A Review for Forge of Freedom

[Mad Russian]

Forge of Freedom (FoF) is an American Civil War game sold by Matrix.

The rules book describes FoF as a turn based strategic wargame of the American Civil War. That's technically correct but there is far more to this game than that simple statement.

The game is a turn based strategic wargame of the American Civil War, after a fashion. While the high end of the game is definitely strategic the rest of the game is more than that. There is a very detailed combat model where you can fight each battle that happens at the strategic level down on the tactical level. What is referred to as detailed combat in the rules.

Let's look at what FoF does before we look at what it doesn't do. From what I've read on all the forums about the detailed combat model it does a very good job of rendering the tactical ACW time period. Everything you could want in a tactical ACW game seem to be there. Including with the strategic part of FoF a random battle generator.

FoF, IMO, does a poor job in it's present state of rendering the strategic level of actions and choices in the ACW. There are issues with how each side scores points to win the war. The game is an area style map for the strategic part of the game, hexes for the tactical part, with different terrain being depicted as appropriate. Basically you have city and non-city areas, with the other major terrain feature being rivers.

The crux of FoF seems to be the combat system. There are two kinds of combat maneuver combat and siege combat.

Maneuver combat in FoF is handled in 3 ways.

1) Detailed combat where you are God and tell everyone where to go and what to do.

2) Quick Combat where you load up a battlefield matrix of areas of attack/defend with one area added to show which of your units are routed out of the fight.

3) Instant Combat which is the same as Quick Combat but where the computer does everything.

I have played this game four times. All four time it was by PBEM with a good friend and long time wargaming associate. We used Instant Combat for all four games.

Siege combat is handled with a bit more complexity. You have to be in the area of the city or fort with no enemy units in the area. The next turn you can give your units orders to attack the fort. There are several options from outright assault to trickery. Some of these options don't work in PBEM and will cause the system to crash. I would expect them to fix this but at last report they were just going to disable that option for PBEM. The option that I'm sure of, that causes a crash, is to select attack the fort or city.

The game is setup on an economic/political basis for the strategic part of FoF. You determine what to buy, where to buy it, what and how to produce both your economic support and your war materials. Factories, Colleges, Horse Farms..it's all there. So are the Governors. They are petty, supportive, demanding and thankful. They are controlled by the National Will.

The National Will is of course the nations will to keep fighting the war. This is determined by your armies abilities to win battles and capture enemy cities.

Wrap all that up and you have Forge of Freedom. That's what it is.

Good Hunting.

MR