Works in Progress from Moves and S&T tracking the development of the GBACW |
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From Moves issue 46 This appeared in Works in Progress column, page 22. The Day of the Generals The Day of the Generals So far, this is the
working title for our From S&T issue 75 (July/August, 1979) This item appeared in Outgoing Mail column, page 35: Antietam Creek We at least have a tentative title for our Sharpsburg/Antietam game, as you see above. It is always subject to change - and we my yet go with "Gleam of Bayonets" in keeping with the literary trend of its forefathers TSS and Bloody April (which will be out in August). Aside from that we have suffered some minor delays in getting started, as grinding out an accurate regimental-level OB is not proving to be easy. This was a campaign in which Confederate records are not merely spotty but virtually non-existent, at least as far as our normal research techniques can discern. We are following a lead provided by one of our outside researchers, the very capable Dr. Dave Martin (whose excellent work into Gettysburg Orders of Battle will soon be available as part of the Bloody April sections on revision to TSS), and we are truing to track down an unpublished manuscript by Ezra Carman, which is purported to have good OB info. In addition to this, we are also awaiting the arrival of our Carman-Cope maps for the Library of Congress - a series of 14 giant maps depicting the battlefield and all troops situations, as well as the Bowlby revisions to that map. We have enough of a map without them to get started (using the OR Atlas), but I'm still stuck with only a 50% OB. As far as the system is concerned, we will be going with most of the revised-TSS system that appears in Bloody April, adjusted for the specifics of Antietam. Our major problems here are elevation and command control. I'm pretty sure I have the solution for the latter - a nice system which enables the Union player to control his army yet still recreates McClellan's absurd delays _ but the former is still a problem. Oh yes... because of the small size of many of the Confederate units we will be reducing the unit scale to 50 men per strength point (and adjusting the CRT accordingly). There are going to be some BIIGGGG units!! Rich Berg As you can see, Mr. Berg, wrote these before
Bloody April had hit the shelves. The less than enthusiastic response
to the extra chrome in Bloody April forced some delays, but by
all accounts, the game was largely completed on time. But due to the crash of SPI, it
would be four more years before A Gleam of Bayonets would be
published! Luckily for all concerned, the GBACW project gave us lots of
smaller battles to work through while we waited!
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