The World Turned Upside Down - Project Progress Review.

The long march back to Boston in 1775 for the British column depicted here by Don Troiani, right at the start of the American War of Independence seemed appropriate to reflect my own long march with a project that has similarly just commenced, all be it under much less stressful circumstances, but hopefully will serve as my own effort to pay tribute to the warriors on both sides of this somewhat tragic conflict for the 250th commemorations.

 

It was a year ago that I decided to start work on a new project here on JJ's, partly to fulfil a desire to work on another 'big-battle' horse and musket collection, following the work on my Peninsular War collection of figures that was serialised here on JJ's about ten years ago, that resulted in refights of Vimeiro, Corunna, Oporto, amongst others and culminated in the series of games refighting Talavera with Carnage & Glory, and the scenario book of early British Peninsular War scenarios that I penned for use with Over the Hills.

The American War of Independence, or American Revolution depending on which side of the pond one hails from, has always been a theme that I have been interested in, thanks to my old history teacher, Mr Colclough, who had the knack of bringing any historical theme to life with his enthusiastic lesson plans that obviously fired the imagination in me, and I well remember picturing the Battle of Saratoga after sitting in his lesson covering the campaign of 1777.

It was April last year, following the refit of my wargames room, that I rolled out my plans for a big-battle AWI collection of figures with my first revamped unit of Continental infantry to get the collection started.
JJ's Wargames: Continental Infantry - New Work on my American War of Independence Collection.

I first scratched that particular itch by playing games with my old Polly Oliver collection of 15mm figures now rehomed with my old friend Steve M, and keen to get back into the period I determined to remedy matters by building a new collection, this time in 28mm as my aged eyes work better with the larger figures these days, and the size of battles tend to be more amenable to the larger scale, and should work well on my 9 x 5 foot table.

The other factor that seemed to beckon the start of this new collection was the upcoming commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, an anniversary that chimed with me, as I well remember the 200th celebrations that took place in 1976 and that sparked my early interest in the theme as a rookie historical wargamer, feeling at the time like a kid in a sweet-shop with all the colourful and interesting historical themes that I could get enthused about and start collecting, with this one right up the list alongside my Napoleonics interest.

Scotty Bowden's 'Redcoat' rules published in 1976 for the bicentenary of the United States of America

I still have my original copy of Scotty Bowden's 'Redcoat' rules published back then by Empire, together with the campaign system and map detailing how to refight the war in miniatures, and still a reference I check in on now and then, and for which I paid the princely sum of £9.95, a fortune for a sixteen year-old back in those days!

So over the past twelve months I have got myself back into a familiar routine of turning out units for this new venture that is very reminiscent of my working up my Peninsular War collection, which has seen me 'deep-diving' the history of the units show-cased here on the blog, and to my mind all part of the fun by giving each unit produced an historical back story that will no doubt be referenced in the games I have in mind to play.

The first twelve months work has produced nine units of British infantry, eight Continental, two artillery pieces, plus casualty figures, all added to the original collection of three militia units, a Jager battalion and Indian warband. I intend for the next twelve months to be equally productive, on the basis that from little acorns mighty oaks do grow.

The picture above gives an idea of the work completed so far, with about eighty percent all new units, the others having been incorporated from my Mohawk Valley collection, hence the Jagers and Indians seen nearest to camera.

The three units of militia nearest to camera were completed as part of my Mohawk collection, and have had new sabot bases to turn them into three battalion units for inclusion in this new work.

As with the Talavera project, I have decided to work up my armies around specific actions, with the decision to focus the first work on units from the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777/78, and the infantry component first before turning to artillery and cavalry.

So to give some planning structure to the units being produced at the moment, I decided to use the orders of battle from the British Grenadier collections of scenarios, slightly adjusted to incorporate my own reading of the units involved, and with notes added for my reference as I work my way through.

My reference sheet for the current stage of work, adapted from the British Grenadier scenario recreating Cornwallis' attack at Brandywine, with my own notes including the facing colours of the grenadier and light companies forming the respective combined battalions, so I can arrange my figures in the proportionate facing colours when I get around to building them, which will be soon. 

As I intend to use Carnage and Glory for planned games alongside Rise and Fight Again, I have noted the actual strengths recorded, and Greg Novak's books have been particularly useful 

My reference plans cover all the scenarios for Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth and I have noted the strengths of units that appear across multiple scenarios so that I can build my units at maximum strength with a view flexing them as required.

These game plans are aimed to allow me to start playing with the collection as it develops, with a plan to have a core force for both American and Crown armies, the latter to include Loyalist and German units, built initially around the Philadelphia campaign, but providing units very useable throughout other campaigns during the war.

Once this stage of the project is completed, with a projection looking at early 2028, I will turn to building units specific to the Saratoga Campaign and other additions to the collection, particularly American and Loyalist units that participated in the South, as well a developing a French allied force.

Of course, as I outlined in my post back in April last year, anybody interested in gaming the AWI faces putting together a collection amenable to facilitating battles of just a few hundred participants to tens of thousands, and although my preference has always leaned towards the big-battle/large skirmish game, I wanted still to be able to play out other smaller scenarios, and I still intend to develop units around my particular interest in the war fought along the Mohawk Valley and Hudson Valley areas of New York.

This flexibility around the size of battle and with units representing battalions or companies led to my decision to use a sabot base arrangement, allowing me to easily rearrange my units to look more appropriate to the level of action I'm portraying on the table, and with the ability to remove colour bearers and put figures on to more looser and skirmish looking bases to capture that look.

As the various units are seen in the pictures, they are arranged as per my Brandywine plan, in the battalions/regiments of 16, 20 or 24 figures, with the lower end of that range representing a force of around 300 to under 350 men at a 1:20 arrangement, to larger units of 350 to 400 in the middle size and 500 plus captured by the 24 figure units.

I can of course flex down to very small units of 12 figures, but I'm looking to avoid that scenario by combining historical units, particularly Americans, into combined battalions, and of course with the sabot arrangements, small units of skirmishers are easily facilitated.

Most rules these days tend to be pretty flexible over figures and basing and C&G and R&FA work very well with this principle, being arranged around the footprint of a unit representing a number-range of soldiers such as I have outlined above, and having factors to account for that size of unit, or as with C&G the actual number of men in the unit.

Carnage & Glory II and Rise and Fight Again are my preferred rules going forward, with a focus very much on fatigue causes such as activity and casualties, and once the collection of figures and terrain is broad enough I look forward to featuring games run using them.

The core of armies in the AWI is of course composed of infantry, and with supporting arms such as artillery and cavalry a very much smaller component in comparison, and so the use of the plastic ranges from Perry make this collection so much more affordable to start from scratch, and with a certain amount of kit-bashing, which I enjoy, enables a lot of variety to be built into the look of the armies.

Alongside the main 'hatmen' battalions, I intend to add in the other arms and of course the more unusual battalions that Perry's provide in their wonderful metal range, and of course all nicely sculpted to fit in one with another.

I am also planning for the likely little detours from the figure collection work every now and then, as the inspiration directs me, as my way of collection building sees me not only working to have all the factions represented, but also some appropriate terrain arranged to facilitate the right sort of stage for the actors to appear on.

My 28mm terrain is already up and running, following the Romano-Dacian build, and much of the hills, woods, rivers and rocky terrain I built for that is very appropriate for battles in 18th century North America.

JJ's Wargames: The World Turned Upside Down - Terrain Build (Snake Rail Fencing & Field Works)

However other terrain items such as Roman watch towers, small villas and city walls are less so, and so I have already commenced putting together additional terrain that has seen my recent snake rail fence 'buildathon', and field emplacements, I got stuck into in January, and I have a big collection of MDF structures from Charlie Foxtrot and Sarissa, plus a few plastic offerings from Renedra that have been accumulated over the last two years that will need bringing to the table, and so any figure collection build of mine has to take into account time constructing these additional and very important items.

I'm really enjoying myself with this collection, and am starting to add to my reading list to broaden my understanding of the subject in preparation for running my first games, a factor that played a big part with the Peninsular War collection, as I found myself learning more about a period I thought I understood pretty thoroughly when I started to find 'rabbit holes' I hadn't explored thoroughly enough.

I think there are some similar 'rabbit holes' with the AWI, although I'm not certain that the sources are as available than those of the Peninsular armies, and in particular I'm looking for a book, or other source covering American Continental army practices, particularly around light infantry and skirmish tactics, similar to Mathew Spring's excellent book on British Army tactics 'With Zeal and with Bayonets Only.

JJ's Wargames: With Zeal and with Bayonets Only, The British Army on Campaign in North America - Matthew H. Spring

I reviewed Mathew's marvellous book here on JJ's back in 2018, and I think it is safe to say that it has had a pronounced effect on the way we see how British soldiers fought in North America compared to the ideas that preceded its publication.

The room refit finished last year has enabled me to rearrange my figure and terrain storage in a much more useable way, but revealed a need to make a few additions with the space required and likely required going forward for my new collection.

So the AWI has started taking up residence in the centre display units for now, and I have added another new tower display cabinet a couple of months ago with plenty of space for another one should that prove necessary.

The smaller scale collections are now safely housed in storage boxes with labels allowing me to find what I need as and when, but I think the 28mm stuff looks nicer on display, and I'm hoping to do more games on my own table rather than traveling with the collections and so the cabinets add to the ambience of the room.

So I hope this post answers a lot of the questions I've had on other forums about the AWI collection, and if you want to see more about the units pictured as a collection here, you can click on the tab at the top of the page, 'The World Turned Upside Down' where all my units showcase-posts along with other related posts will be gathered in one space.

Next up - The work continues with the next unit to be showcased, and one of the most famous units in the British Army, the 42nd (Royal Highland) Regiment of Foot, or Black Watch.

As always, more anon.

JJ