Nathan Bedford Forrest would have made a great Civil War game. As the leader of a small group of cavalry, he was mobile, independent, and brutal, not unlike a character in Diablo. He was a big fella, powerful and charismatic and not afraid to get his hands bloody by fighting with a blade. He looted cities, fought in famous battles, and wrought havoc behind enemy lines. He pioneered the art of mobile warfare, doing blitzkriegs while the Germans were still afraid of France. He probably had like an 18 in melee, leadership, and tactics. Over the course of the war, he leveled all the way from a private to a brigadier general. You could make him an action game, an RPG, or a strategy game. There could be stealth. It could be M-rated, but educational.

Unfortunately, Forrest was involved in an unfortunate episode involving the massacre of black Union soldiers who'd surrendered. Ouch. Plus, there was his post-war dalliance with the KKK. Double ouch. So we probably won't be seeing any Nathan Bedford Forrest games.

But luckily for developer Tilted Mill, there's a guy named John Singleton Mosby, who's sort of a lite version of Forrest, minus any icky racial overtones. So the next game from the guys who brought us SimCity Societies, Children of the Nile, and Hinterland will be Mosby's Conferderacy, one of the most intriguing concepts for a videogame I've read all year. Click here for details.

(The picture is from a Civil War artist named Don Troiani.)

(UPDATE: Tilted Mill designer Jeff Fiske posted here some interesting comments about what makes Mosby uniquely suited to the kind of game they're making.)