The Ken Burns’ Civil War Drinking Game

A ribald but very funny write-up of a drinking game set to the Ken Burns series, courtesy of the ribald but very funny Onion AV Club.  I don’t if I recommend actually playing this, though – the liver damage it threatens is instantaneous and irreversible.

We happen to have been born in a state where every third thing is named after Robert E. Lee, and we’ll tell you what—it is straight awesome being on the South team for the first five hours or so. You get to point and laugh as the North curses General McClellan over and over for his lack of backbone and fuckuppery as General Lee runs circles around him in Virginia kicking ass. Everything seems great. The North bumbles around screwing things up, and Gettysburg, the turning point of the war, doesn’t happen until four and a half hours in.

But we’d advise that anyone on the South team hold off on celebratory toasts when they win a battle in the early stages of the game, because once the tide turns, we feel that there are few more visceral ways for a modern person to experience how brutally things went south for the South than the power hour that is Sherman’s March To The Sea.

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