Civil War (board game)

1961 board wargame

Civil War is an early strategic board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1961 that simulates the American Civil War. Unlike other games produced by Avalon Hill during this period such as Gettysburg, Civil War did not sell well and was dropped from production two years later.

Civil War is a two player wargame in which one player controls Union forces and the other controls Confederate forces. Like other wargames produced by Avalon Hill, Civil War uses a hex grid map and a Combat Results Table to adjudicate battles. But unlike other wargames, it uses plastic tokens rather than cardboard counters.

Writing in the inaugural issue of The General, Carl Knabe admitted that he disliked Civil War because it was unbalanced, saying, "If he plays his cards right, the North can always win." In a retrospective review in Issue 12 of Simulacrum, Joe Scoleri commented on the relatively quick failure of this game, saying, "I wouldn't be surprised if that was because it was too complex for social gamers yet too simple and abstracted for the Tournament gamers."

In 1988, Avalon Hill released a computer version of Civil War. It was not well received. In a 1993 survey of pre 20th century strategy games Computer Gaming World gave the game zero plus stars out of five, stating that it "shows how one can take a highly playable boardgame and turn it into an unplayable computer 'product' [with] incomplete rules, incomplete graphics and incomplete programming". The magazine noted that Avalon Hill did not ship a promised update.