1812, revisited, Sabres and Smoke

A Western student is making a somewhat non-traditional (in that you overlay terrain onto the map, creating a variable board) hex-grid board-game based on the War of 1812.
If you’re interested, Sabres and Smoke just launched the Kickstarter campaign.
Meanwhile in my war-gaming efforts I’m stalled on the Battle of Chickamauga in Ultimate General: Civil War. I need to do more research on the battle because right now the damned Rebs are kicking my arse.

9 Replies to “1812, revisited, Sabres and Smoke”

I remember dabbling in war games for a bit while I was still in junior high school. Avalon Hill was probably the biggest producer in those days. A pair of my buddies were playing one about the campaign in Italy during WW II.
They were also great devotees of a naval war game called Seapower and we spent many hours the following summer talking about the various ships and commanders in the Pacific theatre during WW II.
Later, when I was an undergrad, I remember seeing similar games for sale in the students union bookstore. I’d heard of some of them through the science fiction magazine Analog, which I was reading at the time. One I remember seeing an ad for was Red Star/White Star, which was about an imagined Soviet invasion of western Europe as part of WW III. I recall that it wasn’t an AH game, though.
My interest in war games faded during senior high school and, later, undergrad studies as my academic ambitions were more important. Still, it was fun messing about with that sort of thing.
Maybe I’ll try it again some day.

Is Grant there yet? He’ll know what to do.

“The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and Great Britain, with Canada swept up in the conflict under its monarch. The two-year battle saw invasions across the nation and along the Great Lakes.”
Two year battle? Must be the longest battle in history. CBC makes our story up so it must be true.

Don’t feel too bad Lance, Bragg kicked Rosecrans’ arse in real life too. Fall back on Chattanooga and wait for Grant to march over from Mississippi. That’ll show’em.
Blackbird, ordinarily I would agree with you about any historical information that appears on the CBC but the Battle of the Atlantic lasted from Sept 1939 until May 1945, a bit longer than two years. Most historians agree that the turning point (the point where the U-boats could no longer win) came in May 1943, but that was still almost four years after the start.

Sorry Lance … but I am letting my FREAK FLAG fly !! And it’s the Stars and Bars !! With a Rebel Yell … I cried MORE, MORE, MORE !!!

That part of the hobby has migrated almost entirely to the PC. The complex rules and game state are better handled by a computer, leaving the player to focus on the strategy.
As for Sabres & Smoke….boy, that looks uncomfortably like a clone of Memoir ’44. While that’s legal, if all he’s done is knock off an existing game the board game community is going to savage him.