From: Roberto Chiavini <mumaye@mail.dada.it>
Subject: Another review

Fire in Mississippi (Blue Guidon Press)

Fire in Mississippi is another first design for a new DTP company, Blue
Guidon Press, whose owner, Scott Holmgren, is also the designer of this
little, fun, tense game on the battle of Corinth from the ACW.

The components are of very good quality for a DTP: especially the rules
booklet is very professional, with adequate examples of play; the
counters are nicely drawn, but you have to cut and paste them; the map
is neat, with a good blend of colors which doesn't offend the eye.

This is a simple design, on the beer and pretzels side of the hobby, but
with several nice touches, which make it a good choice for the beginner,
but also for the veteran player who wants to try this otherwise not very
reproduced battle (I remember a game by SPI on this battle, but not
other ones). 

Each player controls several divisions (4 for the Union and 3 for the
Confederate); each combat unit has rating for combat, effectiveness and
movement; there is no stacking allowed but for leaders and one artillery
unit over another one or an infantry unit.

The most peculiar rules are for the activation of the various division
leaders and for the sequence of the turn: each division leader has a
variable effectiveness rating that a player must roll equal or less to
activate the division leader and its units for that turn; if the roll
fails, that leader may be activate only, under certain conditions,
spending army command points (each army has 10 points for the 14 turns
of the game).

The other significant innovation of the game are command postures: each
player may choose among three different postures (attack – ready –
defense), that in turn are used to decide which of the 4 different turn
sequence to use. It's only apparently convoluted or complicated, as
normally the flow of the game is very easy to follow after a couple of
turns.

Most of the other features of the game are standard fare for any
grognard, and you may play after only a fast read of all the little
booklet.

As I said earlier, the flow of the game is easy to follow and the combat
situation is very interesting to simulate, even with rules as simple as
these (and not necessarily not realistic). Solitaire play is also good
(you may roll for the different postures instead of choosing them) and a
complete game lasts no more than 2/3 hours.

All in all I rate this game 6½ out of 10.