"Is there a good introductory book to the land action?" Topic

I have enough spare Airfix Waterloo figures that I reckon I could quite easily put together "armies" for the War of 1812. My reading so far suggests that the generally small unit size lends itself to a man / figure ratio of something like 10:1. This makes a typical American battalion 20 to 30 figures and a British / Canadian one maybe as much as 60 figures, which would be a lot except that few battles seem to have exceeded brigade size. So one might have two or three such battalions but either way 200 per side is probably typical. Conveniently, both sides fought two-deep so I don't need to get busy with frontage arcana.

Cavalry seems pretty simple: there wasn't any. There were two British cavalry units with horses, plus some local troops rarely more than 50 strong and not battle cavalry anyway. Artillery likewise: nobody seems to have had a lot of it and it was a mish mash of calibres often within the same battery.

So this all seems doable and I've tracked down a couple of uniform reference sites – but is there a good primer reader? Any recommendations?

Also, for those who game this, a lot of actions seem to be about river crossings – is this the appeal here, that you're fighting battles that are of the Napoleonic era but not at all so in character? Do I need to get amphibious?

There may be broader sources, but these two works were useful to me for the Canadian and Louisiana theaters:

"The Invasion of Canada" by Pierre Berton
"The British at the Gates" by Robin Reilly

Not a 'primer' for the whole war but if you want to focus on some of the actions almost anything by Donald Graves is well worth reading.

The two books by Pierre Berton are my favorite. Extremely readable.
The Invasion of Canada
Flames across the Border

Don't neglect the classic. There's a single-volume War of 1812 taken from Teddy Roosevelt's History of the United States.

10:1 should work, but there is also much skirmish game potential. Cavalry. The war is not complete without the charge of the Kentucky Mounted Volunteers at the Battle of the Thames, but yeah--otherwise scouts and straggler lines.

Like AWI, part of the appeal is that the battles are small enough that you can both be the army commander and choose when to switch from ball to canister.

I wrote and sell a rule set based on the War of 1812. It is called Red Coats and War Hawks and it won a PELA award at Historicon just before covid.. It includes 12 or more scenarios, activation cards for small units, many of these battles are based on numerous skirmishes in Southern Ontario. The rules outline units needed for skirmish level games for the scenarios based on research. If interested contact me at battlefield_designs (@)rogers(dot)co.
Good luck. Hope to hear from you.
Regards,
Hitman
😎

I'd second any book by Donald Graves as good reference material for individual battles on the Niagara frontier.
Niagara 1814: America Invades Canada by Richard Barbuto is a good single volume history of that campaign.
For the whole war, see 1812: War With America by Jon Latimer.

I liked Amateurs, to Arms by John Elting. Been years since I read it. All land actions.

Oh, good call, Valmy! I'd forgotten.

Thanks folks.

I'm also mulling over a what-if campaign between the Americans and the French. It's tough to see how the latter even get there, but they fought each other at sea in 1798-1800 and the Louisiana Purchase happened because of French defeats in the Caribbean that made it untenable…so….

Never mass produced. Alabama in Flames: 1812-14. Covers the WWar in Alabama. Osprey style format.

War Of 1812 Land Operations by George Stanley

100 years old but this seemed to me to be a good start (and it's free).

gutenberg.org/ebooks/14582

Bad Roads and Poor Rations was written for people getting into the War of 1812. It has 59 scenarios plus information on figures. Its not rule specific and allows for small actions to big battles.