Brothers at War: 1862

Brothers at War: 1862 is a quick-playing, tactical wargame exploring civil war brigade command. Units are regiments, batteries and companies of skirmishers. This is a quadrigame or set of four games, each featuring a full-size, 22"×34" game map and covering battles from 1862: Antietam, South Mountain, Mill Springs, and Bloody Valverde.

Command rules are simple and abstracted. There are no combat results tables. Combat and all checks are resolved using six-sided dice, in which results of 5-6 mark success, and 1-4 failure. Brigades activate via chit pull, with their constituent units moving and fighting individually. Stacking is limited to two units per hex. Massive 1.5" hexes allow two 3/4" units to fit side by side.

Battle Cards introduce an element of uncertainty and excitement to play. Unique off-map displays track every brigade’s reserves and casualties. Once a unit’s reserves are used up, it becomes exhausted and liable to break.

Four battles explore how the system can accommodate a variety of civil war battlefields: The meat-grinder of Antietam’s cornfield, in which brigades collide one after another in a brutally confined area, the mountainous terrain of Fox’s Gap, where a Union corps attempts to break through a handful of southern brigades; the sodden fields of Mill Springs, Kentucky, in which green rebels with old-style muskets battle freezing rain as well as their northern enemy; and an all-cavalry Texan brigade confronting union regulars and green New Mexican volunteers at Valverde in the distant western territories.

• Four 22" x 34" maps (one for each game)
  
• Five countersheets
• One deck of 52 player cards
• 9 Player Aid Cards
  
• Rulebook
• Scenarios Booklet
• Four 6-sided dice