The Dog's Brush: American Revolution game

I got to play a fun American Revolution game, using Black Powder and my uncle's large 28mm AWI collection and his fantastic frontier terrain. A game description and beaucoup pics after the bump.

We played an eclectic scenario, taking advantage of Black Powder's scale vagueness. Instead of a big battle between the Continentals and redcoats, we played a small raid: a small force of Loyalists, probably only a couple hundred troops, are attacking a patriot valley, with the objective of destroying the area's homesteads and terrorizing the population. I took command of four units of loyalists. My uncle, playing the local militia, started out with only a few units but got a randomized stream of reinforcements.

The game started with a bang: my Loyalists leveled a militia unit defending one of the homesteads and sent them packing. We burned one house. My forces advanced into the rugged terrain in the other half of the table, fighting through cornfields, woods, and farmyards. Victory looked briefly at hand, as my legion troops fought their way into the patriot village, but they were destroyed by the militia. I had to shuffle my troops around, feeding units into the fight as militia reinforcements trickled in.

Fighting went back and forth until militia reinforcements became too much to withstand and my Loyalist forces wore themselves out. Victory to the militia.

The game was quite fun---the Black Powder rules are easy and can be readily modified and added to to support scenario purposes. The American Revolution allows for some an interesting milieu of oddball uniforms and units, especially when you get the militias and loyalists involved. Thanks to the plentiful terrain this really felt like congested farmland in the eastern US.

Heavily overgrown terrain

Frontier house, defended by American militia

Three of the 4 loyalist units

First attack

Freaking sweet flashing lights inside the smoke. Yes, my uncle bought some of these when the Perry guys showed them off at Historicon a few years ago. Yes, they are a waste of money. Yes, they are super cool. (Obviously don't photograph too well..)