By Fred Manzo
“Thunder in the Ozarks: The Battle of Pea Ridge” is a sequel to Hermann Luttmann’s “Stonewall’s Sword: The Battle of Cedar Mountain.” Both games use his “Blind Sword” chit pull system to insure the proper amount of battlefield chaos and both are being published by Revolution Games, with “Tito” coming out some time this summer. Once again, Hermann is the designer, Rick Barber is doing the map, I’m the game’s developer and Roger Miller is the publisher. So far the project is moving along quite smoothly. But we still have to test the “Elkhorn Tavern” scenario.
Here, we are about 2/3rds of the way through the “Leetown scenario.” The Confederate are trying to turn my right flank by advancing through Morgan’s Woods on the upper right of the photo. Leetown, where the Union supply train is located, can just be seen in the lower left.
Jeff Davis (no, not that Jeff Davis) has just arrived with badly needed Union reinforcements. The Confederates have advanced with heavy casualties down the center of the board and through Morgan’s Woods to the Union’s right. But the effects of “double canister at 10 yards” can plainly be seen in the upper left of the photo. The Confederates with a light background are on their reduced side. (Although the components shown in these photos are for playtest purposes only.)
So far neither Confederate’s General McCullough nor his successor, General McIntosh, have been killed. In our last playtest McCullough was killed off quite early and his successor step up and did a simply magnificent job. Not that the Confederates needed such good fortune, as in a stunning turn of events, McCullough returned to the game! However, his recovery was so stunning, we changed the rules so that such an event, while still possible, will be somewhat rarer in the published version. (In these cases, just consider the reports of his death greatly exaggerated).
Hi, thanks for the sneak peak at another Blind Swords game. I really enjoyed Stonewall’s Sword. I rank it top 3 of the titles released during 2015 (and certainly the title I played the most of during last year).
How do you think the Blind Sword system would do in a non-19th century setting? For example 18th century Great Northern War, the 17th century 30-years War, or for that matter, 20th century WWI?
Hi, thanks for the compliment. We all worked very hard on that game and, for that matter, on all the “Blind Sword” games.
To tell you the truth we haven’t considered any non-Civil War battles. But I’d think it should work in other situations just fine. Right now we are looking for a medium-sized battle, that has been under-gamed and that is known for its somewhat chaotic nature. Of course, the more critically important the battle was the better, which is a hard set of criteria to fulfill. It would be the fourth in the series: Stonewall’s Sword, Thunder in the Ozarks, Hammerin’ Sickles and “something else.” But that’s for next year.