Monday 31 January 2011

How's it going MrF Jan 2011?

The Presidents Mansion is torched by The Brits!

Here we go again another year & what to do.  For some time now I've felt we've reached a peak with DBA based games, don't get me wrong it's still a cracking set of rules & it's fun gaming.  However a change is as good as the rest, the biggest problem was.. What else to play?  Lots of rules sit on the book shelves in our humble abode, a lot of them only good for sending me to sleep (mental note... I must sell them on Ebay or something).  A while ago whilst trawling through the web, I came along a set of images for cards & counters, but not where they came from.  Eventually I tracked them down to THE PERFECT CAPTAIN website.  These are sets of rules created by wargamer's who were disillusioned with the rules out there.  A brief  look at the periods listed & my interest was perked. 

SO what new period? I picked the War of 1812, some say Napoleonics with Indians...  Again it's different plus not many people have done it. A lot of the battles were small so no need for hordes of regiments, in large wooded areas. I had been thinking of running it a few months ago with DBA but.... Anyway, what scale?  I think we've collected enough 15mm lead, no more.  When I first started gaming (again) with the kids a few years ago, we collected a shed load of 28mm, mainly from the Del Prado Waterloo series.  After discovering DBA, we flogged a fair bit of it (what a mistake) at game shows.  Of course the good stuff goes (for a pittance of what you paid) & your left with the average.  We've got some Brunswick Cavalry/Infantry which we've never been able to get rid off.  So these were used as the base, a new paint job & a few conversions (The bit I love doing) produced some snazzy American troops & British Dragoons.  We're still putting together the forces, I'll put pix of what we've got later.  The John Bull Patriots, is aimed at the AWI & War of 1812,  for small scale actions.  I'll go over them later as we are just getting to grips with them now.  

Next the inspiration & research, another favourite of mine.  Book, videos & websites.  Osprey of course always comes in handy.  The best books I picked up were from Partizan Press including one of the best scenario books I've ever read, all in colour as well.  A big thank you to Dave of Caliver Books after the books I ordered 'disappeared' in the British Postal system, Dave promptly replaced them - cheers cracking service.      http://www.caliverbooks.com/  

The Perfect Captain Website

John Bull Rules

War of 1812 

The War of 1812

A cracking set of games from the Gourmet Wargaming Club


The John Bull Rules by the Perfect Captain

The War of 1812 - A Campaign Guide to the War with America 1812-1815 by Stuart Asquith
A cracking book, lots of info about the war year by year
Osprey's The American War 1812-14.  Both Us & British/Canadian uniforms

Osprey's The United States Army 1812-15.

The Niagra Campaign 1814

Scenarios for The War of 1812 by Stuart Asquith
Fantastic book, a lot of scenarios, lots of maps & OOB's all in colour too!

5 comments:

Chris said...

The War of 1812 is weird all right. Americans generally view it (if they are even aware of it) as a necessary step towards psychological independence from Britain. Brits tend to see it as a perfidous stab in the back while they were fighting Napoleon's bid for world domination. Canadians tend to see it as an attempted land-grab by the barbarians to the south.

There is a certain amount of truth to each point of view. Fortunately there was no real winner or loser, so no lingering bitterness.

Incidentally, check out the toy soldier wargame group on yahoo. Ken Cliffe's All the King's Men rules (free) are centered on both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In the file section are dozens of scenarios drawn up by yours truly (he said modestly).

Best regards,

Chris

MrF said...

Cheers Chris, I'll check out that group.

MrF

Chris said...

Mr F,
I'd love to get my hands on the Asquith books, but Amazon doesn't have them. Do you know where they might be found?

Chris

MrF said...

Now then Chris

Caliver Books in the UK mate...

http://www.caliverbooks.com/

Plus they ship anywhere, it's where I got mine from.

Joined that Yahoo Group, nice one!
I like the uniform pix, better than the Osprey Books...!

Cheers
MrF

Chris said...

Thanks. I was astounded at the amount of material available on the web. Something to remember when doing a picture search: similar search terms may result in surprisingly different results. I tried "1812", "War of 1812", "1812 uniforms", "War of 1812 uniforms", etc., to get an incredibly wide selection of pics to choose from. If something was especially good, I went to that website and followed links that looked to be productive.Best regards,

Chris