"Need review of A House Divided board game" Topic

Has anyone here played it or used it as a campaign manager? I'm curious about playing time and difficulty of play. Thanks

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The most recent version by Phalanx Games is definitely beautiful, but you can still get copies of the older GDW version at a good price if that is an issue. The rules are fairly easy to get into and it is a great campaign system for miniatures battles since you basically don't have continuous combat all over the board each turn. Usually action is focused at a few points each turn, so converting those into miniatures battles is pretty easy to do.

We played it as campaign engine for our acw campaign in the 1995-1996.
It is THE best game for this… and the campaign is a real hightlight.

You need the GDW house divided plus You need also this book were it is already translated as miniature campaign for v+b:
"Battles of the American Civil War" by Greg Novak & Frank Chadwick:

link

You can also use "soldier king" by frank chadwick for a type zenda setting or ted racier game "first world war" which is similair.

In my 35 years of gaming is this "house divides+ battles of american civil war " the best set-up for a campaign.

Kudos for mr. Chadwick and mr. Novak.

Played it relentlessly in College, sometime 3 or 4 times in a sitting. Also played the miniatures campaign three separate times. It's hands fown the best campaign game I've ever been involved in.

I have not played it as a campaign game, just as a board game.

It's a lot of fun and simple enough. I have two problems with it.

One is the snowball effect – one good victory and the winner can stampede the loser. Not every time, but a cracking win can get the ball rolling. This may disappear if you are using it as a campaign game.

The second thing is that the game can often end in a CSA victory in 1862 due to cavalry raids. At least it did the last couple times I played it, in a previous century. But I still have my copy.

Thank you gentlemen it sounds like a winner.

"The second thing is that the game can often end in a CSA victory in 1862 due to cavalry raids."

The way to avoid this just came to me – allow cavalry to block supply, but only count occupation of a city/area for victory if infantry is holding it. Why didn't I think of this in the 20th century?

One last piece of advice – have both sides in the projected campaign play the boardgame a couple times just as a boardgame. Otherwise a rookie error can put an early end to an otherwise great campaign.