Batailles de l'Ancien Regime

Wargaming must be easy, fun, balanced most of the time, visually striking and companionable. These five principles have guided my forty years in historical miniatures tabletop games, as you will find in the rules available here. Plus each set is loaded with historical information.

I’ve raised Ancient Romans, 1066 Normans and Saxons, Royalists and Parliamentarians, 1680s combatants for Louis XIV, Seven Years’ War armies for Europe and North America, American War of Independence lads, Napoleonics of course, Rebs and Federals, Imperials and native foes for Zululand, The Sudan and Northwest Frontier plus WWII armor for the early Western Desert. At sea I’ve built and steered ships of the English Civil War, the early 19th Century, the American Civil War and WWI.

One can do all this in forty years like a butterfly changing from one intoxicating flower to another. Yet The Seven Years’ War has remained my primary and constant interest since 1965. This also developed into directing The Seven Years’ War Association till 1992. I also enjoy writing as evidenced by articles in The Fusilier, Wargamer’s Digest, Courier, MWAN and Battlegames. It seems natural then that I also wrote tabletop rules for all of us. My greatest hobby satisfactions are historical miniatures games with companionable friends, crafting rules and game preparation.

In the early 1970s, dissimilar weapons of the pike and shot era fascinated me. Facilitating this were charming English Civil War Hinchliffe miniatures, Cavaliers and Roundheads and my recent university studies. Immersing myself in increasing numbers of new books about the ECW, especially Brigadier Peter Young’s, I started raising Royalists and Parliamentarians. Wargamer’s Guide To The English Civil War came into being as a result of all that fun, color and curious 17th Century doctrine. Characters such as Prince Rupert helped fuel my imagination too.

At an earlier time, I could not understand a history teacher saying, how Prussia’s Frederick The Great fought a war for seven years at 1:3 odds and won. Combining that improbability with a fascination for 18th Century garments and my first miniatures catalog from Jack Scruby, I was off and running to learn about and do battles of The Seven Years’ War. Brigadier Peter Young and Lt. Col. James Lawford’s charming CHARGE! Or How To Play Wargames came first. Later I branched off as gamers inevitably do. In the early 1980s, remembering my first love, I tried my hand at producing a Charge-like but different system for The French and Indian War. This is how Drums Of War Along The Mohawk came to be published in 1986 after years of development and play testing. Do some of you remember Fort Hal? Just keep the gate closed! But, nobody did.

Now armed with the latest research, Batailles de l´Ancien Régime 1740-1763, (BAR) is the culmination of forty years of questing for answers about The Seven Years’ War. BAR returns to Europe maintaining the more convenient and interesting multi-brigade level systems of my other rules. For it is at the brigade level that we have the most awareness, satisfaction and fun with tactics, drill and striking visual aspects of the mid-18th Century. BAR emphasizes user-friendly flexibilities blended with maxims and etiquettes to run wargames of the most fun, easy, historical and companionable sort.