A Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam

A Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam is a two player board wargame designed by Richard H. Berg and published in 1983 by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), by then operating as a subsidiary of TSR. It recreates the 1862 Battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day of the American Civil War, at a regimental level of detail using roughly sixteen hundred cardboard unit counters, a scale that places it among the so called monster wargames prized by hobbyists for their size and granularity. The game ships with three separate scenarios covering different phases and scopes of the engagement, Hooker's Attack, the combined Hooker and Mansfield assault, and the Grand Battle scenario that reconstructs the entire day's fighting from the Cornfield through the Sunken Road to the final Union attacks near Burnside Bridge.