A couple noob questions if I may

[Compass Rose]

Phil,

You had me thinking I was reading a section of my own personal wargaming history. I started out the same way with John Tiller HPS games. I kept finding myself going back looking through the different series of games they offered, finding more and more that I was interested in. Needless to say, I now own alot of their games and you too will find yourself addicted to these games, like alot of us have!

You have good timing. All of the HPS ACW games are recently updated with all but one title being updated since Feb 2011. http://www.hpssims.com/Pages/updates/up_...CivWar.asp They now all offer the same option rules, and you do not need the game disk in the drive to be able to play them, which is super great news if you travel a lot and/or have a netbook.

I will offer the following suggestion which is the “standard response" to people interested in a new HPS/JT Software series. Go ahead and select the games and battles that interest you. Don’t worry so much as to what other people are playing. You will not be disappointed in any of the ACW games and you will never have a problem finding a PBEM opponent. After a while, you will get some PBEM games under your belt and you will start to develop regular PBEM opponents who may or may not post “looking for a PBEM game” threads. So don’t be super worried if it appears that there is not much “action” within the forums. PBEM games are out there and going on all the time.

If you go look over on the SDC, Steve (Trauth116) has been doing a super great job and is pouring a ton of his own time and effort into making that site very "gamer friendly" and a "one stop shop".

Here is the link to the SDC CWB section. http://hist-sdc.com/spotlights/series_cwb.html

As for recommended games, the one that stands out above the rest, in my view, is Gettysburg since you can easily get 20,000 scenarios for free. The link for these are located in the SDC Download section; see pic below.


There is another Download section over on SDC that has a ton of downloads including official HPS Updates, Maps, Scenarios, Art, etc. See below pic.


Make sure to also check out Old Banshee http://old-banshee.yolasite.com/downloads.php as they have some of the sharpest looking unit art graphics that are currently available, however they do not have their mod's available for all the current HPS titles.

As a final note when searching for your 1st few ACW games, don't forget that some of the battles had dual names.



So if you don't find the battle you are looking for by one name, it may be listed by another.

If joining a club interests you, there is:

ACWGC http://www.wargame.ch/wc/acw/
CCC http://www.wargame.ch/1776/index.html
NWC http://www.wargame.ch/wc/nwc/Napann1.htm

All three clubs have been running for 10+ years.

Good luck and be sure to let us know which titles you decided to start out with.