A Review for Forge of Freedom

The rules book describes FoF as a turn based strategic wargame of the American Civil War. That's technically correct but there is far more to this game than that simple statement.

What is missing from that statement is that, IMO, this is an ACW tactical random map generator with a strategic system stuck on the side. If that's not true why is roughly half the rule book about the detailed combat part of a strategic game?

There are multiple things wrong with the strategic part of the game.

You only get National Will points for winning battles or taking areas with cities in them. You can take half the state of Virginia and as long as you have all the cities the governor is fine with that. No governor is going to sit and watch 2/3 of his state be occupied and not become very affected by that.

The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, one of the most strategically important parts of the United States in the ACW has no value other than for forage to an army out of supply in FoF.

When you capture a southern city the newly liberated inhabitants are much more willing to let their men join the Union Army than Union cities are. That doesn't seem historically accurate to me.

When areas of a nation are isolated their resources continue to go into the national resource pool as though they were still all one big happy family. So, isolate Memphis if you want, everything they make still goes into the CSA production and resource pools.

Occupying the Mississippi River gets the Union big points but it doesn't stop the states on the western side from giving all they get to the cause.

The naval operations are extremely abstracted. There wasn't even enough research done on the game to recognize Pensacola, Florida, as a Confederate port. Which, in point of fact, it was their second largest ship yard.

Ships come in three versions. Ships of the line, Frigates and Ironclads. The CSA has blockade runners it can build as well. These ships have no value to the land operations except for supply purposes. While a single ship can only carry 3 brigades worth of troops a single ship can support the entire nations army if it is just adjacent. Supply is not greater if there is more than a single ship adjacent to the land area.

There are lots of instances where ships fought with forts in the ACW, and had a very large impact in the outcome of the battle, especially siege operations in coastal areas. Not in FoF. Ships have no value except as blockade points and in naval combat. There is no reason to every build anything other than a frigate as the Union. IF the Confederates ever get enough resources they could try to build an iron clad to do battle but they have to build a navy to put it in as well or they won't fight.

In more than 7 months of playing the game not a single person, which includes the Matrix guys or the designer, ever answered the question of how the supply system works or doesn't work. How can that be in a strategic game where supply is one of the cornerstones of your strategy?

Lastly, the rules are the worst I've seen since I started playing wargames in 1970. Not just the worst, by far the worst. They are so bad that they tell you to open the PDF file while you are playing so you can do a search for what you want to find. That's a good idea too, because, your chances of actually finding what you need, when you need it, by going through the rules, is about the same as winning the lottery on any given day.

Good Hunting.

MR