Civil War Stratego

I admit that I'm a diehard Civil War fan and collector. Adding Civil War Stratego to my collecion was a no-brainer. My wife saw the box and said "Let's open it up and play!" The look of shock on my face gave away the simple fact that this was purchased as a collector's item. Her response was, "Oh God, yet another piece for the collection!" Life is good.

They really missed the mark with the Civil War edition of Stratego. That's a pity because it looked like it had great potential, but it almost seems like they stopped putting much effort into it half-way through the design process. First of all the box shows an older, gray and bloated version of Ulysses S. Grant on the cover from a photograph taken when he was president. He was a trim young man in his forties with dark hair during the Civil War. Maybe that's a quibble, but it hints at the lackluster research that went into the game itself. As with the previous reviewer, I think the wooden playing pieces were a huge mistake. Unlike the plastic pieces of other Stratego games, these pieces have a tendency to fall over when even slightly bumped. I can understand their wanting to make them wooden to look more "rustic," but it has seriously hampered the playabilty of the game. I will give them credit for making the soldier images on the peices look different for both sides ... Read more

The civil war version has one problem, if you give the board a slight bump, the pieces all fall over. The version I had as a kid had much more stable pieces, they were hard to tip over. Playing with this version is frustrating.