I was watching the American Battlefield Trust YouTube channel a couple of weeks ago to see the videos they were doing for the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. They were really interesting as always. I was surprised to see in their feed three videos of Gary Adelman and friends playing a multi table 10mm wargame of the Battle of Brandywine against some of the Little Wars regulars. They had previously done this same sort of thing using Altar of Freedom rules playing a Gettysburg battle.
For this game they were using a new set of fast play AWI rules called "Live Free or Die" that Little Wars is producing and supporting on their site. Little Wars TV is donating half of all proceeds from the rules to the American Battlefield Trust to help support their mission. I purchased the rules pdf on their site which is basically four pages of rules, a page of designer notes, a page of examples of play, a sample scenario, and a QRS sheet. All are very nicely presented. They also produce a scenario booklet with 10 pretty common battles included.
The rules are geared for quick play of big battles and agnostic to basing, scale, etc. Most of my wargaming in the last few years has leaned toward this sort of approach. Minimal rules, and you only really need the QRS sheet after that. I tried them with a couple of Brigades a side with 15mm troops I have. I loved the way they flowed through all the major phases you would expect in a horse and musket game. You do have to adapt a little to their intent but I only found one really glaring issue I reached out on the web site to ask about. Even with the tendency to want to tweak rules there weren’t many places I even considered that was necessary. Mind you if you're more of a 400 pages of rules person and not a 4 pages will do person, these probably won't meet your needs. But I highly recommend checking them out.
The back story to this is that the rules were adapted from a 1987 article written by Andy Callan and first published in Wargames Illustrated titled "Loose Files and American Scramble". You can find the article online today. This doesn't appear to be the first attempt at adapting it but I really enjoy this result. It's amazing to think this approach was out there in 1987. You can easily see mechanics that are becoming more common in today’s rules. Most importantly it got my Revy War armies back on the table.
https://www.littlewarstv.com/live-free-or-die.htmlhttps://www.gf9.com/Portals/0/all_images/WargamesIllustrated/WI1-WEBLooseFiles.pdf
Topic: Live Free or Die - Little Wars TV fast play AWI rules (Read 4722 times)