Rebels and Patriots AWI British v American

Although I play quite a bit of 'Sharp Practice' they are not a set of rules I'm totally happy with (unlike say Fire and Fury, Blucher or Rommel) partly due to the time it takes to play a game and partly as I don't find there is much movement in them.

Osprey released another of their cheap and cheerful rule sets recently called 'Rebels and Patriots' covering warfare in the Americas from the AWI to the ACW so Gary and I thought we would give them a try. We used the starter 24 point armies and Scenario A 'Clash at Lament Ridge' (though we used a flock of sheep as the objective rather than a ridge!).

As it was our first game with the rules we went for a fairly open table with some woods and fields:

The British line advances resolutely:

The Rebels attempt to carry off the sheep but the British will have something to say about that:

The British open fire and the Rebel skirmishers are hit hard:

The British Grenadiers cross the fence and charge into some Rebel militia. The charge is unexpectedly thrown back though:

On the right Butler's Rangers press forward:

The Grenadiers regroup and charge again! This time the attack succeeds routing the Militia and driving back the skirmishers:

The Rangers have dispersed the Rebels in front of them and advance to support the Grenadiers:

On the left an indecisive firefight has been going on with the outnumbered British holding off the Rebels:

The Grenadiers have taken a lot of casualties and are dispersed but they have done their job and driven the Rebels well away from the sheep:

In the centre the Rebels used an unexpected reinforcement to deploy a light gun which has been pounding the British line and slowly wearing them down:

The scenario was meant to last around 10 turns and as we had forgotten to count the moves we decided to call it a day at this point as the British were unlikely to lose control of the sheep:

So, what do I think of 'Rebels and Patriots'? They are similar to many of the other Osprey rules such as MWWBK and Dragon Rampant (unsurprisingly since they have the same author). If we played more it would be a quicker game and we missed a few things in the rules that would have made the shooting slightly more efficient and units become disordered and rout sooner.

It did seem more likely that you'd be able to get into melee with decent troops and the Grenadiers especially would have been very scary for the Rebels with the things we missed (basically an extra plus in melee and better morale). Long range fire was not that effective which perhaps encourages more movement but the large size of our figures bases means the table is largely covered even with the starter armies (though we played on a 6x4 table rather than the 4x4 the rules suggest).

Overall probably worth further experimentation.