There has been quite a bit of discussion here about which rules to use, so I emailed Daniel Broh-Kahn, who ran the two A House Divided tournaments at the World Boardgaming Championship.

Basically, the Advanced rules were used, with no optional rules, unless both players agreed.

There are three session reports at the WBC website:
* 1999
* 2000
* 2001

All the games were 10 turn scenarios.

The "rule of 7", was used to minimize luck: The sum of your marches die roll and your recruiting die roll in a month is always seven. As all scenarios start with a 1 for marches for both sides, things get bloody quickly.

In 1999 and 2000, they tried to follow the campaign game over the rounds - in other words, 1861 for the first round, 1862 in the second round, 1863 in the semis and 1864 in the final.

In 2001 they abandoned this in favour of the 1861 scenario throughout as it had proved the most balanced.

By 2001, there were concerns that the short scenario favoured the Confederates, as they can play suicidally on the last turn:



I'll give this ruleset a try, once we are up to trying the Advanced Rules.

Thanks for posting this.

"With 12 entrants, four expressed a desire to play the North, four desired to play the South, and four had no preference."

***

"Much to the gamemaster's delight, the first six games ended in a balance of wins for each side."

***

"In order to play a balanced scenario worthy of a battle for the championship, both players agreed to forego the proposed 1864 scenario and once again play the 1861 scenario, which had proved to be so balanced in tournament play. Terry took the North and Tom the South, where they had each won before. In an exciting, tension-filled game that came down to the last die roll, Tom Cannon pulled off a victory as the South... (from the WBC 2000 AHD page linked above)

--The first quote seems like a great complement to the game in general.

The next two quotes seem strong recommendations for the 1861 scenario! And that I think is my biggest take-away from their experience.

Cheers.

Regarding the rule of 7, how does that take into account the rule that 1's are counted as 2's? Or is this rule absent from the current edition?

I believe the rule of 7 applies just to the dice rolls, so if you roll a 1 for movement, it is converted into a 2, but you still get 6 reinforcements.