Rebels and Patriots arrives

Taking stock - some samples from my collection
of American War of Independence figures. The
Continentals (left) are Warlord, the British (right)
are Perry. I'm not entirely sure how well they
match up in terms of historical uniform
development but probably as well as the
average Hollywood film!

My copy of Rebels and Patriots arrived last Thursday. It was highly anticipated and I'm genuinely excited!

The biggest innovation is probably variable-length charge moves,  which should add an additional touch of drama. Otherwise they generally follow the usual tried and trusted Rampant game mechanisms. Those chasing more detail should read David Sullivan's excellent review on the I Live With Cats blog.

I've already accumulated a couple of ready-made 28mm armies for it, and my first step was to look at the army lists and check to see if I have enough stuff for a standard-sized game (24 points a side).

The armies in question are American War of Independence British and Continentals.

The AWI British list suggests 3 Line Infantry, 1 Light Infantry and 1 Shock Infantry (e.g. Grenadiers). The Continental Army list suggests 3 Line Infantry, 1 Timid Line Infantry (Riflemen) 1 Skirmishers and 1 Aggressive Light Cavalry. The lists are useful indicators of appropriate troop types but by no means mandatory.

Infantry units are basically 12 figures but for +/- 1 point they can grow to 18 or shrink to 6. If I was designing an army list competitively I’d regard small units as risky and large units as extremely good value, but I’m not in that situation and I welcome this flexibility as it will allow me to optimise use of the figures I happen to have. Indeed, I think this is an extremely cunning design move to accommodate gamers with existing armies.

For the British I have:

3 Line Infantry @ 4
1 Shock Infantry @ 6
1 Light Infantry Small @ 5
1 Light Artillery @ 4

For the Continentals I have:

1 Line Infantry Large @ 5
2 Line Infantry @ 4
1 Line Infantry Small @ 3 (less 1 figure)
2 Skirmishers @ 2

I’m thus short on Continentals and will have to borrow some other figures (or upgrade them to Veterans) until I can get some more recruits. I need to add my usual 2p coin bases to the figures and prepare two or three boxes for storage/transport but otherwise I'm good to go.

I also have some 28mm American Civil War armies on order, but I'll have to wait till they arrive to see what I can make from them.

The 28mm 1798 armies continue to accumulate but won't necessarily be complete until next year.