A is for Amusettes, B is for Boardgame

I think I have just about recovered from Partizan and am now counting down to my summer holiday, including a trip to Rhodes.

While at the show I was pretty busy with the game but did dive into Dave Thomas's stand to pick up a couple of blisters of AWI figures. The American dragrope men will be alongin due course, but first off the blocks is this pair of Hessian amusettes that can do double duty as either AWI Hessians or Imaginations Tattembergers. 

I'll not detail what an amusette is here as it is covered well in other places if you do a quick online search. The figures are up to the usual Perry standard, although there was a slight miscast of the chap kneeling and reloading - the amusette's stock was missing and needed replacing. In this case I used one from a rifle in the Warlord Hessian Infantry box (from where I've pinched the heads and hats for my imaginations cuirassiers). The repair seems to have worked out OK and is well protected by the basing (I hope).

The figures were painted with Vallejo acrylics. The jackets were Dark Green, gradually highlighted by adding Olive Green. The mantlets were base-coated in Dark Prussian Blue then given a top coat of a mix of the Dark Prussian Blue with Turquoise, with a touch of light grey added for a highlight. Washes were involved. I only had a cheap "matt" varnish to hand, which is more satin. At least the figures are probably protected to some extent and I'll dust them with a more effective matt varnish when I next have one.

These should be a fun addition to the armies and I'll need to come up with a little scenario to justify having them!

More photos below:

As well as painting - and going to work, gardening, etc; I have been playing around with Worthington's "Battles of the American Revolution" which arrived in the mail just before Partizan. This is one of Worthington's "travel" games and features the battles of Freeman's Farm and Oriskany, both from the 1777 Saratoga campaign. The rules are simple and suitable for either two players or to use solitaire, playing both sides to the best of your ability. There's plenty of scope to add house rules. While it all works "out of the box" there are some grey areas and the combat system seems a bit inauthentic as attackers can gang up on single defending units even when there are other defenders adjacent. If interested, take a look at the Boardgamegeek page where there is a forum entry suggesting tweaks.

As well as fairly familiar rules for movement, zones of control, etc there is also an abstracted system where players can use a limited pool of leadership points for forced marches, rallying damaged unit or adding points to a combat. At Freeman's Farm the British also have artillery, represented by its own abstracted system with a limited pool of points. These both give players some additonal choices without unbalancing things or introducing excessive complexity. And there's no stacking allowed :-) A battle will probably take no more than half an hour or so.

Victory in Freeman's Farm is determined by a combination of destroying enemy units and capturing victory point hexes. In Oriskany it is losses and American units exiting along the military road towards Fort Stanwix - again allowing players to vary their approach when replaying.

The game components are of high quality, with a double-sided mounted mapboard and thick counters with pre-rounded corners. The oddest choice is to provide two white d6 for resolving combat with opposed die rolls - I'm sure most players will opt to change this for dice of different colours! The box is small enough to make taking it on holiday a realistic proposition. Here is a picture of the game on top of some A4, 5mm gridded paper:

...and here are the two battles set up and in play:

Oriskany

Freeman's Farm

In the same range, Worthington also have a box with two battles of the War of 1812 and one with two battles of the Mexican-American war. These use the same rule system but do have cavalry and (I think) some battles where both sides have artillery - so might be of more interest to those who are agnostic about which war they are gaming. Caveats about rules aside, I can really recommend picking up one of these games if you want some entertainment over the summer.

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