Description
Military Strategy Board Game the battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War. –The Great Skedaddle
In this game, you will lead an army through a key historical battle in the musket era. Unlike most games, you won’t have God like knowledge and control of everything. Like real generals, you will often not know what the enemy has, where they will attack from, when they will move or even when your own troops will move.
How do you win?
You win by sacking one of the enemy’s baggage trains or by inflicting 50% losses on their army first.
How does it work?
As you fight, your units take hits, fall back and become ‘Spent’. Spent units are vulnerable and easy to kill. You can unpack a baggage train to rally them back to Fresh, but unpacked baggage trains can no longer move. If the enemy sacks one or your baggage trains, you lose!
What makes this fun and very tense, is that all the pieces remain hidden on upright blocks. You can’t be sure which ones are fresh or spent, elite or poor grade troops. Where are the baggage trains?
Each command moves in random order by chit pull. This is very chaotic, just like real war. Who will move first? You can use your HQs to try to jump ahead or delay your move. Is it better to move first or last? It depends. Do you need to plug critical holes in the line or seize key terrain before the enemy does? Do you want the enemy to go first so that you can fall back and delay their advance? Or do you want the enemy to attack first so that you know where to commit your reserves? All combat is saved till the end of the turn. So movement during the turn is very fluid and up for grabs. Timing is everything.
In this battle the Austrians launch a surprise attack in a desperate attempt to break out. Badly outnumbered, Napoleon fights to survive until reinforcements arrive.
Historical Background
Union general McDowell developed a brilliant plan to launch a surprise flanking attack. Confederate general Beauregard was able to reinforce with Johnston’s army from the valley by rail. Many expected this to be the only battle needed to put down the rebellion. Instead, panic gripped both armies of green troops as they closed for combat. This quickly escalated into a full on rout all the way back to Washington, becoming known as “The Great Skedaddle”.
• Huge map (38” x 24”) covers the extended area, so you can explore many different possible strategies to the battle.
• This map also covers the area fought over in Second Bull Run, to allow for a Add-On, expansion scenario.
What the Professionals Play
Great for teams and solitaire play.
• Period style map.
• Kriegsspiel style, hardwood pieces.
Options
Scale: This small battle comes in the small Brigade blocks only. With few pieces it has a fast playing time, making it great for playing out at restaurants or pubs: Pub Battles!
Brigades blocks Only: Optional upgrade for players with the older big blocks. Includes updated rules & scenario.
Paper: A great way to get started on a budget. Folded and in a box.
Canvas: Real maps of the period were printed on canvas. This authentic, premium map is tough, durable and beautiful. Printed on 100 year, museum quality, archival canvas. It is water resistant, spill proof and lays flat and smooth. Truly a work of art. Canvas map games come rolled in a tube.
Mike Strand –
High marks on the map! It is clear, and can be read without confusion, yet rewards careful study.
Steve Carr (verified owner) –
You really hit it out of the park with the new Bull Run game. Best Bull Run game I have played. The map is superb. The game captures the flavor of the battle perfectly. I have made one small addition for historical flavor: I made one of the Confederate detachments Hampton’s Legion with similar rules as Stewart’s cavalry. Thanks again for all your work. Can’t wait for Chancellorsville.
Tom Dempsey (verified owner) –
This is one of the most interesting games in the Pub Battles series. It is also one of the only games addressing Bull Run to successfully capture the chaos and confusion that attended this first major battle of the American Civil War. It features a superb map (a hallmark of the Pub Battles series) and a visually compelling set of blocks and labels that have a significant impact on the play of the game.
Starting with the map, it is one of the most impressive cartographic works of art in the Pub Battles series. It is not a technically correct, surveyed topographical map, as is the standard in the hobby. Rather, it is a product of contemporary maps prepared by military cartographers in each army. These professional military engineers produced maps that identified key terrain, significant high ground, water obstacles and areas of forest and other vegetation that had significance for maneuver, fields of fire, and other aspects of civil war combat. The map covers all of the areas along, north, and south of Bull Run creek that affected a widely distributed battle, again covering far more of the campaigning area than earlier games of the battle.
The units – blocks and labels – also represent a unique departure in Pub Battles games, and by their very nature help to capture much of what made Bull Run such a unique battle. The blocks and labels to not identify the two opposing sides, as is the case with other pub battles games. The blocks are a variety of colors, as are the labels: blue, grey, green, white, red, among others. No single color predominates, nor is any particular color characteristic of one side or the other. This is a deliberate design feature of the game, and reflects the fact that neither side had a standard uniform at this point in the war. Units were raised and equipped locally, with uniforms frequently designed by prominent local actors, or by the units themselves. The result was a chaotic mix of uniforms on the battlefield, making it almost impossible to identify friend from foe simply by observation, especially at a distance.
You will experience the results of this throughout each game, no matter how familiar you become with the orders of battle on each side. Glancing at the map at any point during the battle will confuse more than it explains. It will be difficult to follow the development of the fight, and you will frequently lose track of which units are which, even in your own army. You can, of course, pick up and examine your own blocks any time you like, but you will be surprised at how difficult it is to make sense of things, even so. Welcome to Army Command at Bull Run.
Another really unique feature of this game is the “Militia” status of almost all of the engaged forces. There are only two non-Militia units in the game, both of them in the Southern armies: Jackson’s infantry brigade, and Stuart’s cavalry command. This feature accurately captures the fact that the armies at this point in the conflict were largely untrained, with inexperienced leaders at every level. As you will quickly find, when both sides are made up pretty much entirely of militia, combat becomes bloody and unpredictable. It will be much harder to manage your losses than is the case in other Pub Battles games, and every attack will become something of a “crap shoot.”
Some of the most interesting games you play will be your very first ones, cold, right out of the package. The mixed colors and lack of familiarity with the ground will create the same confusion and uncertainty experienced by the actual commanders. The militia status of both sides will make for unpredictable combat results and rapidly shifting tides of battle. Exactly what occurred historically.
Once you have played through several times, the game changes pretty dramatically. The fragile nature of the armies makes for much more careful, even conservative, play. The widely distributed battlefield, much like Antietam, means that decisions to commit forces involve significant lead times. Decisions to cross Bull Run tend to be irrevocable, compartmentalizing the fight. Disaster on one part of the field can be accompanied by dramatic successes elsewhere. ,
Dave Dugas (verified owner) –
Good review, this is what I experienced with the great unique game. It is a very subtle, simple system but results in highly accurate results…a hallmark of the Pub Battles games. A “must have” if you love wargames.