As I re-familiarise myself with Black Powder, I remembered how tough buildings are to attack and thought I would run through the routine to take another look. 

There are some headlines features for the Built Up Area (BUA), with three being particularly effective; (1) a defender that is hit gets a +2 to their Save roll. (2) if the occupant is forced to take a break test, then it can ignore ‘retire’ results. (3) at the end of each round of hand-to-hand combat, the occupants get an automatic +3 bonus hits against the attacker.

The attacker has a couple of things that they can do to increase the effectiveness of their attack (1) use artillery before an assault goes in and hope to inflict a hit and / or a ‘Disorder’ result on the occupants. (2) make maximum use of supports. Having support to the rear and one to each flank will give the attacker +3 Bonus hits against the defender - surprisingly, cavalry can be used as a support.

In the above scene, a lone Prussian battalion is holding the walled farm. A French brigade of 3 Infantry battalions and a cavalry regiment are putting in an attack. The French unit at the front of the farm gates will be the attacking unit and the three friendly units around it will be adding their support.

I have already allowed the French to make two turns of artillery fire at medium range, but this does not produce an effect.

The attack is described as a charge and as such, as the attackers close to contact, the defenders will be able to get off some ‘closing fire’ musketry. Even though this is limited to just two attack dice, the Prussians are lucky and inflict 2 hits (not Saved) and a Disorder (that is very lucky!).

The attack is executed in the Hand-to-Hand Phase. Helped by the +2 Morale Bonus on the their Save rolls and the +3 Bonus Casualties that the defenders in buildings inflict on attackers, the Prussians score the most hits and the attackers are forced to take a Break Test. They roll badly and the lead battalion is removed from play. This loss causes the other three French units to take Break Tests, but they are fine.

At the end of all of that, the French Brigade have lost a battalion and the Prussian defenders have 3 hits, which makes them shaken.

The French decide in a subsequent turn to attack again. This time equal hits are inflicted (a bit of lucky dice really for the attacker) and so this time both sides must take a Break Test. The French fail and retire, but the Prussians fail catastrophically and are removed from play! 

This leaves us with the dilemma that neither side holds the farm …. which player will be the first to get a unit in there? If the Prussians get there first, the French will have to do all over again!

So that took a 4:1 attack over two turns to get a result, which compared to some of my previous games is quite good ….. but only if the French can be the first to get a battalion into the farm.

Perhaps the farm could have its +3 Bonus casualty value lowered to a +2. I think in Black Powder the general +3 bonus feels a bit more like it is representing a ‘Hougoumont’ style strongpoint, a +2 might feel a bit more of a typical period building complex. 

Reading accounts of Napoleonic battles often refers to a village changing time multiple times over the space of a couple of hours. A building strength of +2 (or even a +1) might get us closer to that sort of thing.

While this was still on the table, I thought I would run it again, but using my own rules.

In the first assault, the French failed their pre-charge Competency test and so only put in a ‘half hearted’ assaulted. Needless to say, they were thrown back.

They wanted to attack again, but under the rules units cannot charge on consecutive turns, so they use turn 2 to re-organise and bring the fresh support up to be the lead unit.

On turn 3 the attack went in. It was another half-hearted attack, but even so, the attackers came off best, forcing the Prussians to abandon the farm and allowing the French lead unit to move in.

Even though I have always thought of Black Powder buildings as being a bit too strong, on this occasions with Black Powder the farm was vacated on turn 2, where-as in my game the farm was not captured until turn 3. Though that is unusual for a Black Powder result and I think going forward, when using Black Powder, I will just drop the melee bonus on buildings from +3 to +2 unless there is good cause to want to treat the building as something of a fortified place.

My 28’s have sat rather lonely on a shelf for a while, but recently, both the Napoleonic and Wars of the Roses collections came out for some table action and the pleasures of just moving them across the table were renewed.

The Napoleonics cover French and Austrian forces. Last year they started as a 'from scratch project' and were brought, fairly quickly to eight units per side, where they formed the basis of a ‘Pocket Army’ article for The Wargamers’ Annual 2025, titled ‘Pocket Armies on the Danube’.

The intention always was that this starter force of eight units should be expanded at leisure to around twelve units per side ….. but unfortunately the ‘leisure’ aspect of that sentiment has had the life beaten out of it and here I am, a year later, no further on.

So as a bit of a palette cleanser from the Epic stuff, I am putting a French unit under the brush.

These infantry units each contain 20 miniatures. I used to paint in batches of 20 for that reason, but I am now trialing a move to just doing 10 figures at a time, so I knocked up a tray to take 10 of my painting corks and here we have the first half of the unit. The second half will include the officer, drummer and standard bearer. I am hoping that painting small numbers like this will make the painting habit a little more bearable and more in keeping with that notion of being a leisurely pursuit!

These are Perry Miniatures lastics from their French Infantry 1812 - 15 boxed set. These have been a relatively straight forward build, you just have to glue on a head, backpack and a pair of separate arms and they are done (good), though I am not dreadfully keen on the bayonets being attached for marching troops, especially as my hands keep catching them. All my units so far do have bayonets attached, but I think for this unit, I might nip them off before they get their primer.

I prime with hand-brushed Vallejo poly black and then dry brush with a couple of coats of off-white, to help keep colours bright and to better define the various parts of the figure and equipment.

Anyway, they should make a nice painting project for September and the Napoleonic project can then claim to be moving forwards ...... slowly!

Having given the Epic Prussians a Landwehr Lancer unit earlier in the month, I decided to give the French their first cavalry unit and they too have lancer models, so these went onto the painting sticks. 

They have been done as Chevaux Légers Lanciers, line lancers, not to be confused with the 1st Regiment of Polish lancers of the guard. This is the 1st Line Regiment with scarlet facings, the first of six regiments converted from dragoons in 1811 and rather colourful chaps they are too.

They have white plumes on their helmet except for the elite company sitting on the right flank of the unit, which had red plumes.

They were involved in the 1812 battles with Russia and 1814 actions at Dresden, Leipzig and Hanau.

In 1815 during the Waterloo campaign, they operated on the French right and were used against Bulow’s Prussians as they emerged from the Bois de Paris, who were advancing on Plancenoit (hence our photo).

I have continued with the 80mm x 60mm base, which holds 12 cavalry models set in two ranks. It is easy to image 2 - 3 of these horse bases forming into a cavalry brigade without their footprint taking up too much space on the table.

I think next, the Prussians could do with another base of Jäger, while the French need two bases of skirmishers to keep up. That should at least be a fast hit to help the monthly base count!

I think last month I pushed too hard on the painting front and it has left me a little unenthusiastic for painting this month, so perhaps overall less pressured painting might actually lead to better productivity in the long run.

I have just found some rather nice 28mm resin barricades and thought I would have a go at them for a change of pace. I primed with a rattle can in a sort of iron red and now with acrylic I am trying to put a dark brown base coat down, but that red is proving a real bugger to kill! Even dragging out my artist quality acrylic paint doesn’t have the covering power on a first pass - never mind, we will get there ……. Eventually! :-) 

Through the post today a kind gift from fellow blogger Steve J.

Savannah (the British turn south), of the Osprey Campaign series, covering the capture of Savannah, the capital of Georgia, by British, Hessian and Loyalist troops and the subsequent 1779 campaign when American and French troops attempted its recapture.

Nice maps, complete orders of battle and Graham Turner's wonderful artwork, supprted by helpful descripive text, such as the account of the Battle of Stono Ferry all add into the mix of my latest interests with the American Revolutionary War. Thank You. 

In an effort to get the Black Powder rules properly back under my belt, I threw down a small napoleonic game, just to reinforce some routines and this situation arose.

The Austrian battalion recently had a musketry exchange with a French battalion and the latter came off quite badly, withdrawing to save itself the almost certain prospect of further harm.

Into this gap, a French assault column that had been moving up to support, suddenly appeared and the way ahead was now clear. The Austrian unit was carrying 2 casualties and a disorder marker and the French commander wanted to deal with them before they recovered, so he ordered the French assault column to immediately assault.

The resulting Command die roll only gave the assaulters one move. They needed two and their charge just fell slightly short of the Austrian unit.

In the next turn, within the rules of ‘proximity’, the French battalion, still in column, were able to order themselves to charge to contact. They did so, but first they had to take closing fire from the Austrians, which inflicted a casualty and a disorder marker.

The attack went in, but the now disordered French had lost their advantage. They had become disordered, which negated their charge bonus and their delay in attacking now meant that a second Austrian battalion has been able to get close enough the support the defenders.

Oh Dear! said the French commander.

That Austrian support made all the difference to the outcome, the attack failed and the French battalion had to take a Break Test ….. they rolled a 4!

A bad fail, which saw them being removed from the table.

Had they rolled better on the command dice for their initial attempt at charging, allowing them to contact the Austrians in the previous turn, before Austrian support showed up, they would have got a draw result instead and the resulting pause would have given enough time for their own French support to move up behind them and then all bets would be off! It would just be the luck of the dice.

It is these sort of narrative moments that BP with its order system and chaos, seems to pull off quite easily.

Time now to sit down with the rules and do a more thorough reading to pick up those things that I have undoubtedly missed.

The Tri-Pack I package mentioned below, covering four Battles of the American Revolution by GMT, went to the table last night for a face-to-face game.

Saratoga was my first exposure to this system a looong time ago and here, in this re-printed collection, it gets a new scenario that just covers the fighting around Freeman Farm. It is four turns long, so seemed the perfect re-introduction to the system for both of us.

By the end of play, we had this rather straight forward system under our belts and had an enjoyable couple of hours of gaming.

The only thing that didn't tickle our fancy was the 'Tactics Matrix' - during each close combat, each player secretly selects a tactic such as Skirmish, Withdraw, Echelon attack etc., from a list of 8 possibles, though only 4 are available to all battles, others need additional elements such as a leader and an open flank.

Anyway, having chosen, you compare tactics and you end up with a die roll modifier or a withdrawal. Neither of us saw any advantage to the rule; it held the element of Rock, Scissors, Paper and took time to consider the tactic and then calculate, and for what seems like not enough difference to matter compared to the input, Getting a possible DRM for a combat that in any case is using a D10, which itself is arguably a swingy device, is something I can let go by.

So we abandoned the rule and played quite happily without it, as indeed I always have in the past. Of interest is that Tri-Pack II comes with a 'solo bot' card to help choose the tactics and there is a lot of randomness in that, so I feel justified in abandoning the mechanic.

In our game, it looked like the British were going to overwhelm the American forces and were poised to capture the important American held objective, when on the 3rd turn a goodly number of American reinforcements arrive just in the nick of time to rebuff the British assaults ..... but there was not enough time to see the Americans counter-attack and take objectives that they needed.

So this small action looks like each time it is played, neither side is likely to win big and that the matter might settle on casualty victory points alone. The winning of course didn't matter, it was an enjoyable couple of hours pushing counters and the scenario has set us up for bigger things. Look forward to more.

After my recent moans about a game dragging on for longer than my sore back wanted! I have taken four different rule books to the table to see whether any suit me better.

I think it is important that the scenario should not be too ambitious to keep the game shorter, but sitting on top of that, rules need to be not only streamlined, but designed to make a smaller game with fewer units interesting, primarily by being a little dynamic in nature and disrupting predictable play.

The testing resulted in a very lengthy article which is best hosted over on the Battlefields and Warriors blog rather than here. 

Link

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2025/08/comparing-some-black-powder-period-rules.html

Above - a house with grounds counting as a single built-up area and to the right, the same base serving as an orchard.

The area within the confines of the wall is roughly 8" x 6". The walls are from Pendraken Miniatures (straignts and corners) and the base is the heavy card cover of the 1st Edition Black Powder rulebook, which is thick and light and hasn't warped.

The internal grass surface is from a matting bought in a craft shop and it has been applied using that foliage glue that goes on white like PVA, but dries clear and stays very tacky - It is used to put foliage onto tree branches, but works well here as it didn't seem to over-wet the card base.

Basing texture plus flocking has gone around the outside and the trees are home built with Woodland Scenic kit. The building is  resin from the superb Battlescale range, also sold by Pendraken.

I was going to fix the trees in for an orchard base and add extra flock to the grass mat area, but I think there will be more versitility with the trees being separate and having a base that can also represent walled grounds .... I am thinking about a compact feature here for Epic Pike and Shotte, whenever that materialises.

One of the advantages about making it just an orchard and fixed trees is that the piece can be handle without touching the trees themselves, which I don't feel are very robust. With the trees tightly packed, I won't try and shove figures in there, they can rest on an off-table template that represents the orchard.

Quite a few of the Rapid Fire Reloaded scenario books use orchards.

As mention a few days ago, after playing the small and contained trial action with the 28mm Wars of the Roses figures and the Irregular Miniatures rule set on cards, I took everything to the full table to play a bigger battle and put the rules under a bit more pressure.

This would be a replaying of my throw down scenario that I used to test the Hail Caesar rules some time ago. Using the same scenario would also give me a chance to compare the two systems.

Anyway, that game has been played and game notes, pictures and conclusions have been posted over on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog for those interested.

Link;

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-battle-for-skenfell-mere-1471-again.html

Having recently bought the new Tri-Pack 2 for the American War of Independence, containing the battles of Germantown 1777, Monmouth 1778, Newtown 1779 and Oriskany 1777, I have been lucky enough to acquire a pristine unpunched copy of the now out of print, Tri-Pack 1, which adds the battles of Guilford, Saratoga and Brandywine, plus the bonus game of Eutaw Springs, which falls from the Guilford campaign.

I had forgotten that when this came out (2017), it also had mounted boards.

So now between the two Tri-Packs, the boardgame collection has gone from having no AWI games, to having 8 solid battles, bound by a common set of rules.

The game scale is an hour per turn and units are regiments. I look forward to breaking into these.

Looking through my Epic Revolution box from Warlord Games, I note they give scenarios  that cover the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth and Guilford Courthouse, configured to use with their Black Powder rules. The Rebellion supplement also has a Eutaw Springs scenario, so I should have a fair bit of crossover between the boardgames and figures sets. It will be interesting to compare the figure scenarios to the boardgames scenarios once I get all of this up and running. 

Hi Steve (W), this is the sort of thing that I was talking about. I painted 15 Landwehr cavalry with a view to going with the official basing of 3 bases with 5 horse per base.

I didn't like that more often than not, they would be in line and that despite 15 horse, it looked a little 'thin', so I pinched my nose and jumped in with single basing for the cavalry!

This is an 80mm x 60mm base with just 12 horse, double ranked, but slightly misaligned to give a little sense of movement (I hope).

Having re-evaluated my table space, I may well go back to 2 infantry bases (from the previous 3) per unit, which would have a frontage of 120mm and better match with what I am doing with the cavalry.

Unfortunately the thing about basing is ...... I always change my mind and end up re-basing :-)

I need to do a French cavalry unit next to help keep this pair of 'Pocket Armies' balanced. I was going to do dragoons, but on checking the Epic battle set, there are French lancers in there, which I had forgotten about.

Having got a bit fed up painting the Epic, I gave myself a week off, but not wanting that break to grow into 'a thing' I put the French Lancers on painting sticks yesterday and I am back on it.

Irregular Miniatures have a set of Ancients rules published in 1989 that are still available and which are presented in half a dozen index sized cards. On one side of each card are the rules and on the other, examples of those rules. Each card covers a different part of the sequence of play.

A couple of months ago I tested them against a small situation involving the Epic Punic Wars figures from Warlord Games.

Here I test them in a contained situation with Wars of the Roses figures, just to see how well the rules stretch forwards to 1485.

There is a bit of a write up and some pictures over on the Battlefields & Warrior Blog.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2025/08/irregular-miniatures-card-rules-from.html

I picked this up at Waterstones (UK dedicated book store) as it has a fairly tight focus and drills into the detail of the Militiamen, which will help pad out my 'lack of knowledge' of the period.

Part of the blurb on the back of the book says 'but in the South a different kind of warfare was afoot. Local militia, sometimes stiffened by a small core of the Continental Line, played a pivotal role.'

This is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for, especially for when I start out on the painting thing and the forces will be small while I get going. Just initially browsing through the book, I came across an account of the Battle of Blackstock's Farm and that looks a great place to start things off.

The Osprey format is there with nice colour plates of uniform and information about equipment, training and life on campaign.