"My AWI Project" Topic

Over the past year I have toyed with the idea of creating large scale regiments and fighting battles using old school style war game rules (Featherstone's rules in his Wargamer's Handbook of the American War of Independence, Grant's The War Game, Young's Charge!, a possible adaptation of Little Wars and maybe my own attempt at an old school style of rules). I wanted to use a modified version of Featherstone's Organization which I'll list below

Infantry Regiment:
1x Officer
1x Drummer
2x Flag Bearers
40x Rank and File
(Light will have 2x Officers and 2x Drummers, no Flags. I haven't decided yet if this is also what I want to do for the British grenadiers, I know they were converged units and therefore did not carry flags)

Cavalry Regiment:
1x Officer
1x Flag Bearer
18x Rank and File
(It is hard to find mounted flag bearers, so the second command figure might just be changed to a second officer)

Cavalry Squadron:
1x Officer
10x Rank and File
(This is how I will probably represent most continental cavalry units)

Artillery:
1x Officer
10x Crewmen
2x Guns
(Featherstone actually does not give a way of organizing artillery in his AWI guide, but several other rule sets I have looked at have two guns in a single unit, so that's what I went with here)

So this is how the forces will be organized on the unit level but for each army I want them split into Brigades and the organization I plan to go with is based off of the Battle of Brandywine

British Army
1x Guards Brigade: 2x Guards Regiments, 2x Light Infantry Regiments, 2x British Grenadier Regiments, 1x Artillery Battery
4x Infantry Brigades: 4x British Line, 1x Artillery
1x Reserve Brigade: 3x Highland Infantry, 1x Artillery
1x Hessian Line Brigade: 4x Hessian Line Infnatry
1x Hessian Grenadier Brigade: 4x Hessian Grenadier Infantry
Unbrigaded Units: 1x Cavalry Regiment, 1x Cavalry Squadron, 1x Mounted Jaeger Squadron, 1x Foot Jaeger Regiment, 1x Queen's Rangers Regiment

To total it up: 2x Guards Regiments, 2x Light Regiments, 2x British Grenadier Regiments, 16x British Line Regiments, 3x Highland Regiments, 4x Hessian Line Regiments, 4x Hessian Grenadier Regiments, 1x Cavalry Regiment, 1x Cavalry Squadron, 1x Mounted Jaeger Squadron, 1x Foot Jaeger Regiment, 1x Queen's Rangers Regiment, 6x Artillery (44 units)

Continental Army
5 Divisions each comprised of: 1x Artillery, 2x Brigades of Continental Line (each of): 2x Continental Regiments
1 Militia Division comprised of: 2x Brigades of Militia (each of): 4x Militia Regiments
1 Reserve Division: 1x Artillery, 1x Brigade of Continental Line: 3x Continental Regiments, 1x Brigade of Cavalry: 4x Cavalry Squadrons, 1x Light Brigade: 2x Light Infantry Regiments

To total it up: 23x Continental Regiments, 8x Militia Regiments, 2x Light Regiments, 4x Cavalry Squadrons, 6x Artillery (43 units)

Has anyone here attempted, or successfully pulled it off? Any tips about scale (I'm leaning towards 10mm or 15mm, or if money becomes a huge roadblock going down to 6mm)? Tips for a table size needed to fight the battle and any other advice you can give me would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

- Dan

I'm assuming you are going to use a painting service. It took me a year to paint up a total of 6plus regiments using 16man units (1 to 20). I never did any Cav. These were 28mm Perrys.

Use my guide:
TMP link
This way you can start playing very soon.
Start with small battles and if you find its not your cup of tea you aren't out much.

I totally, completely, 100% second Winston Smith.

Also keep your eyes out for painted figures for sale. It really helps to jump start a period to start with a game-able amount of painted lead, and if you don't like the gaming experience, you can always resell the painted stuff without losing any money. (That's the theory, anyway. I have yet to actually sell any painted collections I acquired this way….)

- Ix

Just remember that the British light battalions were converged just like grenadier battalions. John's (Winston Smith) guide is a very good plan to use.

Jim

You may want to have 2 hornists instead of 2 drummers for the British light infantry battalions. Also, at that number of figures you might want to consider representing the "point platoon" of riflemen who headed the column on the march; two figures should do it (each light company had two or more men armed with rifles, who were "converged" under the command of a subaltern). British light dragoon units had two rifle-armed men per troop of 30.

In terms of artillery, Featherstone wrote his book before a lot of information became available. Whilst the British also tended to have a reserve artillery park with 12-pdrs and 5.5" howitzers, both sides used their artillery as "battalion guns" (more accurately "brigade guns" in the Continental Army) and attached them to the infantry. Thus each British converged flank company battalion (bear in mind these had 12-14 companies) had a pair of guns – 6-pdrs for Grenadiers, 3-pdrs for Lights; each Hesse Cassel infantry regiment had a pair of 4-pdrs. Each Continental brigade had two 4- or 6-pdrs attached, although occasionally larger brigades might have four guns; the Americans tended not to use larger calibre artillery in the field.

Hope that helps.

I found John the OFM's thread (as linked in Winston Smith's post) of where to start the AWI suggestions in valuable as a new musket era a player. I followed his coat/facing color suggestions for my 28mm Continentals and plan following his suggestions for when I get my British set. I still have a lot I don't know about the era, but at least a have reference point to start from.

If it's Brandywine that you're interested in, then a possibly helpful piece of trivia when painting up the British is that of the 18 line battalions present (so excluding the Guards and combined grenadier and light infantry units) 6 had yellow facings, 3 had blue (i.e. the Royal regiments present: 4th, 42nd and 23rd), 3 had white (including 2 battalions of the 71st highlanders), 3 had green/dark green, 2 had buff and 1 had black. In the AWI generally, the most common facing colour of British battalions that fought seems to have been yellow (or shades thereof).

I would suggest ditching the cavalry component and focus on infantry to speed up the delivered project.

@DanLevi

I did a project like this for the Peninsular campaign. I picked several British/Portuguese engagements and based on the common Brigades and units involved put together a force suitable to play using Black Powder. I had a post in the Napoleonic gallery thread of what I painted in 28mm from end of Dec 15 to the end of Jan 16.

I am, like you doing the same for AWI but in 10mm just for something different as I have not painted in this scale before.

John the OFMs post was a great write up on how to get started, many thanks.

I wish you good luck.

cheers

I have decided to start a blog to keep me on track with the project and motivate me to finish it (always my biggest problem, i get easily distracted). Here is the link if you would like to follow along
link

Thank you all for your helpful tips!
-Dan

Hello Dan!

I've read your postings and your blog and think I might have a couple of suggestions that could help you with your project. I'm at times a little long winded and I'm sure you will have a number of questions so rather than tie up TMP perhaps it would be better if you contact me at glennrpearce@hotmail.com

Best regards,

Glenn