Tuesday, 24 June 2025

On the Workbench: AWI

A new project! I have Assassin's Creed III to blame for this. Playing the game reawakened my previous interest in this period which had ceased when I disposed of my 10mm collection. 

This originates back to my school days when I found a book in the school library covering the battles of Lexington and Concord. It fired my imagination which I attempted to recreate on the tabletop with Airfix WW1 Americans standing in for the militia and Napoleonic Highlanders representing the redcoat juggernaut.

The inevitable happened and a batch of 6mm figures was acquired from Baccus with the intention of playing through Lexington and Concord once again. You will find a previous game on the blog using those 10mm figures. The original orders of battle for that game are being used but doubling up on the figures. 

In between reorganising the Napoleonic French infantry into standard 36 figure battalions I have commenced painting the AWI forces involved.

The grenadier battalion drawn from various regiments. It can be broken down to 2 or 3 units for the battle.

Continued -
Light Infantry battalion formed in the same way which can also be broken down into smaller units.


Militia/Minutemen in marching pose representing an ability for close order.

Militia in firing/loading pose signifying not as well drilled.


For Lexington and Concord 600 - 700 figures will be required so in theory, should not take too long to paint up. However, there is a slight pause while I paint up a few more Celts for an expansion of the Early Imperial Roman project which I will cover in more detail soon.  

12 comments:

  1. Great work Jon. An excellent idea to use different poses for the different training types.

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  2. Your painting of these tiny figures is excellent I swear I can see the whites of their eyes!

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  3. Blimey, I remember our son having a go at Assassin's Creed many years ago, but not understanding the game play at all! Good to see it sparked of your interest in the AWI again though Jon:). I imagine with the 250th anniversary coming up, we will see a flourish of AWI related games and content, which will be nice. As always superb work on those figures and hard to believe they are 6mm!

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    1. I have never grown up Steve. Still have a soft spot for computer games with Total War featuring heavily. It is the historical element that attracted me to Assassin's Creed rather than the gameplay.

      With regard to the AWI project I am increasingly trending towards trying out Black Powder. I have the rules now and having a read.

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  4. Very nice. I look forward to reading of progress as time permits you to paint and post.

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  5. Nice work Jon. One question are you using unit cards to track casualties and are you amending the rules shoot per base or per figure? Thanks

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    1. Many thanks Paul. I intended to bring British Grenadier rules into line with the way I shoot per base in General de Brigade and Guns at Gettysburg. A simple case of making minor adjustments to the charts in those rules replacing number of figures firing with number of bases. Casualties recorded on the Orbats list.

      All that said I will almost certainly give Black Powder a try having warmed to Hail Caesar.

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    2. Unfortunately I like the idea of units getting smaller from casualties. Black Powder you get casualties upto your stamina value i.e. three or more and it could mean your whole unit disappears. Its different mainly associated with morale, Hail Ceasar I'd guess is similar?

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    3. I know where you are coming from Paul and with the exception of DBM I have pretty much wargamed that way for as long as I can remember. Hail Caesar has typical stamina values of 6 for a standard sized unit which I am guessing, will make units in Black Powder more brittle. I will need to play a few more games before I decided to stick with Black Powder, one of the motivations being to speed up play.

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