The American Civil War: 1861-1865 is a board wargame published by Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) that presents a strategic simulation of the entire American Civil War on a hex-grid map of the eastern and western theaters. It was designed by Jim Dunnigan, with graphic design by Redmond A. Simonsen, and was originally created in 1974, appearing as a folio game inserted into issue 43 of SPI's Strategy and Tactics magazine in 1977. The game is played by two players, one commanding Union forces under Abraham Lincoln and the other commanding Confederate forces under Jefferson Davis, each managing army movement, supply and battle across the war's full geographic scope rather than a single campaign or battle. As a strategic-level design, it lets each side pursue different historical or alternate approaches to the war's major theaters over the course of a single game, in contrast to SPI's other Civil War titles that focused on individual battles.
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1. The American Civil War: 1861-1865 (Wikipedia)
Lead sentence
a board wargame published by Simulations Publications Inc.
Lead sentence [game-type-category]
a strategic simulation of the American Civil War
Publication history section
The American Civil War was designed by Jim Dunnigan, with graphic design by Redmond A. Simonsen. It originally appeared in 1974 in Strategy & Tactics #43 as a pull-out game, but was also released the same year as a boxed set.
Lead, players
The American Civil War is a two-player game in which one player takes the role of Abraham Lincoln, controlling the Union forces, and the other player takes the role of Jefferson Davis, controlling the Confederate forces. The magazine pull-out edition contains: 22" x 34" paper hex grid map of American states in 1861 200 die-cut counters map-fold rule set The boxed edition also includes a six-sided die In addition to the historical game covering the entire Civil War, the rules also include a number of "what-if": scenarios, such as "What if Robert E. Lee had commanded the Union army?"
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