AUBURN – Miniature soldiers will be fighting Civil War battles on tabletops at 1 p.m. Saturday, June 22, at the Auburn Public Library, in a program sponsored by the Androscoggin Historical Society.

Elery Keene and his son Ben will act as game masters, explaining the rules, answering questions and helping to determine the results of combat properly and fairly. The public is welcome to participate.

This is how the games work: Two teams of four to 10 players play a four-hour game. One team represents Yankees, the other, Confederates. Each player is assigned to command a brigade of soldiers; some players may command artillery.

The game is played in turns of variable length depending on how much combat may happen in a turn. Each team tries to carry out a battle plan, conceived collaboratively at the beginning, to defeat the enemy. Each player makes adjustments to his plan, without collaboration, on a turn-by-turn basis, moving his toy soldiers on a table laid out with hills, roads, rivers and woods. Dice are used to determine the results of combat. The game is best for players 10 years old and older.

Elery and Ben, who live in Winslow, are avid game enthusiasts. Elery is a retired executive director of the North Kennebec Regional Planning Commission, an organization of municipalities in Kennebec and Somerset counties.