"Favorite larger battle AWI rules?" Topic

Asking for a friend who bought my "element based" units.
I still have my skirmish based figures for smaller battles.

What rules currently available do you like? And why?

It's also important to tell me why you DON'T like a particular set.
For instance, I really dislike tules where you have to bleed off "disruption points" to be able to do anything. It paralyzes the game.
I shall name no names. After all, I started this thread. You need not feel bound by this.

I like my own link
- I wonder why? – they are DBM element based so may not fit in with yours, but at least they are free!!!

Maurice works well and always gives a good game

I've recently been into Rebels and Patriots. As I age I like simpler rules and something you can actually finish in <2 hours.

I like the rules for the simplicity and few rules easily memorized.

I biased here but we've used A Gentleman's War for AWI several times. They're fun, you can give units qualities to reflect historical performance and they can accommodate a number of players.
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We have also tried Fife & Drum rules for AWI wargaming,
I found they gave a good game, easy to learn, believable results.
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Saratoga Soldiers by Gettysburg Soldiers. It is a fairly simple rule set that still gives a good game.

If you want to fight all of Brandywine, I would look at Volley and Bayonet.

Volley and Bayonet. It's been my go to for "full battles" forever. Easy to play and get a result.

Fire and Fury's Variant for the AWI link

I like British Grenadier because of the tactical detail, which reflects the realism of the period. Also it is similar to General de brigade, which I like and use. However, I dislike disruption points, so, I don't use them.

Rebels and Patriots, while technically written as a skirmish game works just fine with any troop representation. Typically 12 stands per unit, could be 12 individuals or 12 element stands.

Bonus points for rules sanity, only have to remember the one system if you're playing skirmish and big battles.
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Ill second Saratoga/Gettysburg Soldiers. Easy system that allows you to generally follow period "tactics" as we generally understand them; I'd call it a division a side/player level. Individual units are regiments. I only have two qualms:

1. Skirmishers are allowed, but really serve no purpose in the game; they are ineffective at fire, gain no additional survival bonuses, and don't effectively screen formed units. Only cavalry can screen (which seems a-historical).
2. When many things are abstracted, oddly enough, artillery isn't. Hits are tracked against the gun, crew, limber and horses. Lots of odd detail for that one particular arm.

Both rules easy to house-rule away. If you don't like house rules, go for Black Powder. Rebels and Patriots is decent, but does not really capture period tactics well other than as a skirmish game.

I confess my attraction to the Southern Campaign and feel Regimental Fire and Fury does a great job of addressing those battles.

I also really like Rebels and Patriots as a semi-skirmish game. Easy to teach and easy to learn. I am a Daniel Mersey fan, and one thing I really appreciate is the looseness of the rules and the ability to add scenario specific items as needed.

I've found Regimental Fire & Fury to be my consistent favorite. It's about the right level of detail for players to handle brigades, the C3 & morale are built into the maneuver system, and it has lots of dials and knobs for tuning units to feel different (slow & steady Hessians, dangerously aggressive redcoat grenadiers and lights, fragile militia, better and worse Continentals and redcoat line, etc.). There is linear-period drill built into the rules, but I rarely have enough experienced players to use them (I have a hard enough time getting players to dress ranks!). With a GM who knows the game well, it can play pretty quickly, though as with all versions of F&F the close combats can really bog down the game. FWIW, I don't like the "open order" rules in the official RF&F AWI supplement – I find it way less fiddly to use Extended Line as "open order" and Line as "close order", and the game works better anyway.

I've enjoyed Guns of Liberty a lot, both running it and playing it. My biggest complaint is the "wall of modifiers" – all combat and morale rolls have long lists of DRMs, which is slow for new players and saps confidence in the results (was the arithmetic correct? Too late now!). But it's also an extremely honest old school game without hidden gotchas.

I want to like Rank & File for this period, because the simplistic straightforward nature of the rules matches the character of the Revolutionary War period. However, R&F is a bloody game and needs adjustments for a low-casualty, morale-based conflict. I think R&F also needs a lot of help to get the feel of different troop types, nationalities, morale classes, training, and personalities into the game – it's nearly devoid of C3 rules, and it wasn't the weaponry that distinguished units in the AWI. R&F is an amazingly easy framework on which to bolt on house rules, but every time I set out to do that I wind up with a pale imitation of Regimental Fire & Fury, so I just go play RF&F instead.

- Ix

Ah yes, the search for THE set of AWI rules. I started with British Grenadier, but while OK, they were a little fiddly – Disruption Points (DP)…

For a long time, I used a Fire & Fury based set (pre RF&F, which I also did try). I've become much less enamored with F&F over time, mainly due to pace of play (due to the virtually complete half-turns making up a single full turn) and having to do the labels. All that being said, they did provide good games.

I've also tried Loose Files and American Scramble (also too fiddly with even more DPs), Guns of Liberty and some other set I can't remember the name of (one used D20s and the other D100s, both way too many modifiers as Ix mentioned for GoL), and a new set (Rise and Fight Again?) from a kickstarter that like SO many new sets of rules these days appeared to suffer from a complete lack of proof reading/editing. Also like Ix said, I tried Rank & File. With mods (e.g. C2) it works great for SYW, but works better when units are roughly the same size, and not too small. I also tried the rules from Little Wars TV – Live Free or Die. These I found went too far the other way – too vanilla.

So where am I now? I also use Rebels & Patriots, just treating a 12-figure unit as a battalion. It works OK and plays quickly. I also use Black Powder, with some mods – e.g. a change to the turn sequence to put shooting before movement. I most recently tried Valour and Fortitude. It is essentially BP-lite. You can't beat the price, but for me I'm still not 100% sold on them.

I am hardly a hard core aficionado of the period but my occasional forays have exposed me to a fair number of the rules listed already and Regimental Fire and Fury was my favorite.

Land of the Free has the big advantage of classing units by size without rigidly defining them. There are suggestions for the number of bases in a small, medium, etc unit, but they overlap a bit and are flexible in what they represent on the battlefield as well. Hard cover, iirc from Osprey. Neither the best nor the worst, and they do stretch to most of black powder North America.

Not for big battles but I love The Perfect Captain's "Patriots!". Each base is nominally a platoon, grouped into companies. Small actions, what military historians would call "skirmish" and wargamers would call "small unit" battles. Great fun, lots of flavor, available free from the files section of the Perfect Captain Facebook group. Fans were good enough to archive the TPC games there. They may be available elsewhere on the web as well.

Black powder? It has modular units that can 'plug and play' most of the fiddly rules plus it is a Brigade level system.

Plays pretty quick too….

Fire and Discipline, a 1:10 troop ratio. So units from 1 to sixty men can be represented on one stand. Larger units take multiple stands.
Uses old style rules since it was first released in 1986. Later expansions focused on other eras.

We have been experimenting with an AWI version of Chris Pringle's Bloody Big Battles and loving it.

"Sons of Liberty"

These are our club rules. Regimental/Battalion level, as God intended it. Can play any size battle you want. Easy and Fun. They are free. PM me and I will send you a set or if you are on io Groups you can get an annotated copy here, PDF link

I hate "British Grenadier" because of the stupid disruptions. I love their scenario books which I use as a starting point for my scenarios.

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John,

I thought you guys used AOR for the AWI.

We do, sometimes. We think it's a bit too generic.
It's a Goldilocks thing. 🙄

I am surprise that DAF hasn't chimed in with his rules.