Battle Cry Online

For those of you who don't already know, the Commands & Colors system designed by Richard Borg is my favourite wargaming system for two players. The first wargame to use this system was the American Civil War-themed Battle Cry which was published by Avalon Hill (Hasbro) in 2000. I bought Battle Cry and had a lot of fun with it. Then along came other versions of the C&C system such as Memoir '44 (WWII), C&C: Ancients (Ancients) and BattleLore (Fantasy) and sadly Battle Cry didn't get played much by me any more.

Interestingly, of the four current Commands & Colors games, I would probably rate Battle Cry the lowest. The reason for this is that the C&C system has evolved over time and there are certain parts of the Battle Cry rules which could do with updating. Anyway, having said that, I still believe Battle Cry is a fantastic game.


I was very excited to recently find out that Battle Cry can now be played online at Gametable Online. Last week I created an account and played a few games against the computer opponents, trouncing the AI in two games in quick succession. This afternoon I played my first online game of Battle Cry against a human opponent in real time and it was a different story.

The game I created was the battle of First Bull Run. I played the Confederates. It was a tense, nail-bitingly close battle but I'm very pleased to say that I went on to win the game 6 flags to 5 flags. It was a historical result as well with the Confederates defeating the Union.

I found the game commands simple to operate and it played very fast. It was also very exciting playing against a human opponent. I think Battle Cry might soon join Blue Max as one of my online games of choice.

Oh, by the way, did I mention it's free?