"Looking for a rule set" Topic

I would like to fight AWI battles in 10mm where a unit equals a Regiment. I would like to fight battles of up to the size of Monmouth in an evening.

What would be a good set of rules to handle this?

Thanks in advance

Black Powder?

Try Loose Files and American Scramble.

Here is a link to how I interpreted the rules and a down load to the rules themselves.

link

Johnny Reb II
Regimental Fire & Fury

A stand is a regiment in Volley and Bayonet. There are also DBx variants. Are you looking at multiple stand units, or what?

I have down loaded Loose Files and American Scramble and am looking those over now. I'm looking at units that would be about 24-30 figures for a regiment of infantry. Multiple stands are no problem because from what I under stand I could build/buy stands(sabots?) to move them all at once.

The type of game I would like to be able to play is somewhere between 2000 – 12000 troops per side. With 10mm I think I would be able to stay on a smaller table at this size game.

From looking at the AARs here and other sites I like the way units look in the pictures of Black Powder. I like the linear look of the units.

Edit – Do the Black Powder rules give a good feel for the AWI?

At Monmouth, many of the American brigades were the size of British regiments.

I second Loose Files and it plays at a good speed. I've tried it with brigade card activation inspired by the TooFatLardies rules and think I've got the basis of a great game. I predictably call this mash up Lardy Loose Files. I guess in the same way that British Grenadier took Loose Files and ported it into the General De Brigade wrapper I've taken the same rule set and ported into a TFL wrapper.

I've made a couple of changes to the firing to allow for the unit quality to have an effect. I want to try it next with bigger units up to 12 bases in strength. If you base as three in a single rank as per LF you can use your units for other rules.

I tried Loose Files and American Scramble, and I thought it was like most Andy Callan efforts: a lot of great ideas that needed work.

To expand a bit on Timmo uk's oblique reference, British Grenadier is a more mature game system combining concepts from LFAS and General de Brigade. It's expensive now (only available in the Deluxe version) but if you live around GdB or GaG players, it might be an easy sell.

I also recommend trying Guns of Liberty, a great little game focused on the AWI period. It's fairly simple and straightforward, essentially a mashup of classic horse & musket gaming mechanisms, pretty easy to learn and teach. Currently you can only buy it directly from Eric Burgess, though he's recently said he'll release the 3rd version as a print-on-demand or PDF or something. Since version 3 has been about to be published any year now since at least 2012, I wouldn't wait. :-)

Winston Smith/John the OFM is a strong advocate of using TSATF for the AWI. If you like TSATF, that should work just fine, and if you have a lot of TSATF fans to play with, it's an excellent choice.

I settled on Regimental Fire & Fury, and I have a web page dedicated to my house rules for it. RF&F is no more "perfect" than anything else listed so far, but I like it about equally to GoL, and I have a larger pool of experienced RF&F players to recruit from, so RF&F is what I play.

All that said… I don't know that any of the above will do a battle as big as Monmouth in an evening. Of all the suggestions in this thread so far, I think only Volley & Bayonet and Black Powder may match that requirement. You might also take a look at Koenig Krieg and Warfare in the Age of Reason, both of which were designed with large 18th C. battles in mind.

Another idea I've toyed with but have yet to try: adapt Fields of Blue & Grey to the AWI. These rules are morale/disorder-driven rather than casualty-driven, and represent each battalion/regiment on the table while using the brigade as the unit of maneuver and morale. Those concepts are the right approach to get a battle like Monmouth done in an evening, but whether FBG works well enough, I can't say yet. FBG is free, so you can't beat the price. ;-)

Edit – Do the Black Powder rules give a good feel for the AWI?

Of course they do, but absolutely not. Do you really expect to get get a useful answer to that question on TMP…?

To really answer your question, you'll first have to define what the "feel" of AWI comabt was, and I think a lot of us playing the period are still working on that. Try reading With Zeal and With Bayonets Only and figure out how to translate that to a miniatures game, and best of luck to you, sir. Meanwhile, if you like the BP mechanisms and accept the abstractions, you'll probably like AWI BP just fine.

- Ix

You might want to look at Volley and Bayonet, given your scale and time constraints.

If you have enjoyed any of Sam Mustafa's games, you might like Maurice. There is a "lite" version here link

I would also recommend Brent Oman's Field of Battle 2. Especially if you want a little friction in your tabletop battles.

I would recommend Black Powder Rules. Hope it helps.

Take care

Andy

Thank You all for your responses.

I have the Loose Files and American Scramble rules that I'm looking at and and going to get enough miniatures to have about 6-8 units per side. I think this will be nice to get me started back into wargaming. I will probably move to a different set of rules at some point because I would like to fight a campaign but we will see.

We really enjoy American War of Independence. It fits the bill for what your asking for. When test playing we did Battle of
Brandywine in five hours. link

If you have a computer, you might want to consider the AWI version of Carnage & Glory II. You can read reviews of the rules on TMP and join their Yahoo group.

Most HMGS conventions have several Carnage & Glory games on their schedule, including Cold Wars in 2017. You can try out the rules at a convention to see whether you like them.

Most AWI battles, large and small (including Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, Eutaw Springs), have been played at conventions in under 4 hours using Carnage & Glory II.

Good luck.

I never thought any system which work for European wars will do for AWI unless twicked a lot. After all where in Europe woukd you have two 12000 men armies fight it for 7 hours and get away with only 500 casualties and a clear result? It would rather be 2000++

We released Fire and Discipline: The American Wars back in the 1990s. It was a variant of a 1980s title. The casting for the AmRev era represented 10 men. So both small 60 man and large 'firing platoons' could be represented. the original used the matrix combat system rather than a bucket of dice.
The 10mm basing was the same as 15mm bases.

Some examples of play and basing miniatures for the AWI rule set. YouTube link