Civil War Game for my classroom

Jeremy, this design gave me goosebumps. There are elements to it that blew my mind. I hope you can get it working for next year.

This is great stuff -- especially the way you've dovetailed it with deck-building later on. I have one data point's worth of experience to share on the "vote for secession" part: back in high school, I got to play in a day-long classroom game where a visiting professor simulated international relations by dividing the students into groups representing different countries' National Security Councils. We ended up achieving global nuclear disarmament -- something that had never happened in previous games he'd run. We managed it because:

a) We all knew each other, and
b) We were all young and idealistic

you may run into the same situation, so if you allow a vote, be prepared for the South to stay in the Union...

This is excellent -- how do you intend to implement this mechanic?

Depending on your class size, it seems like it would take many battles to give everyone a chance to be general. Maybe that's not important, but if you want everyone to experience that part of the game, you might consider merging Magic with Memoir '44.

If you haven't played Memoir '44, you should check it out. The part that's germaine to your design is the division of the battlefield into "Left Flank," "Right Flank," and "Center," areas. Normally, 1 player commands the Axis powers, the other the Allies. Each side gets a handful of "Orders" cards which determine what kind and how many units can move. Some cards can only be played in a certain region.

Example:

Scout the Left Flank -- this card allows you to order 1 unit in the left flank (an order consists of optionally moving the unit, followed by optionally attacking with the unit).

Pincer Movement -- allows the player to order 1 unit from the left flank and 1 from the right flank.

And so on.

Sprinkled among these normal command cards are specials like:

Counter-attack: you may play this to perform the same action as your opponent just played on you.

Fighter Support: attack any unit on the board with special attack rules (specific to their combat system, so irrelevant here. Well, I guess fighter support *in general* is irrelevant here, but it gives you an idea of the variety of special orders).

There are a number of beautiful bits to this system. For one, you could let one student command each region, thus allowing 3 generals per side in each battle. You could even go for more historical accuracy and only use multiple generals for the larger battles. The other great thing with this system is the natural way it stacks the deck -- in scenarios where the Axis has the upper hand, the Axis player gets to hold more cards, and vice versa when the Allies had the historical advantage. In some cases, after 'n' turns, one side gets more cards as "reinforcements" arrive or as the element of surprise is lost, etc.

Another way to tilt the scales (which has nothing to do with Memoir '44) would be to give each player a "general" card with a few special abilities (for example, at the 2nd battle of Manassas Junction, the Union would get a Gen. John Pope card, while the Confederacy would get two cards: Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson and Maj Gen. Longstreet). This could give insight into the historical figures' strength and weaknesses as well as provide a way to skew battles to the historically-favored side.

Card battles a la Magic seem like they'd work pretty well for this format, and I love the idea of modifying the deck via Congress. How far would you take that? It would be amazing if players unwittingly "drafted" a large portion of their deck this way. Resources like Land, Taxes, Munitions, Soldiers, and Supplies could all be doled out as a result of legislative decisions.

I realize that's probably not possible, given the need to conform to some semblance of historical accuracy, but it sounds neat.

Do you mean you'd track hit points by decrementing the die?

As noted above, I love this idea. What are the time frames for battle vs legislation? Do they take place simultaneously in real time? Does a battle resolve to its halfway point, then break for a stretch to allow legislators to do their thing?

From a "world simulation" point, it seems like battles would resolve almost instantly relative to the time it takes to appropriate and distribute supplies, money, etc. What is the game-purpose of simultaneous resolution? Is it just to give non-generals something to do during battles?

I see why you would go this route, but in this case, the "middle way" doesn't make much sense. If it's still possible for a non-historic outcome to occur, you have to design for that eventuality. Meanwhile, if you stack the deck to mostly ensure the "correct" outcome, some players will become frustrated by the system's bias.

What are your teaching / game-design goals? It feels like the current design contains two mutually-exclusive threads. On one hand, students have that ability to influence policies to score points and improve their armies' chances in battle. In this model, battles are biased but can go either way, and results of legislation affects battles and results of battles introduce new legislative goals. Overall, this feels like a dynamic simulation that could easily diverge from history. On the other hand, there are fixed events like Secession and heavily-weighted battles that keep the experience aligned to history, which would strongly skew the end results toward a Northern victory.

And I know I could be way off base with my thinking, so take everything I write with a huge grain of salt. There are definitely games that present biased historical situations that provide for outcomes different from history (see: "Axis and Allies").

That's "all"? That's a great start -- certainly got me excited! Hope you'll post more thoughts.

Mark