American Civil War: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas
â€Package contents: -1 x American Civil War: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas
â€Product Code: GMT 1304
â€Package Info: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a comparatively short and simple game of the naval conflict at sea and on the great rivers in the American Civil War. Easily playable in less than three hours, Rebel Raiders on the High Seas is a strategic contest between two players, one seeking to reunite the Union by force, the other to maintain its new independence in the face of the escalating industrial might and resolve of its northern brother. More of a representation than a detailed simulation of that conflict, the game is intensely engaging, highly interactive and moves along quickly, with players constantly responding and reacting to their opponentâ€s moves.
- Product is for use in the GMT Games table top game American Civil War: Revel Raiders on the High Seas.
What's in the box
One 22 x 28 map * One Rule Book * One Play Book * One Players Aid Card * Eight six-sided dice * Two decks of 55 cards each (one Union, one Confederate) * 6 Plastic Stands for Leaders * 176 5/8” ship counters * various round, hexagonal, rectangular cargo, victory point, leader, control and informational counters * 30 small red opaque plastic tokens (to mark pieces which have moved)
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I enjoyed the game, and to spice things up I added variables such as pirate raiders attacking Union shipping, and more foreign nations helping the Confederacy, those two factors changed the end game , and essentially made the game much more versatile. I do recommend the game . .
This game tries to simulate the events of the civil war perhaps to a fault. I have played the game several times and each time the outcome comes out nearly the same. The game is a battle of attrition for the South with nearly the inevitable conclusion that one would expect in a simulation. The game is based on the South holding on to cities and ports and collecting victory points by raiding and running the blockade. At the start of the war the opportunity to collect victory points is pretty substantial, but as the war goes on and ports are closed and more warships scour the seas the opportunity for raiders and blockade runners to collect points gets harder. Meanwhile the industrial might of the North churns out large quanities of ships and assault tokens as the war goes on as they try to take over the Southern cities.
By the end of the game, 12 to 13 turns, depending on the victory conditions being met, the game will come down to whether the South can defend key cities from being captured or collect enough victory points from raiding and blockade running so they have a positive total by the end of the war to give them the victory. The North will need to capture the key cities to win the game. No matter who wins the game, the feeling of the game is either a crushing blow for the North or an annihilated South that somehow managed to survive total devastation because they had enough victory points to win the game in the turn limits.
The manufacturer claims the complexity of this game is not difficult, but I did not find this to be totally accurate. There are rules and exceptions to the rules beyond belief such as the playing cards that dictate certain situations, when to keep them or discard them, or how you can roll dice or modify roll dice to determine outcomes. The rule book is not laid out very well in terms of the sequences the game is played. You will need to back track throughout the rule book to read all the special conditions required for each battle situation. I found that I needed to make a consolidated cheat sheet in order to get the flow of the game right.The card system does not enhance the game, but makes it more complex to micromanage.
This is not a beer and pretzel type of game due to the complex set of rules and counter rules. A good war game should be simple to play, but hard to master. This game was neither. This game takes around 4-5 hours to play.
The two star is for the attempt to make a game about the naval conflict of the civil war. I would suggest reading the rule book from the GMT website before purchasing to make your own decsion about the game.