"Thoughts on using TSATF for American Revolution" Topic

This started a few years ago when I just happened to have a bunch of washer based militia and Indians and Rangers. I added some Continentals painted green as Johnson's.

I used vanilla TSATF with the following minor changes:
Muskets use carbine range
The only rifles are … wait for it … those armed with rifles!
First class troops use the British tables.
Second class troops use Egyptian tables.
Settlers use Boer morale but shoot as Egyptians.
Indians roll dice to see which TSATF class of Irregulars they act as.
I did quite a few Wyoming Massacre games and did Bushy run.
These were fun games and actually seemed to be "realistic" in the results.
Then I wanted to do Lexington and Concord, so I got a bunch of LI and grenadiers.
Lately, I have been rebasing or basing a lot of Regulars on washers and had two or three games.
I think I need to add some ad hoc mods.

1) If you are not in column or line, Regulars will add 1 to all morale die rolls. This is to keep regulars from galivanting all over the place like you see in "normal" TSATF.

2) Since the sizes of my units vary tremendoulsy, from 6 to 24, there will be no roll for stragglers when charging.

3) An Ace affects the LOWEST ranking leader figure.

4) Unless you are playing with "savages", (Indians, Loyalist Rangers, a battle with bad feelings between Tories and Patriots, etc), ignore the "wounded" cards. All are taken off. Highly optional, of course, and varies by scenario.

5) When in a "zone" with other figures, artillerists are wounded/killed on face cards only. They cannot be singled out.
However, if they are not in a "zone", artillerists are merely Class II target.
"Zone" is to be as determined by a fair umpire or GM. I experimented with that this last Saturday. With easy going players, it should be obvious, but with win at all cost players, it might be an issue.
Line if sight figures behind the battery can be hit on face cards however.
Not specifically AWI, but something that has been on my mind for a while.

I am trying to develop some non fiddly rules to keep those in line who should be in line. This was not an issue with my original Wyoming Massacre games, with fleeing settlers pursued by Indians.

I am just throwing out a few ideas here. I don't intend to use Sword in the Forest, or Disperse ye Damned Rebels. I like the original just fine.
If anybody has any ideas for this join in. I don't guarantee I will use them, but may consider them.

I am going to try this method for when I do Cowpens soon.
TMP link
I just need to get a few units painted.

Up the morale roll by +2 for those who should be in line for not being in line. Regulars should be in line or column not as you say gallivanting all over.

Yeah, no need for regulars to be a fireworks display in the 18th Century.

I had LI galavanting about to take an artillery battery in the flank, but that's LI.

Any special rules for grenadiers?

No. Just British regulars. In TSATF, that's good enough.
Btw, bayonets vs non-bayonets is a +1 in melee. All rounds.

I like it John.
What's your beef with TSitF? I don't have them in front of me.

No beef. I just wanted to see how TSATF worked with minimal changes, and am pleased with the results.

Sounds like fun gaming. I might just give it a try. Thanks for the idea.

It all looks reasonable to me, though it might make militia a little too good.

There were some good militia, but there is always the Bashi Bazouks option.

The sad thing is that playing around with TSATF is keeping the OFM from Flames of Liberty development. It's just like going to Comiccon is keeping GRR Martin from finishing The Windbags of Winter.

I have had Foundry 5th Foot, Perry Highlanders, Old Glory Associators (Marines), Fife and Drum hunting shirt dudes, Old Glory von Donop, etc sitting around 85% finished for a long time. Now with this I am re-energized. I even dug out some Front Rank Highlanders. And Old Glory "pimp hat boys"!
Plus I got some magnetic bases from Wargames Accessories in the custom width I use for my Age of Reason games (but slightly deeper) so I can use them also for large battles. In fact Darrell, our AoR expert says I don't even have to do that.

I'd probably rate most militia as Egyptians across the board. Some special units might fire as Boers, but not the majority of them, IMO. Something fun to do with the militia is to not know their morale until they have to take a morale check, and then roll on a table to see what their random morale is for that battle.

I have reserved "Egyptian" classification for the bulk of Continentals, second line British, Hessians etc.
Militia obviously has to be not as good as that.

Let's not forget that in vanilla TSATF, Egyptians are good dependable troops while British are superb.

Okay. I haven't looked at the rules in awhile. I agree that they should be worse.

I've used TSATF for Star Wars (hordes of Sand People "natives" vs a few Tatooine units of stormtroopers and colonists)

BEST RULES EVER!

Use The Sword in the Forest variant. It is for the F&I War, but works fine for AWI.

I use my own variant for TS&TF for the Jacobite wars of the 18th century and it works just fine, with some modifications for period and some fixes for what I consider to be some niggling flaws in the original rules (e.g., I have an "Overrun" rule so that teeny tiny unit remnants are not used as sacrificial attackers or defenders to confound much larger units).

Formations are an easy fix -- just restrict your unit formations to a few basic types and forbid anything else and the "Leaderless to Stand" rules will provide a disincentive to break units into too many leaderless segments. What I would do for this period is allow only Column, Line, Open Order and Mass formations. Decide how you want restrict these (are Indians only in Mass, or can they also be in Open order? What about Light Infantry?). Basic units of Regulars or Militia would always have to be in column or line, and whatever isn't one formation is automatically treated as the other. Here's how I treated this:

***
Is It a Column?
To summarize:
If a unit 1) has five or more figures, and 2) is deeper than it is wide, or 3) is at least four ranks deep, it is a Column. All other configurations are a Line. A single file is treated as a Line.
***

Then you only have to treat Column as target class 1 (same as Mass) and Line as target Class 2 (same as Open Order). And play with the fire and melee and morale modifiers to encourage "correct" period formations and tactics.

I also had a thought to make spades a "save", a heart a definite kill, and the diamonds and clubs wounds.
This is to reflect the musket's lesser accuracy.
Or maybe all black cards will be saved.
I definitely need to retain carrying wounded and it's handicaps. Definitely with Indians involved, and Patriot Loyalist differences of opinions.
With pure British , maybe no wounded. Just remove figures.

I have a new slug of units clogging the production line, so I will be grabbing club game dates soon.

If the basic units are considered battalions, you might consider allowing a few figures per unit to represent Light or Grenadier companies (where appropriate) and treat them as Key figures -- they would receive appropriate bonuses for combat as long as they are present.

I would enjoy playing an AWI game with TS&TF rules -- I keep encouraging others I know with figures and interest in the AWI to work this up and let us all give it a spin, since I can't afford to embark on any new periods right now myself. Stick with your project, "Winston" and let us know here how it goes.

If the units represent battalions, the flank companies are invariably stripped from the mother battalion and converged in the AWI.
So the LI and grenadiers have their own units.
AWI purists may howl, but I prefer to call my units "units" and try to forego such technical terms as "regiment" or "battalion " I can always play Age of Teason for that.

Cowpens, Moore's Creek and / or King's Mountain are coming up soon!

As a suggestion, Muskets & Tomahawks could probably do just as well, and maybe require fewer mods.

I use M&T to play AWI pitched battles, with a few modifications – the most significant change we use, is to allot players a number of activation tokens per command which they choose when to order their units from (these order tokens are still regulated through the limits prescribed by the # of orders per unit class allowed in M&T). In non-skirmish-size battles, it might be problematic that hundreds of troops arrayed in battalion/regimental commands couldn't react to battlefield evolutions in their areas, as opposed to waiting for random activation opportunities occurring through the card deck pulling mechanic.

I love and I know TSATF.
So I'm not trying new rules.
Except of course my own Flames of Liberty, in development for years and selling for $250 USD when I finally get it finished.

Well M&T aren't really new rules anymore, but I get it.

Btw, good luck with Flames of Liberty….will that $250 USD include all the AWI codexes!? :P

Nope. It will be unsupported.

If the primary mechanic is to line up 1000 miniatures on each side, spanning the table with flanks anchored on the table edges, then move them straight forward and roll dice until someone wins, and you print it in hardcover on glossy paper with lots of pictures, it will be a huge hit.

- Ix

I have been thinking of using a version of TS&TF for Trenton at a Christmas season game. Something on the order of "The Sword and the Patriot" or something like that.

I don't see a problem with keeping the troops in formation. The original rules pretty much keeps the Imperial forces in formation. You never want to go to mass formation or lack of formation unless you have to.

We play at least six to seven games of TS&TF every year and formations are not a problem. We just did three Sudan games and I hosted a "Sword in North Africa" game and the French only broke formation when they routed or ran inside buildings.

But I guess you could have a rule that states you have to stay in formation. Use the mass formation only for being in disorder. However I may just use "Musket and Tomahawk".

TS&TF is the closest thing we as a hobby have to a universal set of rules. I just love them!

I ain't spending $250 USD on Flames of Liberty unless I know for damn certain there will be a Revised Expanded Edition available for $300 USD a year after the original publication! Consider the gauntlet hurled, Sir!

Interesting thought…
I wonder what the minimum amount of change I would have to introduce would be to get away with that. Maybe just adding a name or two to the Acknowledgements section would suffice.

Reverse all the tables so that high rolls are now good and low rolls are bad. Or vice-versa. Hours of fun!

But that's too much like work!

Reversing the rolls isn't that hard. I did it to make everything the same (high-good/low-bad) so some of my players brains wouldn't lock-up…

I have not seen them but is "Disperse, Ye Damned Rebels"
Larry Brom's variant for TS&TF?

No. It's a different game.