Game of the Week, Nov 4 - 10
We return to the 19th century this week and the American Civil War with Forgotten Campaigns. This title will be on sale for 25% off normal pricing now through Sunday November 10th.
Forgotten Campaigns is a title unlike the others in the Civil War Battles series, in that it covers a wide range of actions from all theaters of the war. In this 15th installment of the series we have rolled up the actions not covered in other titles, and in many cases actions that the historians have not devoted much attention to either. Fighting will range from frontier actions in New Mexico during 1862 to Mobile Bay in 1865. The Red River campaign of 1864 is included as is the War in Mississippi with Brice's Crossroads and Tupelo. Naval combat plays a prominent role in many actions as well, with coastal actions from Charleston to Baton Rouge and many others.
To get a bit more detail about the content in Forgotten Campaigns you can check out the Design Notes. And the Getting Started tutorial document.
Forgotten Campaigns was the first game released when the re-branding of John Tiller Software to Wargame Design Studio was announced in the Fall of 2021. As such it went out as version 4.0, but as you can see from the changelog an exceptional amount of work has gone into this series since that time. The version in the store is the most recent at 4.05.1.
(All images can be clicked for full-size viewing.)
This title includes 115 stand-alone scenarios and an additional 59 are pulled for the Campaign system.
As the name implies this title covers a lot of the more obscure engagements from the war. There may very well be battles included that you have never even heard of! The battles included are:
- Val Verde
- Apache Pass
- Glorieta
- Secessionville
- Baton Rouge
- Port Hudson
- Charleston
- Morris Island
- Olustee
- Mansfield
- Pleasant Hill
- Can Island
- Jenkins Ferry
- Brice's Crossroads
- Tupelo
- Mobile Bay
- Pilot Knob
- Lexington
- Little Blue
- Big Blue
- Westport
- Mine Creek
- Newtonia
- Fort Fisher
- Averasboro
- Bentonville
- Mobile
Many of these actions feature smaller forces than what is common in the bulk of the Civil War Battles series, but they also often tend to offer big maps with much more terrain to move in.
This title includes 4 different Campaign offerings as well, pictured below:
The first in the list is sort of a "grand tour" of the content the game has to offer. Losses do not carry over in this series of scenarios as they are widespread both in time and territory. The remaining three options are smaller, but do offer that feature. If you would like to read more about how campaigns are handled in the pre-twentieth century games you can read this post.
Now for a few books. Due to the wide coverage of this title the potential list of books is pretty wide, but we'll keep it to a half dozen or so.
And now for some video content. No link here since it is copywrite material, but the movie Glory is a must watch if you haven't seen it. Features Battery Wagner near Charleston among other things.
We have a content and game review from SmartWargames:
And The Mack has a series of 7 videos on this title. Here's the first one:
Now for a few more screen shots from in the game. As with the entire Civil War Battles series, this title has 3 2D views and 2 3D views to choose from. Then you have options to select from 2 different 2D icon sets, and finally you can have either colorized or black & white unit and leader images. There are also some free alternative 3D maps that can be loaded from the Support page if you wish.
As we bring the post to a conclusion we want to mention the Civil War Battles specific section of our forums, where you can discuss this title, or any others in the series.
When you are ready, head on over to the Forgotten Campaigns product page and pick up a copy for yourself.
Guys have you ever thought about putting together a game “The Campaigns of Nathan Bedford Forrest”. Heck he is the only Cavalry commander to take on the U.S. Navy and whip them several times. I suspect with a little imagination you could come up with multiple “what if” scenarios in addition to the historical battles. I know he is in several existing games but it seems there is more than enough about him that would make for good game play. Thanks
Great game. Covers so many battles you NEVER see anywhere else. I am sort of a civil war buff, as much as you can be that in Sweden, but WDS cover a total of xxx battles, skirmishers or campaigns from civil war and this title completed it.
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