British Grenadier Rules for the Amercan War of Independence

[T13A]

Hi

Has anybody had experience of using the 'British Grenadier' rules for the American War of Independence? I'm looking for the usual basic information about them. If anybody could point me in the direction of a review that would be great.

Many thanks, Paul

[Spartan]

Hi,

I have quite a bit of experience of the rules. They are based heavily of General de Brigade so it you have played and like them you will probably like British Grenadier.

If you haven't played General de Brigade i would say a lot would depend on how well up you are on the AWI. If you are looking for a set that gives a flavour of the period then they are ok, they are very clunky similar to sets produced in the 1980's.

IMO the main issue with the rules are

> The Author chose a fig to man ration of 1:20, this isn't particularly useful for the period, a ration of 1:10 would be better. At a guess the author just copied this ratio from General De Brigade without examining the size of the battles of the period. Hence he later revised some of the scenarios to 1:15, 1:10 & 1:5 which causes problems as although the ratio is decreased the ground scale isn't proportionally increased.

> Another issue is that the basing is for order, rather than close order, which means that fudges are needed to deal with troops that fight in close order e.g. German Units, the same applies for 3 deep line rather than two. This can be got round by to some extend by basing at close order.

> There is also an issue with unit coherency  for skirmishes as there is no distance between bases that has to be maintained, this may of been corrected in the delux version but i haven't see this as i use my own rules now.

> There are a number of random events with are triggered by specific scores on melee, combat etc dice rolls e.g. rolling 2 6's. These can have a major effect on the game and consequently can make the game too random so i tend not to use them.

> The scenarios in the rule book and the first two scenario books have inaccuracies, missing information and some major flaws. For example the Hubberton scenario is entitled 'Save the guns' yet there were no guns (artillery) at the battle, the map is also incorrect.

I would say the rules are better than black powder for the period but unless you can get the original paperback version the current version at £34 is not worth it :-)

Hope that helps :-)