Reply To: Historical and Modern Wargaming – Where the "Fluff" is Real Life

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

I think we’ve talked before on how most rulesets for the period “struggle” to reflect the actual historical battles of the day (or rather try a refight using the OOBs and terrain of any AWI battle, and it’s almost impossible for the Americans to “win” a battle that they actually did on that day). Was this one of the reasons why you decided to kitbash your own set from the AD&D Battle rules?

 

Or was it rather you’ve used them before, and just like how the rules work. We’ve (over on this side of the pond) have tried “British Grenadier” (which seems to be the best option out of what’s available nowadays, but it still suffers from Americans being unable to achieve a “win” due to classifications on troops quality (with British Line being B or C class and things like the Guard Regts being A class. Yet even the best US units only can hope to be classed as C class (or “normal” of line troops), with the rest being D or E classification (A to E being, A equals best of the best and E class being troops that probably would have been better fielded with pointy sticks as they are more likely to injure themselves with a live musket). I first wondered if this was because all the rules were written in the UK (and perhaps suffered from a bit of national bias). But then again this period also has probably the largest amount of rules written by US authors and still suffer the same issues (so perhaps the bias was never there).

 

The AWI is a particularly difficult period to play in black powder as it’s asymmetrical in force projection. For the British they probably found it being a bit like their modern counterparts in Afghanistan (as you never knew if the man in civilian dress in the street next to you was friend or foe on the next day). The “Minute Man” could also be referred to as an “insurgent” in more modern parlance (and probably used the same tactics). So in the first part of the war the British tried to force a fight in an open battlefield (as that was how they were used to fighting in Europe), and the US forces (at first) rose to meet them in that battle….and lost. Later on the US forces started to work to their strengths and fought in rougher terrain (which had the British fighting at a disadvantage). And for the later half of the war the British learned how to fight in those wooded areas in open order while the US forces (well at the very least the continental line regts) were trained in close combat drills and in the effective use of the bayonet in a battalion sized charge (which also meant training the officers when and when NOT to order that charge).

 

So with the forces in the AWI constantly changing in tactics and ability throughout the period it’s hard for just the ONE rulebook to cover everything. We last played an AWI game using a kitbash of British Grenadier and Johnny Reb II (with the majority of the rules being JR II). We got “near” to getting what we wanted from the game, but one of the problems when you start writing or modifying existing rulesets is that’s it never “done” (or you’re forever getting ideas during and after the game), so once that “wall” is broken it’s a never-ending story of adjustments and redesign 😀

 

Anyhow, looking forwards to Part II of the game to see how it all ended up (although with one of the two regular US line regts already having left the field it’s not looking good for the US forces…