From: Irv & Nancy Horowitz Subject: Long: Battle Cry I write to urge rgmh readers to take a close look at the new Hasbro/Avalon Hill board game Battle Cry. At least skim through a copy and play a few rounds on someone else's set. I predict Battle Cry will be all over Historicon this year, so take a look. Battle Cry is a board game, but it's a hybrid that also meets my criteria for a miniatures game. I recall some gamers wishing that a hobby organization or a commercial toy company would one day produce a popular, introductory, "historical miniatures game in a box". It was proposed that a "miniatures game in a box" would be a powerful tool for advertising our hobby and recruiting new gamers. In Battle Cry, Richard Borg and Hasbro/AH have produced that popular, commercial, historical miniatures game in a box. Give Battle Cry to your intelligent nephew who's interested in your toy soldiers. Bring a copy of Battle Cry home and play it with your kids. Keep a copy of Battle Cry open and displayed in the hobby shop. It will catch the attention of walk-ins. Play Battle Cry with them. I like several things that Battle Cry does. Battle Cry has excellent introductory rules, that is, these are excellent rules for novices. Battle Cry rules can also easily be tweaked by experienced gamers. I predict Battle Cry will spawn as many variants as Axis and Allies, or De Bellis Antiquitatis has. Battle Cry, straight from the box, delivers a colorful, attractive miniatures game at a cost of only $40 and a couple of hours assembly time. Battle Cry can also be upgraded by increments into a more elaborate miniatures setup. A novice gamer can be led by easy stages into developing hobby craft skills and building a non-trivial miniatures collection. Battle Cry is an army level game where units represent divisions (more or less) of horse, foot and guns. Usually about 12 units are present on each side. Each army may also field up to three generals. Games are based on historic battles, but no exact time scale, ground scale or figure scale is specified. 15 scenarios are provided with the game. Gamers are already publishing home rolled scenarios. Some gamers will dislike the army level design and board game feel of Battle Cry. I can only think of two other miniatures rule sets that represent armies at such a high level of abstraction (one flat = one division): De Bellis Antiquitatis and Le Petite Empereur. Personally, I can suspend my disbelief and enjoy these games. The design choice to model armies at an ultra high level allows play with a limited number of miniatures, and so better suits Battle Cry to be an introductory game. Battle Cry has excellent introductory rules. Including table of contents but excluding narrative text and scenarios, the rules are only 12 pages long, well illustrated with many visual examples. The game is driven by a card deck. Each player draws a few (3 to 5, as per scenario) action cards, then plays one each turn. Each card allows a player to act with a certain number of units in a specified part of the field. Most cards only activate one or two units, some cards are even weaker. A few strong cards allow an "Assault", an "All Out Offensive" or a "Counter Attack". I've only cited a few of the different cards. Some gamers will dislike the card mechanism. The card deck tends to screw a skillful, experienced player. It may not matter that you see that your enemy's left is weak, and you would like to operate against it with your right-wing cavalry in open country. If all the cards you draw apply to your center, you can only operate with center units, and you may well lose the game to your opponent's more fortunate card draws. IMO, the card deck works to equalize games between a novice and an experienced player. This mechanism will allow a 10 year old to beat you fair and square in an appreciable fraction of the games you play. The taste of victory will keep that 10 year old coming back for more. Battle Cry rules can also easily be tweaked by experienced gamers. For instance, by adding geographic objectives to scenarios, games will tend to play out more like their historic prototypes. Troop quality can be varied per scenario. Cards can be removed from or added to the deck, and on and on...this game will be tinkered with. Battle Cry, straight from the box, delivers a colorful, attractive miniatures game at a cost of only $40 and a couple of hours assembly time. Battle Cry is played on a 20" X 30" board, laid out in hexes that are 2 1/8" from edge to edge. The board is pale brown with some green. A set of terrain tiles is included, to represent hills, woods, rocks, streams, buildings and so on. 116 20mm plastic miniatures molded in blue and grey come with the game, along with a sheet of gummed Union and Confederate flags. It took me a couple of hours to cut the figures from their sprues and assemble the lot. The result, though basic, is an attractive and functional set of figures and terrain that can be used to model historic battles. Battle Cry can also be upgraded by several increments into a much more elaborate miniatures setup. A first step might be painting the miniatures provided. A novice who enjoys painting might go on to buy a few boxes of inexpensive plastic 20mm ACW figures and replace the original figs with a more varied set. Battle Cry can be played with metal miniatures. In the game, an infantry unit (division) is represented by four figures, a cavalry unit by three figures, an artillery unit by two cannon. I fiddled a bit, and found that four 15mm Fire and Fury infantry flats, 1" X 3/4" each, will fit into a Battle Cry hex in place of four 20mm figs. And they look great! I can fit in Johnny Reb cavalry and artillery flats and generals. Gamers who already have ACW collections will probably want to see what pieces they can fit into Battle Cry hexes. Figures might be easier to upgrade than the Battle Cry terrain (which is pretty good straight out of the box), but I can imagine three dimensional styrofoam hill hexes. Perhaps some of the real craftsmen in this hobby can develop other types of functional, three-dimensional terrain for Battle Cry. This game has a lot of potential. The publication of Battle Cry might be a watershed event, that takes the hobby of historical miniature wargaming into the mainstream. Or at least into a major side channel. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself. - Irv