Phalanx Games has been publishing games for some years now. Lately, they've been diversifying a bit, which resulted in the excellent Maharaja. Before that they brought out wargame-like games. The third edition of A House Divided was one of their first releases, and it's the subject of this review.
As I've neither played the first nor the second edition I can't compare this edition to those. What I can do, however, is give you thourough playtest review based on eight or nine sessions with four different opponents.

Phalanx Games publishes its games in English as well as Dutch and German. The graphic design of the versions is mostly the same. I have the Dutch version but I'll use the English jargon.

Premise

A House Divided is a two-player wargame about the American Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Each of the players chooses a side to play: either the Northern States (the Union) or the Southern States (the Confederacy). The goal of the game depends on which side one plays. The Union needs to occupy the seven largest Southern cities. The Confederacy can win in one of three ways:

• Occupy Washington;
• Occupy a number of cities such that the maximum army size of the Union gets smaller than that of the Confederacy;
• Still be standing after 40 turns.

The players control troops of cavalry and infantry, which march across the American soil, occupying and fortifying cities and other strategic points.

Components & Presentation

The game comes in a largish box (37.5 × 27.5 × 5.5 cm.) absolutely packed with components.

• an eight-page booklet with the basic game rules.
• a four-page booklet with the advanced game rules.
• another eight-page booklet, this time with some optional rules
• one game board, depicting the Eastern States, measuring about 72 × 52 cm.
• 160 cardboard chits
• six six-sided dice: three in blue, three in grey

The booklets are full colour on glossy, somewhat flimsy paper. The unit chits are made from very sturdy cardboard, printed on both sides in full colour. The board... ah, the board. This, people, is a work of art. It's detailed, it's functional, it's sturdy, it's flavourful and it's very pretty. The art is done by Franz Vohwinkel, whom you may know from his work on the aforementioned Maharaja, Starfarers Of Catan, the Hoax deck from Blue Moon and a host of other games.
The chits practically fall from their sprue so no fiddling or knifing is required.

The rules of the Dutch edition are a bit vague at certain points. Some of these ambiguities are introduced by the inexact translation, others are already present in the English version. Alan Emrich, one of the developers explains and expands some of the rules on this site. There are also two Player Aid Mats there, which ought to have been included in the Phalanx edition.
The rules are not exactly difficult but they can be somewhat intimidating for a more casual gamer. Wargamers should feel right at home with the numbering scheme which divides the rules in neat paragraphs and subparagraphs. The general gist is fairly straightforward, but there are a lot of exceptions on which I'll elaborate later. Be sure to read the whole booklet before beginning play.

Unfortunately there are some additional problems:

• There are too few flag markers in the box.
• The colours of the opposing factions are difficult to distinguish in dimmed lighting. The dull blue and light grey of the markings and markers can cause confusion.
• Only the deployment of the default scenario is visually represented on a map. The three alternative scenarios only get simple listings. This makes set-up for players less knowledgable in American topography awkward and tedious. Even the inclusion of state names would have been a large improvement here.

Rules

As said, players control troops which are separated in cavalry and infantry. The main difference between these two is that cavalry moves faster but causes less casualties. A battalion begins as a militia. After promotion it becomes a veteran unit, and finally it's a crack unit.

The game proceeds as follows: each turn represents one month (or two months in Winter.) Each turn the Union player does his things after which the Confederate player reacts. Each player's part of a turn consists of four phases: movement, combat, promotions and recruitment.

Phase 1: Movement

Movement depends on the kind of troops and the transport lines. Each turn, one rolls on a six-sided die for the amount of marches one can make. Moving multiple troops from one place costs only one march, whether there are one, two or ten troops at the starting point. However, infantry moves slower than cavalry. Cavalry can make evasive manoeuvres. The Northern troops can move faster along the rivers, whereas the Confederates are blocked along the Potomac. The Union can make naval invasions if they roll a six. Troops can also extend marches to entrench themselves, making themselves harder to hit. Oh, and there are subtle differences between friendly and unfriendly railroads.

Playtest remarks: In practice we found the movement rules counterintuitive and hard to grasp, while little strategic depth was added. While I appreciate an effort at simulation, I think that it needn't involve a bunch of exceptions on top of an awkward table. We also quickly adapted an optional rule where the range of the march roll is made more narrow, and slightly favours the Southern states. Otherwise, the roll of the dice was very dominating in an otherwise nicely tactical movement phase.

Phase 2: Combat

This phase only occurs when the active player has moved his troops into nodes that are occupied by enemy troops. The defending player shoots first. For each troop the shooting player chooses a target (making sure that each enemy piece is being shot at, if possible) and rolls a six-sider. If the roll is at most the combat value the target is hit and the chit is turned over to its reduced side. A second hit will eliminate it and remove it from the board. Reduced pieces do not differ in any other way: their combat values stay the same as fresh troops. After all the defending battalions have shot, the attacker fires with all his troops. This alternates until a side either is wiped out or retreats to a neighbouring node. If there are more battles, the active player decided in which order battles are resolved.
There are rules for troops that have entrenched themselves or are in fortresses (they are harder to hit, giving a -1 to the attackers) and for attacks that have to cross rivers. In the latter case, the defenders get a +1 for the first two rounds.
After all battles are done, all reduced pieces are instantly 'healed'. What's more, the winner may promote one unit , which leads to the next phase.

Playtest remarks: This phase is pretty straightforward. Normal combat is mastered in two or three combats, and entrenchment and crossing rivers are learned after seeing it in action two times. The biggest problem we had is that the dice are once again very influential. Sure, better troops have higher combat values and hit more often. However, if you roll a bit bad and the enemy has some lucky rolls he can wipe out half a dozen crack commando teams with two or three cavalry units. This can be a big disappointment after all your careful manoeuvring in the Movement phases.

Phase 3: Promotion

Every turn, in the Promotion phase, the active player may promote one unit. Militia turn into veteran units, and veterans into crack units. That's all there is to this phase.

Phase 4: Recruitment

Recruitment, however, is a bit more tricky. Militia units that are killed or promoted are put into the recruitment pool. After promotions, the active player may recruit new units from this and does so by rolling one six-sider, with a roll of 1 counting as a 2. This number of units may be recruited and put on a friendly recruitment centers, with a maximum of one unit on each node. Recruitment centers are marked by a small coloured shield with a number on it and are the bigger / more important cities on the map. Most cities serve only as recruitment centers for one side, but there are few sites, such as Cairo, that can provide troops for both sides.
All this is checked by a Maximum Army Size, which is determined by the sum of all shield-numbers on all occupied cities. Say, If you lose a recruitment city which support 3 troops, your Maximum Army Size drops by 3.

Playtest remarks: This is where an amount of bookkeeping enters the game. There is a recruitment track on the board, but only the Maximum Army Size can be recorded, not the current army size. This is easily remedied by putting extra markers on it for the current army size or modifying some flag markers, but in a game as polished as this, this stood out. Also, it's a bit of a hassle to keep track of the current army size: the best way is to update it with every death and recruitment, but this is easily forgotten.

Drafts of the Union civilians

At three points in the game, four additional infantry militia are added to the Union recruitment pool to represent drafts. This happens in April of the years 1862, 1863 and 1864.

Playtest remarks: The Confederacy often has a hard time already, and the draft doesn't help in any way. There is a slight delay as the militia are added to the recruitment pool and are not directly placed on the board, but this hardly matters.

General playtest remarks

Explanation of the rules to a new player can take the better part of an hour, and gameplay is always longer than the sixty minutes that the box claim.
The two sides are inherently unequal and not everybody will appreciate this. In my games the Confederacy has a hard time winning. The Union has numeric superiority and threatens all the Southern coastal cities. A way to put the pressure on the Union is to focus on attacking Washington in the first half year at least, but a few unlucky rolls will quickly put an end to the threat. In all fairness I should add that I lose even when playing the Union. It was hard, however, to point to any specific mistakes I would have made. Once again I stress the importance of luck.
The movement of cavalry units is faster than that of infantry units, but only one cavalry unit is available in the recruitment pool of an army. It's hard to build up a cavalry force, especially since they lack the firepower of infantry so promotion and recruitment is often not very enticing. On the other hand, cavalry can be very handy as a rapid intervention force. Outmanoeuvring and outpacing the opposing troops is very satisfying.
The endgame is somewhat lacklustre. If you're losing the game, it's very hard to get back into the saddle. Often the defeat is pretty obvious and all that remains is going through the motions.

Optional Rules

There are lots of optional rules for A House Divided. One is for a shorter game: instead of going all the way, you only play 10 turns from July 1861 until June 1862, with some small addition to the victory conditions. Since I've found that a lot of games are more-or-less decided after 10 turns I don't think this option is a big deal. Also, it doesn't cut down on the complexity of the game. Rather I'd have seen a beginner's game with less units and easier movement rules to get into it.
More serious gamers, however, will be having a ball. There are two additional booklets with advanced and optional rules. I can't really comment on them as I haven't perused them much but here are some observations nonetheless. (Chris Farrell has a nice overview of the rules.)

The advanced rules are supposedly 'neutral' in that both sides have the same level of advantage from them. There are additional units such as generals and mercenaries and rules for them. Other extra rules cover things such as leadership, morale and supply lines.
Playtest remark: One of the rules favours the Southern player a bit in that it makes the movement rolls in the beginning of the war better for the Confederacy. We've used this rule as the Southern player was often a bit outgunned, plus the table that is used makes the movement roll a bit less random.

The optional rules are divided into neutral rules and rules that favour either the Union or the Confederacy. This is a welcome addition for those players (such as I) that find that one side often wins regardless of the opposition's playstyle. Rules here cover such things as maritime evacuations towards Washington, greater mobility for the Union across friendly railroads and the hampering of Union maritime movement if Fort Monroe had fallen.
The optional rules also include three scenarios where you start the game later (April 1862, 1863 and 1864). These make a nice change of pace if you're bored with the default beginning, but since there are a lot more troops on the map these variants are not recommended for beginning players. As I noted before, the presentation of the scenarios is weak as there are only lists with troops, no visual representation on a map. A nice thing is that there are victory conditions included here that can be checked in March 1862-1864. You subtract the respective Maximum Army Sizes from each other and check a table. For example, if the Union has a maximum of 16 higher than the Confederacy in March 1864, the game is considered a draw, while a difference of 14 or less is considered a Southern victory.

A really nice touch is that most rules are explained with cursive text that provide the reasoning of a rule. This provides additional historical information.

The verdict

Although I list a lot of problems with the game, these are often a bit nit-picky. Despite all my complaints the core of the game is very good and I enjoy it.
I really like the presentation of the game: there's a lot of content, solid chits and markers, and a truly stunning board. However, there are some minor problems here such as ambiguous rules and a lack of a summary card that are all the more apparent contrasted to the things that are there. So, Presentation gets a 4 out of 5. Ruleswise, A House Divided is very solid. It's an excellent light wargame that almost bridges the gap from wargame to 'euro' board game. Almost, but not quite. The rules are a bit too complicated (especially in the movement section) and playing time is well over the one hour that is advertised on the box. The roll of the dice plays a rather large role that makes the awkward movement phase less important than its complexity seems to indicate. There's a excellent replay value here, however, with a host of optional and advanced rules, which gives Substance a solid 4 out of 5, as well.
In short, A House Divided comes well recommended, especially for those 'euro' gamers that are interested in a wargame.

Please help support RPGnet by purchasing the following (probably) related items through DriveThruRPG.