Oh boy am I exhausted! It’s about 8:00pm Sunday night and we just left the convention. SDHistCon is officially over for us. We just had 3 full days of gaming and as always had a great time. Overall, we played 8 different games over the 3 days, shot 5 videos and spoke with lots of great people. This convention continues to be amazing and we will definitely be returning in the future.

Today was a bit slower for us as we really only played 1 big ass wargame. We had promised Mark Miklos, who is the series designer, that we would play him in a 3-player game of Battles of the American Revolution Savannah from GMT Games. In case you don’t know, Battles of the American Revolution (BoaR) is a tactical level wargame series that portrays various battles of the American Revolutionary War. The series is a hex and counter wargame with Combat Results Tables, and uses tactics cards to determine the stance of both attackers and defenders to gain modifiers to combat rolls.

Savannah was published in 2005 and is volume IV in the series. It covers the events from September 10th to October 9th, 1779, as the Franco-American Allies mount their first significant cooperative effort against the British in North America during the Revolutionary War at Savannah, Georgia.

The reason Mark wanted us to play the game is that it is a 3-player game designed to create tension between the 2 Allies the French and Patriots as they must cooperate and draw from the same set of resources in the turn of event cards and diversions as well as Momentum Tokens. The cooperation is important but each side will earn their own victory points and only 1 player will be crowned as victor.

Savannah is a bit of a change of direction in the series as there are several new mechanics including an abstract siege and bombardment table, and the already mentioned random events deck. Unlike previous games in the series, initial turns are strategic, reflecting troop movements over 1 and 2-day periods and allowing for the building of defenses by both sides in the firm of trenches and redoubts. When the American/French player decides to assault the city, the game switches to the familiar tactical game turns reflecting a single hour of battle. This was a very interesting experience and was quite different from our experience with Brandywine.

We played for about 6 hours and made it to turn 21 of 25 when Alexander and I decided to concede as we just couldn’t muster the needed attack strengths to be effective with our assaults. Mark’s British artillery was very effective and he typically would hit us about 60-70% of the time causing disruptions and retreats which would undermine our combat prowess and made it so we just couldn’t get it done.

My French bombardments were pretty effective as I hit a few times and rolled well enough to blow 2 breaches in the outer defensive walls of the city of Savannah. This was where I would choose to assault as they would not gain the defensive bonuses from the fortifications.

We had a great time with the game and we are really glad we had the opportunity to play with Mark. He is a great guy and we love his enthusiasm for this history and for the series. I look forward to playing other volumes and he recommended that we need play Eutaw Springs.

After we played, we got together with Trevor Bender to get a quick look at the upcoming Korea: Fight Across the 38th appearing in C3i Magazine #38 from RBM Studio. Korea: The Fight Across the 38th recreates the opening salvos of the Korean War. It is the third volume of the C3i Combined Arms Series, after Battle for Kursk: The Tigers are Burning, 1943 and Desert Victory: North Africa, 1940-1942.

The series rules have been adapted to capture the ebb-and-flow of operations as well as the rugged terrain and the logistical challenges faced by each side and will be featured in C3i magazine #38, which will be out in December 2024.

The game loosely resembles the earlier award winning Kursk game. However, Korea in 1950 is not central Russia in 1943, so this one is very different and is really an interesting subject and implementation of the series in a small format wargame that plays in 3-4 hours. We were able to shoot a short video with Trevor and I am very much looking forward to this one.

Well that is a wrap on another very interesting convention here at SDHistCon. We had a great time and played a little of games including Shiloh – The First Day from Revolution Games, Crisis: 1914 from Worthington Publishing, Common Sense upcoming from GMT Games, Virgin Queen from GMT Games, Greek Tragedy from Blue Panther, Guerre Eclair from Nuts! Publishing, John Company 2nd Edition from Wehrlegig Games and BoAR Savannah from GMT Games. That is a lot of good games. And I cannot wait to get back here again next year!

Thanks for following along and I hope that you enjoyed reading about our experience.

-Grant