, so that is 4:1 attack, which is obviously good …. But at 4:1 there are 2 out of 6 chances of getting an ‘Exchange’ result, which hurts both sides, so the Union voluntarily reduce their attack to a 3:1, which is a bit less risky. The artillery suffers a retreat result. Note in the optional rules, there is a mechanism that would allow lone artillery to use what we might think of as defensive fire against the attacker, making artillery overall less vulnerable.
Just to see that working, I theoretically gave it a go and rolled die, the artillery forced one of the attacking units to retreat, which would have the immediate effect of dropping the Union attack down from 4:1 to 2:1, so reducing the attack value and giving the artillery a better chance of survival.
The remaining attacks by XII Corps further up the map, push the Confederates back and the attackers advance into those vacated hexes. By advancing and moving next to Confederates, they essentially lock those Confederate units down with their ‘sticky’ zones of control, obliging those same Confederates to counter-attack in their part of the turn.
Importantly none of the Union attacks resulted in an ‘Attacker Retreat’ result, so none of their units suffer loss of combat effectiveness.
It now becomes the Confederate part of the turn. In their Movement Phase, they shuffle a few units around to shore up the defence. They don’t really want to attack, but they are adjacent to three Union units and are obliged to attack them. Having said all that, as it turns out, they actually do quite well with lucky dice and the following happens;
One attack suffers an Attacker Retreat result, so the units retreat and are flipped to show their loss of combat effectiveness.
The next attack inflicts a Defender Retreat result and Starke advances into the vacated hex.
Finally, they inflict a Defender Retreat result on I/I/XII, but it is surrounded by Confederate zones of control and so cannot retreat. It is removed from play instead - ouch!
So by the end of Turn 1, we might consider that both sides gave as good as they got.
Now moving on briefly;
Early Game - Union IV Corps strike across the Middle Bridge and establish a toe hold on the Confederate side of the creek. I and XII Corps continue to press the Confederate flank and take Dunker’s Chapel.
Mid Game - The Confederates are slowly being driven back, but the Union attack across the Middle Bridge has stalled as increasing numbers of their attack force have lost their Combat effectiveness, due to getting too many Attacker Retreat results.
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| Pressure builds |
Overall, Confederate losses are higher, but importantly, it looks like Sharpsburg is likely to remain out of Union reach.
Union 3/2/XII have breached the Sunken Road and a Union attack over Burnside Bridge has been repulsed.
End Game - The Union are suffering from too many of their front line units having lost their combat effectiveness and while limited to moving 10 units per turn, I have not felt able to do the sensible thing ….. which was to make sure that each turn, a fresh unit or two were also being drawn down over the Middle Bridge, to keep the attack fed!
Above - there are just a couple of turns left. The dark blue counters are Union and those with yellow print have lost their combat effectiveness. The Confederates are in pretty good terrain. Union artillery are heavy 20 pounders, firing from the other side of the creek.
Burnside Bridge did eventually fall and Union troops were able to cross to put pressure on the Confederate line and stretch it further.
For a brief moment in the last turn, The Union were able to capture a solitary Sharpsburg hex. If they could hold onto that, it would at least deny the Confederates the opportunity to score 15 Victory Points by claiming sole occupancy …… but literally on the last roll of the die, the Confederates, with JG Walker In the lead, ejected them! I love those last die roll type narrative changers.
Winners and Losers - The Union, despite for the most part of the game, having inflicted the most casualties, towards the end of play, as they became more desperate to break into Sharpsburg, some of their chancy advances after combat left some brigades out on a limb and they became easy pickings for the Confederates and the casualties started to equalise.
At the end of play, the Union had inflicted 32 casualty points and the Confederates had inflicted 31, so looking very much like a draw ….. except the Confederates get a further 15 points for sole occupation of Sharpsburg, giving them a Marginal Victory, which feels about right.
If the Union sweep under the Confederate left flank had been more successful, they might have blocked the Confederate retreat path to the Antietam Creek Ferry and that would have cost the Confederates dearly. Likewise, taking one hex of Sharpsburg would have denied the Confederates those 15 VP’s.
Conclusions.
Did I enjoy that? ‘Yes’ and that is central to everything. For the record, I played this solo and did not come across anything in this two player game that was an obstacle to that.
As an initial playing, it was rather refreshing to play an Old School system in which you can concentrate on play and leave the rule set mostly in the box and just concentrate on tactics and manoeuvre. I will look at the optional / variant rules and maybe introduce a couple for my next playing of this scenario, to compare.
It is also a lesson that multi layered systems are not necessary to deliver a good game, there is a reason why some of those early quad games endure. Decision Games have plans to release deluxe versions of the old Napoleon at War quad and the old Thirty Years War quad.
I like that Decision Games decided that each battle in the game should have their own bespoke counters, rather than having to delve in to a stash of counters just to find the ones you need for the battle on your table.
This was an important playing session for me because I took a bit of a punt on whether or not the game would suit me. As a bonus, it seems ideal for our short face-to-face sessions, allowing for a game to play through to a proper conclusion in one session, while being very playable and nicely themed.
It will be interesting to see how, what amounts to quite a generic system, makes each of the other battles feel ‘right’. No doubt the map geography and any special rules will be enough to carry the battle theme.
The game is expensive and taking a decision to use mounted maps rather than paper maps feeds into that cost and deluxe feel, but if a good enough number of the eight battles supplied get repeat play, then the game, compared to buying two duffers, will have earned its place on my shelf. There is also a part of me that is wanting to return to some of this easier, earlier stuff.
Having said all of the above, if a company is going to put a ‘Deluxe’ title on the box, then the game needs to feel deluxe in every regard and the recent problems that Deluxe Ardennes had with regard to counters and rule errata, does not hit that high bar and that incident reduced my confidence in just buying these games without waiting to hear what other peoples experience has been with them. Fortunately my experience with Blue & Gray has been good.
Overall Decision Games look to be putting a lot of good stuff out at the moment and that includes their Battles in the East series. Having put my hand in my pocket for this Deluxe Blue & Gray package, I’m glad I did.
Resources.
I also have a bit of webspace called ‘COMMANDERS’ which is a little more snippet based than here and update more frequently. LINK
https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html
The earlier post that discussed the new Blue & Gray Deluxe box can be found here LINK;
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/03/blue-gray-deluxe-boardgame.html
I bought my copy from Second Chance Games in the UK - LINK
