Any thoughts on Lincoln's War

Hi guys, haven't been here for a year Did any of you managed to play Lincoln's War? Looks great but I haven't read any review of the final product yet. I'll probably get it anyway as I need a game that covers the whole ACW but it would be nice to hear any opinions.

There was a tournament yesterday, so you'll probably see more about it soon.

S.

Interesting post today on BGG: Rules Update Status

Snippet below:

"Progress is coming along steadily, although not as quickly as first thought. Priorities are to make easily understood clarifications and fixes that everyone will understand. In many cases this is requiring a complete rewrite of entire sections, reordering, and added redundancy in areas where required. There are also several rules changes that we have tested which we believe will make the game more playable and a more interesting experience."

I don't own the game, nor have I played it, but I have observed the BGG rules forum from the sidelines occasionally. From reading the nature of the queries that have arisen, I definitely got the sense there were plenty of issues related to organization, insufficient clarity, and at times outright errors of omission (i.e., the rules fail to cover situations that arise).

Of course we're all aware that this is hardly unique to games, and especially so for wargames. But I still find the part in bold pretty astonishing. This game seems to have been the designer's lifelong dream to produce. Its Consimworld topic was created in October 2007. MMP began taking preorders in November 2009, and when that effort never got to the finishing line they went the Kickstarter route.

Fair play to them for supporting the game post-release, but I would really feel like a mug if I'd bought it and now saw that things are going beyond simple errata and clarifications. When things require hacking, chopping, and large-scale rewrites, doesn't that strike you as a fairly damning indictment of whatever playtesting/development process was used? Basically: what on earth was going on in all these intervening years?

It could either way. It could be genuinely broken or it could be that the designer is an over tinkerer. I don't know which for Lincoln's War. It reminds me of Clash of Monarchs, which has been change heavily (new setups, even a map patch) since release. Even though the game as written was quite solid, it's just that the designer was a perfectionist.