Outside of some American Revolutionary War games I've play tested, not too many people in the Midwest do anything with the 18th century. That was, of course, until the last Border Wars. As luck would have it, while I ran a Trojan War skirmish game, across the table Tod Kerschner and Dale Wood from Emperor's Headquarters in Chicago ran an Age of Reason game, They turned out to be authors of the rules system as a large group of people played a Marlborough war game. They designed Age of Reason as a 25-mm scale system using their figure line, which is made by Old Glory. Each player pushed a brigade of infantry. a regiment of cavalry, and several foot batteries around the battlefield as lines of infantry volley fired each other. I'd recently bought a copy of the rules used and quickly thumbed through it before coming to the convention. The game mechanics at first looked cumbersome. Though, once a person got familiar with the rules, the elegance of the system become apparent. The game is divided up into 12 turns. During a turn, a player may move his troops, fire artillery and muskets, and melee. The game ends if an army suffers 25% casualties and is forced to withdraw or achieves its objective at the end of turn 12. Besides the game mechanics, the second part of the rules is devoted to army lists from 1685-1788 and their Seven Years War campaign, "Sport of Kings". I do like this era of "limited warfare" and its linear fighting style. If I were seriously going to play Age of Reason, I'd do it with 15mm figures for two reasons. First of all is expense. After sinking much treasure and lime into painting my Dixon English Civil War figures. it makes much more economic sense to do 18th century warfare with 15mm figures because of the amount of armies involved. The second reason is that the figures could be used for other 18th century gaming systems, besides Age of Reason. Other Sets Which brings me to the second part of this article. There are two other commercial rule sets which I've seen played (especially for the American Revolutionary War). Volley & Bayonet and Flint & Steel. Both seem to work well for the period at events and demo-games. They both use 15mm scale figures and I believed are designed to be played a battalion level (like Age of Reason). Washington's War and Patriots & Loyalists are also available for American Revolutionary War. However. I haven't tried either system, so I really can't comment on their playability (though Harold Wones would probably know more). I do like a Fire & Fury regimental house adaptation for the American Revolution by Lance Western. We play tested it using the Battle of Cowpens, one of the major battles from the southern campaign. The game only lasted two hours, due the size of the units engaged. My Colonial militia and Continental regulars nailed his Hessians and British line, though my cavalry units wound up being spent in the end (unlike the historical battle where the British routed the Americans). I'd like to play more 18th century wargames, but until more people decide to build up their collections, I'll have to be content with an occasional pick-up game. Back to Dispatch Mar. 99 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com