If they mean to have a war, let it begin here

I’ve used the Perry plastic AWI stuff before and it can get very confusing since both sides are only dressed slightly different.

To get around this I decided that all my Patriots would be marching and all my Crown forces will be Charging. This way it’s very quick to pick them apart.

Battalions will be 4 bases of troops and a command base for a total of 5. Only one flag, National, per unit to avoid problems and locking myself in too much. 40mm and 4 men to a base so nothing out of the ordinary there.

With the spares I built some Light Infantry in the Caps and the set came with a total of 8 Riflemen both of which will be based on 40mm bases but only 2 to a base.

I went with Tricorns for both sides and will be doing almost all the Infantry in them, they’re so iconic and accurate for this part of the war. The British set also comes with the cut down Saratoga Caps for that Campaign and Uncocked hats for the South. The Patriot set comes with the Light Infantry Cap and Civilian style brimmed hats.

So why the Revolution?

I wanted to do a proper large scale wargame but at the same time I didn’t want to do something I already knew about. I wanted to use this army as a learning opportunity.

My first idea was to go way back to the Ancients but that died pretty quickly. Romans are cool but Romans get boring. You can go jump off a bridge if you think I’m even going to try and paint Persians. Pikes were always going to be out. Storing and Transporting them is just too hard with my now limited space.

Then I figured I try the ECW and Thirty Years war but the pikes were a deal breaker.

Then I got quite keen on doing the War between the States also known as the War of Northern Aggression and my personal favorite courtesy of Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies “The War twix the Yankee’s and the Americans”.

But one of the goals for this project is to be able to display it and take it to events. You start putting the Stars and Bars on the tabletop and people can get nervous.

This also ruled out any Colonial Warfare even 100% positive ones like the Sudan. It’s not worth dealing with the fallout.

So finally I settled on the American Revolution. There’s just one problem. I know quite a lot about the American Revolution. Or rather I know quite a lot about the Southern Theatre.

So the choice was easy. The New York Campaign is what I’m aiming for but I won’t restrict myself too much.

So I went out and picked up two boxes of each. They’re already built and primed.