A Change Is As Good As A Rest.

It feels like time to give some of my other figures an outing.

Last May I made a mould of a War of 1812 master figure that I had worked on off and on for several years, cast a dozen, and painted one sample. The rest have been in the painting queue ever since.

Recently Bob Cordery presented me with a copy of his new Portable Napoleonic Wargame and I've been waiting to give them an outing. The War of 1812 is about as close as my remaining collections get to Napoleonic so it seems like time to paint up some more Americans then give it a go.

Having read the rules over again, I am going to make two changes for the War of 1812.

The first is that while the British made good use of light troops, they had no rifle armed troops in Canada. I have decided to treat British light infantry, and native warriors as riflemen but with a range of 2 but to give real riflemen a bonus when shooting at other skirmishers.

The second change is due to there being no evidence of infantry in North America forming square when charged by cavalry. At Crysler's Farm, when the American Dragoons charged the flank of the British 49th Foot, these merely refused their flank and repulsed them with volleys of musketry.

Actually, there has been quite a bit written in the last few decades about cavalry vs infantry in the Napoleonic Wars indicating that squares were neither quite as universally employed as thought in the mid20thC nor quite as universally successful once you get away from the British experience. But I'll leave the European experience alone for now and for just the War of 1812 I will remove the square rules including the bonus for cavalry in melee with infantry not in square.

I'm looking forward to fighting Crysler's Farm using the PNW but first I have some figures to paint.