Tony Horowitz's excellent book Confederates in the Attic spends a few chapters focusing on those committed Civil War buffs who take the concept of historical re-enactment to an entirely new level. For them, it's not enough to put on a uniform and enjoy a pot of chickory before lining up to shoot blanks at the opposing line. For the truly wow powerleveling committed re-enactors (who prefer the term "living historian," thank you very much), it's about completely immersing yourself in the lifestyle, avoiding anachronisms from one-piece longjohns all the way to your fancy 20th century apples. They refer to this devotion as "super hardcore."

I bring this up because I think it applies to the mindset of most wargamers, both designers and players. When the "super hardcore" mindset takes over, historical accuracy becomes the sole yardstick by which these games are created and judged. But sometimes, in an effort to cram as much authenticity into the experience as possible, some game designers create so steep a learning curve that no one but Napoleon himself could find his way wow powerleveling through the hard shell of the simulation to get at the tactical goodness inside.

Players take control of either the Union in the North, or the Confederacy in the South and are tasked with breaking the other side's morale. The most direct route is to capture certain key cities that the other side relies on. Richmond and Washington DC are obvious targets here, but there are plenty of other cities that are tactically important to either side. You can also destroy an enemy's morale by wearing down their forces and forcing them wow gold to replenish them with unpopular tax increases and drafts. We love that the game models these factors because they accurately reflect the reality that armies and wars require the support of the people back home.

Here's where the gameplay of The Blue and the Gray gets lost in the simulation. It's all well and good to model each and every aspect of Civil War strategy, but the actual presentation falls short. Sometimes the player is bombarded with an avalanche of numbers for things like transport capacity, supply limits or unit cohesion. Other times, the player will fail in actions (or even be unable to undertake them at all) with no real explanation of why things aren't working clearly.

There are some other interface issues that make the game less than friendly, even to the super hardcore crowd. To begin with, there's no convenient way to keep track of which of your units have already been given orders, which still need commands, and which are recently unfrozen. It's not a big deal in the battle scenarios but once you try to tackle the larger campaigns, you'll spend less time strategizing and more time just perusing the battlefield, trying to spot units that haven't been touched yet. It's equally confusing trying to figure out wow gold where your newly conscripted units appear.

The Blue and the Gray looks like a highly polished board game, complete with unit cards and illustrated maps. There are a few special markers that identify broken railroads and such, but the map is relatively static. You will see your units sliding around the map in between turns but that's it. It certainly looks impressive for a board game, but it doesn't really take advantage of the PC in terms of its overall presentation. In particular, we'd love to have seen clearer markers for tactically significant features for the units.

Sound effects are thin and weak overall with forgettable weapon effects. The music is good overall, but there's so little of it and the games drag on for so long that it can't help but get repetitive. The developers missed a real opportunity here to include more of the rich and varied music from the time period.