The Brave Men, Badly Led series of miniatures rules was designed to provide fast-playing, fun and accurate games, covering the forgotten wars of the age of rifle and musket, when linear combat was the standard battlefield practice, and war was still considered a "glorious" thing by the men who fought it.
All the traditional elements of the age of linear warfare are included, but so too are less tangible elements - the chaos of warfare, the inability of officers to act decisively at critical moments, the less than arbitrary nature of movement for any unit of men operating in battlefield formation. Using the BMBL rules and the revolutionary "Event Deck," you will deal not only with failed offensive pushes, but sudden rainstorms, drunken generals, overcharged cannon, and the acts of God and Nature that made battles in this era anything but a sure thing.
All of this, and all but the largest battles can be resolved in four hours or less!
Our first volume, 1846 - Napoleon of the West, explores the bloody experience of the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, when North America's two largest military powers attempted to settle the matter of continental supremacy once and for all. Command American and Mexican forces in the war that effectively shaped the coming centuries on the American continent.
Play in the miniatures scale of your choice, using simple formations based upon three-stand battalions, and comfortably command up to a division per player with relatively small armies, no unusual dice or measurement mechanisms, and absolutely no rebasing required.
Polish your cuirass, sharpen your saber, hang your flags high. The time for war is now!
The rules are available in print or PDF format. The print version retails for $16.03 USD, and the PDF format for just $5.24 USD.
Because I have just finished formatting the files, etc., the book doesn't always appear in the search engine at Lulu. However, you can find it by going directly to our Lulu storefront (seen link below).
I will update the Black Army website soon as well with the relevant link information.
The print version, for those interested, is approximately 62 pages, spiral-bound, with historical illustrations throughout, a FAQ, and general background information on the war. In addition, as per request of several playtesters who want to game the war but are unfamiliar with armies of the period, I've included a very basic set of guidelines for building tabletop armies. It isn't perfect, but it will make building armies a lot easier than it might otherwise be, since orders of battle for this period are... very frustrating to mine through... to put it mildly.
1846 will be fully supported with scenarios, errata, and special rules for the Texas War of Independence and the Pastry War, along with other goodies, over the next few months. Feel free to join the official Black Army forum (Forum Noir) at blackarmy.activeboard.com.
This has been a labor of love, and though there are, I'm sure, still typos here and there, I am thrilled to see this thing in print (even if it's through an "ego press") after seven years of work.
Many volumes of BMBL to come: to include the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, the Russo-Turkish Wars, the Seven Weeks War of 1866, and the War of 1812, among others.