Flintlock: Black Powder, Cold Steel - Volume I: Carolina Rebels

THIS GAME HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.

Flintlock is a company level American Revolution game at a scale of about 50 yards per hex and about 50 men per counter/unit. The system emphasizes the limits of command, training, and discipline, all in the milieu of the very linear style of warfare in the pre-Napoleonic era. In addition, it uses a most unusual set of mechanisms for resolving shock combat. Will you have your troops go into close order, or spread out for better fire possibilities? What are the pros and cons of the rifle-armed American militia? Can your dragoon forces exert any influence?

Flintlock is designed for quick learning and easy play. Game rules are short, but they cover almost every aspect of battle at this micro level. Playing time is less than 2 hours.

The battles chosen highlight small unit tactics in the grueling Southern Campaign, where both sides had ample opportunities to watch, learn and practice, with an emphasis on formation. Some of the great commanders of the war, from Nathanial Greene and Daniel Morgan to Lord Cornwallis and the infamous, but capable, Banastre Tarleton are in full action.

The Scenarios/battles, all (well, most) with armies of one or two thousand men, include:

Camden (17 August 1780)  where Lord Cornwallis stood and confronted a much larger force under Horatio Gates, but the rebel militia disintegrated and Gates’s army was routed in a major British victory. 



Cowpens (17 January 1781). Daniel Morgan conducted a masterful, tactical battle, defeating Banastre Tarleton and destroying the dreaded British Legion in one of the major victories of the war.



Guilford Courthouse (15 March 1781). Nathanial Greene outnumbered Lord Cornwallis by more than two to one. However, the British took the field but with such heavy losses that, in retrospect, Greene could claim a strategic success.



Hobkirk’s Hill (25 April 1781) in which Nathanial Greene’s Marylanders failed to stand against a concerted charge from Lord Rawdon’s smaller but better disciplined army.