Battle Cry

Some of the Dogs of War are strays...

I don’t know what the final list of games will be, but even now there are borderline games: those where I’m not sure if the game belongs. One week ago Richard Borg’s Battle Cry was one of those “yes, it’s important, but probably not on the list.”

This week, I’m thinking it maybe does.

Battle Cry would always have been tough for me to evaluate. I played the game as a prototype — I wouldn’t say Richard was a friend, but he was an acquaintance.

Battle Cry by Richard Borg. Photo by BGG User “Frank Vleugels”

During a convention Richard had this lovely little system that could easily recreate numerous Civil War battles …. the map is blank with large hexes, and you can set terrain on them, then add the miniatures representing infantry, cavalry and artillery.

I played against a college friend from South Carolina, so I took the North. Each of the battles we played were tense affairs, the map is divided into three areas “left, right, center” and each player has a hand of cards. The cards provided a command system — A card might activate a few units on the left flank, or perhaps one unit in each of the three areas, or perhaps be a cavalry charge and activate some number of cavalry units anywhere. Some cards were decidedly better than others; but you might play a mediocre card to delay and hope for something better, or that your opponent would be lulled into moving closer …. which would make your next card deadlier.

And there are dice. Whenever you attacked you’d roll the dice (adjusting for distance and terrain) and any symbols that matched the unit you were firing on were hits. One hit, remove a miniature. The last miniature in each unit had a flag, and kill enough flags and the battle was yours.

This made for an elegant system as units that had taken heavy losses might run away (to save the flag) or might charge forward in a last desperate attempt to wreak havoc. It was up to you.

Battle Cry was embraced by wargamers, but was intended for a wide range of audiences. Some of the cards were arguably too powerful, possibly to add more randomness. But when the game came out, it was a minor hit. I played all of the scenarios, and hoarded bonus scenarios that Richard sometimes made and gave out as photocopies (or that were professionally printed and used as convention tournaments).

But that does not make a game one of the Top games of the century. Worried that I was influenced by my personal connection, I had marked the game as “Probably not” in the list I kept. After all, I haven’t played it in years, or seen it played.

And I didn’t see it played last week. But I saw Memoir ‘44 played. A game using the “Command and Colors” system that Battle Cry created, but in World War II. I saw Command and Colors: Ancients played, and not the simple two player version but a gigantic 8 player battle.¹ And there was a new game getting played at multiple tables: Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, another “Command and Colors” game with Richard Borg credited as a designer (along with Adrien Martinot)². And there have been other entries in the system: C&C: Napoleonics and Battlelore (a fantasy setting similar to the Hundred Years War but including magic and monsters). And there are more, a small stream of settings and titles in the “Commands and Colors” family of games.

So Battle Cry is fading, but the system is going strong twenty five years later. It is admittedly a niche, but it seems to be doing well. I personally prefer the real battles of the Civil War to the made up battles on an ice planet, but the system handles both and I can imagine that some of the reason Battle Cry isn’t played as much is because of the conspicuous Confederate Battle Flags. The Empire is problematic, but also make-believe.

Image by Days of Wonder (the publisher).

Still, I am not quite convinced that Battle Cry (as the first Command and Colors) game makes the cut for the 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century³. But — if it misses it isn’t such a wild miss that discussing it is out of place here, and we can ponder it and see how we feel when more games have been discussed.

What do you think?

1. Three players (“Generals”) on each side have their own board and units and the Commander divides up the cards and handles overall strategy.

2. Borg is sole designer of Memoir ‘44 and C&C: Ancients.

3. Despite what Wikipedia says, Battle Cry was published in 1999, but even if it was published in 2000 I’d still allow it, as I don’t want to get into debating the exact borders of the 20th Century.