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Hey everyone, im looking at getting into either a Civil war, Revolutionary war or most likely Napoleonic War. i personally like the British armies so most likely rev war or Napoleonic
Can i get some suggestions for inexpensive/ less expensive models and rule books??
FMJ

We have used Muskets and Tomahawks for a while to play American War of Independence on a Skirmish level, they are good rules but the card driven system can be abused in list building by super competitive players.

Others for Napoleonic smaller scale engagements we have played with both Song of Drums and Shakos and Sharpe Practice by Two Fat Lardies with my preference being the later. Sharp Pratice is available as a cheap download PDF to.

http://toofatlardies.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=6

As for models we are fairly spoiled by the amount of plastic available now both Perry and Wargames factory do AWI plastics covering infantry and militia.

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore/horse-and-musket

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/index.php?cPath=22_62&osCsid=g7sn2es5lhqncsfej4c9glpjg3

Things are even easier for the Napoleonic period as you get more range in the plastic available including cavalry, artillery and infantry. Again Perry miniatures have some of the best stuff but also a couple of other suppliers to keep in mind with Victrix having a great range of models.

http://www.victrixlimited.com/collections/28mm-napoleonics

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/napoleonic-wars-1789-1815/plastic

Sam Mustafa has written rules for Napoleonics and American Civil War that I think are great.

Lasalle is a tactical level Napoleonics game, and Blucher covers more grand strategy.

Longstreet is the Civil War ruleset.

Black Powder by Warlord Games will answer all your needs.

can you use 1/72 scale for black powder??
i figured i could get more models for cheaper using that scale but iin the long run it may screw me since most players use 15mm correct ?

FMJ

 fullmetaljacket wrote:
can you use 1/72 scale for black powder??
i figured i could get more models for cheaper using that scale but iin the long run it may screw me since most players use 15mm correct ?

FMJ

Any of the popular Wargaming scales can be used for Black Powder if you have a few like-minded people to play in that scale with you.

 fullmetaljacket wrote:
can you use 1/72 scale for black powder??
i figured i could get more models for cheaper using that scale but iin the long run it may screw me since most players use 15mm correct ?

FMJ

Black Powder and Sam Mustafa's rules both allow you to use pretty much any scale you want.

Yep. My group plays Hail Caesar and is starting Black Powder at 15mm, halving the ranges, and changing to a smaller base/frontage. It works incredibly well.

We do play with a few more "gamey" rules changes for ease of play. It makes things less historical, but also more fun to play casually.

It easily becomes a game you can play hardcore historical, or make it more casual.

Black Powder is a good entry point to any of those periods for set-piece battles. However, it does have larger troop sizes and big tables aat 28mm. If you have played Warmaster you know the basic command and control rules.

Muskets and Tomahawks is great for AWI. It captures the less "formal" nature of the AWI skirmishes. However, it isn't so good at set-piece battles.

For ACW I have heard good things about Longstreet, Regimental Fire and Fury, and Johnny Reb. Longstreet is card driven and some people don;t like that feel for their wargames. However, it is a pretty slick system. The other two are more traditional in design.

For Napoleanics, the choices are dizzying and I am excited to see some more suggestions.

Ok, what ive seen with most napoleonic games or any Musket and cannon games is there is no model removal, just markers you put next to the units , and usually 1 unit of say 20 little guys represents 100, personally, ide rather see the 100 guys and remove casualties from the board, any game system that does that??
FMJ

Anyone tried Republic To Empire?

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/product-521.html

 fullmetaljacket wrote:
Ok, what ive seen with most napoleonic games or any Musket and cannon games is there is no model removal, just markers you put next to the units , and usually 1 unit of say 20 little guys represents 100, personally, ide rather see the 100 guys and remove casualties from the board, any game system that does that??
FMJ

I can not think of any 1:1 scale Nappies, because the scale of the smallest tactial units not be suited, especially at 28mm.

If you think a Battalion is the standard Tactical size we are looking at:

1 grenadier company = 140 men
4 x fusilier company = 4x140 men
1 voltigeur company = 140 men

total 840 men/ bataillion. In theory 4 "bataillion de guerre" + "one bataillon de depot" with only 4 companies for each regiment.

So that's a total of 108 officers and 3862 soldiers (18 February 1808 decree) for a French regiment, in theory.

Now, imagine that all on the table top, with figure removal for casualties. Nappies/ACW are just not the right scale for those type of mechanics. Plus, there wasn't really "skirmishing" int he sense we talk about it in Wargaming.

true, i guess your right... but if that was on the table top, it would look pretty bad ass right? hahaha
FMJ

I expect full historically accurate numbers would likely would be wieldy in a very small scale as 6mm, don't play in 6mm so I wouldn't know of any good rulesets designed for that scale and period though.

Songs of drums and shakos is great for Napoleonic skirmish games.

 JamesY wrote:
Songs of drums and shakos is great for Napoleonic skirmish games.

I don't deny that it is. But he just was looking for Napoleonic mass battle rulesets not skirmishes.

We did 1:1 scale ancients in 6mm in the 1980's.

It was fun exactly once. Then it became too fiddly to be able to deal with.

And that was using rules where 1model = 20men. So each 25mm base held 206mm figures (which was still packed quite closely).

That would have been difficult to do with full sized Ancient Armies of 10,000 - 50,000 men (what we did was a Dark-Ages/Medieval game with armies of about 5,000 men each).

Since that experience, we just stuck with 15mm and 25/28mm figures (15mm for Napoleonics).

As it has been explained, it would be hard (no doubt how impressive) to do a 1:1 28mm Napoleonics game.

I have NEVER understood the attraction to individual figure removal in set-piece battles. But then I read a lot of military theory in my teens for Renaissance, Ancient and Napoleonics (and SYW) periods which detailed the differences in behavior between the behavior of individuals and a large number of men fighting as a cohesive unit. A lot of the assumptions about weapons that work for units do not work in a skirmish setting (like allowing Spearmen to Attack from behind another person. With fewer than about 50 Spearmen, it just doesn't work, because the enemy can break off individuals from a smaller group, eliminating the ability to fight in that fashion).

I do like Skirmish games, especially for things like the French & Indian Wars, or Dark Ages period skirmishing (which is basically what happens with Role Playing Games that use miniatures). And I LOVED doing Western/Cowboy gunfight gaming (I miss my Cowboys and Outlaws). We would recreate Gunfights from Sergio Leone films...

But for Massed Unit, Set-piece battles, units pretty much remain nearly intact until they break. Different periods would have different rates of degradation, with some periods seeing unit strength erode more slowly, and others more quickly (Napoleonics was pretty much in the More Quickly category - units would seem to be fine, and then suddenly vanish, with all of the men breaking and fleeing. Ancients conflicts would see the degradation occur more slowly, with units seeing men dying off, until they finally fled... I'm pretty sure the gunpowder has something to do with. It).

MB

There is a valid question in Ancient warfare about how many people actually got killed in the melee? It would seem very few when you think of some of the lopsided casualty rates.

The killing seemed to occur in the pursuit phase, after one side breaks and runs.

Anyway, for broad looks at some new eras, I recommend Black Powder and Hail Ceasar to get you started. As an alternative, you could try some of the cheaper Osprey series of Wargames such as Lion Rampant, Ronin, etc. Then, if you like these periods, then you can dig deep with more specific rule sets. However, these two sets give a good game and a good flavor of the periods. They are designed for casual, spectacle games between friends.

15mm or 1/72 (plastic) are a lot cheaper than 25/28mm figures for any period. In historical rules you typically have a base with perhaps four figures on it to represent a unit or part of a unit. When using 15mm the base sizes and distances are reduced while the number of figures stays the same.

6mm are even cheaper though you tend to make bases with a lot more figures on them to represent the same size of unit. It gives arguably a more realistic impression of ranks of figures.

 Hordini wrote:

 fullmetaljacket wrote:
can you use 1/72 scale for black powder??
i figured i could get more models for cheaper using that scale but iin the long run it may screw me since most players use 15mm correct ?

FMJ

Black Powder and Sam Mustafa's rules both allow you to use pretty much any scale you want.

I enjoy those rules as well. Brings the flavor out nicely, IMHO. I have played in 15mm, 28mm, 10mm and most recently in 6mm napoleonics.

You use the same base sizes as for 15mm but the overall look is amazing.

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/039/5/e/6mm_napoleonics_51_by_darventravos-d4p24sj.jpg

Not a photo of my stuff since I am at work, but a good representation of what the forces look like.

 fullmetaljacket wrote:
Hey everyone, im looking at getting into either a Civil war, Revolutionary war or most likely Napoleonic War. i personally like the British armies so most likely rev war or Napoleonic
Can i get some suggestions for inexpensive/ less expensive models and rule books??
FMJ

If you like using British armies and are looking for something slightly different you could try the Jacobite wars. During 1715 and 1745 (know as 'the fifteen' and 'the forty five') The uprisings started in Scotland and the aim was to put James VII and the house of Stewart back on the the throne . The Jacobite army me with a lot of success in Scotland itself, however began to lose momentum while the army was in England. It all came to a head when the British army crushed the Jacobites at Culloden, and the leader, Bonnie Prince Charlie had to flee.

The war itself is an interesting period to model, the British wear the long coat and tricorne (though some have the grenedier honour and get to wear the caps and pouches and thy louped clothes) They are also able to include some lowland Scot units into their army, since a lot of Lowland Scotts didn't want the Stuarts on the throne.

The Jacobites however have a mix of musket armed troops as well as troops armed with lochbar axes, targes and swords. They make for a good army to model as they were mostly highland clans and didn't have a uniform as such but wore their clan tartan. They were also aided by French regulars and can also include these.

The armies themselves were small, and even the bigger battles were not as big as naploeonic battles, this means that n army is easier to achieve than in the napoleonic period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_risings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk7yMbbDbTA

7 years wars rules are best for this period

http://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/shop/product-77.html

http://www.emperorspress.com/home/rules/warfare-in-the-age-of-reason

I'm a pretty big fan of the General De Brigade rules, which allow you to play mostly division games in 15mm-28mm. Each miniature represents 20 real men, with individual figure removal. So each unit is roughly 24 to 36 miniatures (Some crazy Austrian battalions get 40+ minis).

I haven't played Black Powder yet, but I was a huge fan of Warmaster so I may have to take a look.