A Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam

A Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam is a two-player "monster" wargame (contains more than 1,000 counters) that simulates the 1862 Battle of Antietam.^[1] The game is a regimental-level recreation of the battle, using a scale of 1 hex for each 120 yards. Each game turn represents 20 minutes of time.

The boxed set contains:^[2]

• two 22" x 34" maps
• two rulebooks
• two six-sided dice
• two plastic tray with snap-on lids for counters
• 1600 counters

There are three scenarios included with the game:^[3]

1. Hooker's Attack: The early morning attack of Union Major General Joseph Hooker against the left flank of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
2. Hooker & Mansfield: A continuation of Scenario 1, where the Union XII Corps of Major General Joseph K. Mansfield joins the battle
3. The Grand Battle: Covers the entire battle.

In all scenarios, victory is determined by a combination of geographic objectives and casualties inflicted.^[3]

In 1976, Richard H. Berg designed a grand tactical, regimental level board wargame, Terrible Swift Sword, that simulated the Battle of Gettysburg. Published by SPI, the game won that year's Charles S. Roberts Award for "Best Tactical Wargame".^[4] Using the same set of rules, Berg created more games simulating Civil War Battles, several of them considerably smaller in scale, in what is now known as the Great Battles of the American Civil War (GBACW) series. Between 1978 and 1981, SPI published eight more of these games.^[5] Berg started development of the next game in 1981, another grand tactical game with 1600 counters that would simulate the Battle of Antietam. Berg added several new rules to try to simulate Union hesitancy during the battle, and the game underwent a long period of playtesting. In late 1982, just as it was judged ready for publication, SPI fell into financial difficulties. TSR suddenly took over SPI, reduced it to a subsidiary, and looked to quickly publish some of the games that SPI had under development, including Battle Over Britain and Berg's game about Antietam. Several changes were made to Berg's new rules, and the game was published as A Gleam of Bayonets. (Berg disliked the title, saying, "Personally I think it sounds like toothpaste.")^[3] It became the first Berg-designed GBACW game to be published under the TSR trademark, with artwork by Ivor Janci and Kitty Thompson.