We have been looking into starting historical war-gaming for a while now, but have found that 28mm (as a standard on the market) had too many issues for us. The individual boxes were confusing for someone who just started collecting. Rulebooks would generally fail to explain what each unit (or battalion) needed to have in regard of uniform choices, instead telling you how many bases or figures needed to be there. One had to dig deeper into that rabbit hole to figure out why some models in the unit had different bits of their uniforms, and why some of them were even painted differently than the rest.
The worst part (for us) in 28mm historicals has to be the scale, or more specifically how many actual men does each figure in your unit represent. Coming from other 28mm games, we were comfortable knowing that each figure was 1 individual soldier, so it came as a nasty surprise to learn that those nice looking 24 figure units marching around the board were in fact anywhere between 500 and 1200 men.
You could always go for 28mm skirmish rules, and in fact that would be preferred if you enjoy the narrative in such games. A group of soldiers could enter a building to find some wine bottles inside and get drunk, the officer could be a real ladies man chasing skirts instead of enemies, troops could run out of ammo and had to find a supply cache to reload... We found that the skirmish rulesets that gave us such a narrative flair tend to be over complicated for our taste, while others actually being far to simple, lacking many troop choices or tactical possibilities. There are no grand cavalry charges, no infantry forming squares, no artillery decimating infantry that got a bit too close...
One could always try 6mm scale, with either keeping the 24 figure ratio per battalion making it a super affordable option, or try fitting extra models in there, perhaps even using the 28mm bases for individual companies that comprise each battalion. This would most likely cost as much as the 28mm variant, but could look more real to the eye. The one that didn't go blind painting all the tiny details.
Enter Warlord games and their new Black powder Epic battles set during the American civil war. Hard plastic, 15mm scale, decent price, and with more than 2400 miniatures inside.
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| The big box in all its glory |
Inside you will find 12 gray and 12 blue sprues of minis, some 24 green sprues for the bases, a Black powder 2nd ed mini rulebook and an A4 sized booklet on the conflict. Then there are 2 sheets of paper flags, 1 for each side, 2 frames of laser-cut mdf terrain by Sarissa precision, and a bag of dice.
The box itself is made of thin cardboard and was already bending when we got it, but the artwork is amazing.
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| The sprues |
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| The rules |
The mini rulebook is 200 pages long, filled with photos, diagrams and some historical facts. It covers the whole black powder period, not just the American civil war, and even has some basic scenarios and orders of battle for each conflict. There are many supplements available for each conflict.
We will most likely be using a different ruleset for our games, but more on that subject in another article.
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| The booklet |
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| The iconic fences |
The terrain provided is nice, but lacking. The house is nice, we were able to build it in about 30 minutes, but the fences we find most lacking. The provided fence is just too short. We would have preferred to get a longer fence, maybe even instead of the house. Warlord are offering a set of 3 buildings for 15 pounds, enough to maybe create a small farmstead for your games, but no option for extra fences (at least not as of may 2021). No choice but to build our own when we start working on Acw terrain.
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| The house |
The flag sheets are our favorite part. Such a nice selection for both sides, they even include flags for cavalry, Zouave regiments and the Iron brigade, along with many famous regiments one might want to represent on the field of battle.
Downside is there is no painting guide whatsoever. A missed opportunity for the booklet.
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| The Union flags |
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| The Confederate flags |
The figure frames are all the same, 12 each in gray and blue, so you can start playing before you paint. They are of nice quality,the only flash I found was on the officers swords. The pegs on the strips could have been a bit thicker, to allow assembly without glue. This way I had to use a small amount of universal glue in order for the strips to stay on the bases during gameplay / handling, but be easy enough to remove from the bases when the time comes for painting.
The uniforms and hats are generic enough to pass for both sides, allowing for cheaper mass production. Its a shame Warlord didn't make the other figures of this line in plastic, instead they are metal and have a significantly higher price.
The other thing we find lacking with the plastic figures apart from the small pegs, is the mounted officer. Its fine as a single figure, but to have 24 identical ones, even more if you get another starter. They could have had a separate plastic sprue, with maybe 3-5 different mounted officers than put 6 of them in the box and be done with it. This way its passable if you keep the officer close to his unit, but the moment you need to base 2-3 mounted figures on a base for a higher command, you are out of luck.
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| A Confederate artillery battery |
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| A Confederate officer leading his men to battle |
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| A Union officer |
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| Union troops, closeup |
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| A Union gun |
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| Union troops, closeup #2 |
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| A Union line |
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| The finished house is pretty decent |
This box allows you to build 12 units of a 100 men each, plus 12 guns and mounted officers, per player. The number of figures per unit even allows for a 1:1 ratio, where each unit is a company with up to a 100 men. Having a minimum sized regiment with 4 units, would allow for a smaller brigade, all with just this one box. Alternatively you could have each unit represent a regiment, with ~1:10 scale and have a whole division for each player with just one box.
Overall, we feel this is a solid product, but with a lot of room for improvement.We give the miniatures a 8/10, and the whole product as a whole a 7/10. We would recommend this to anyone just starting to collect this period as a nice alternative to 28mm scaled armies.
I'm curious if Warlord will follow up this conflict with any other. Perhaps Napoleonics? Leave you thoughts in the comments bellow.
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