Picking My Battles

I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago. I’m getting my hands on every book on the battles of the War of 1812 I can and reading, reading, reading. This is helping me to both pick a battle to recreate and understand how the war was fought in greater detail. I just finished Field of Glory: The Battle of Crysler’s Farm, 1813 and am almost through Where Right and Glory Lead: The Battle of Lundy’s Lane, 1814. They are both by Donald E. Graves, a well known expert on the War of 1812. I find his books to be well written and although I still bog down under the flurry of names as normal for a historical work I find them very readable.

Originally, after reading an Osprey book on the war I had found A Very Brilliant Affair: The Battle of Queenston Heights, 1812 in Chapters. This is published by the same imprint, Robin Brass Studio. They’ve published a nice collection of book on 1812 and other periods of Canadian history, some of which I’ve only discovered when googling their website.

Having read the semi-fictional 1812 as a child I was originally taken by Queenston Heights as the battle that appeared in 1812 and included Isaac Brock. I had originally only known him from 1812 but when I read more of the early history I came to respect this “Canadian” hero. The problem is that Queenston Heights is not the easiest to translate into a wargame. I haven’t abandoned it, but since so recently reading of other battles I’ve decided to release it as the battle I am definitely going to recreate and turn it loose into the mix for consideration.

There are four battles that I have books for: Queenston Heights, Crysler’s Farm, Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane. Chippawa is covered in Where Right and Glory Lead but there is also another book available for it. There are other small actions which I may write scenarios for, but I really want to focus on one battle to form the OOB I will collect, terrain I will build and rules I will troubleshoot. While I am happy to simply paint and play some Back of Beyond British, I want to be able to run a War of 1812 participation game and have it be educational and fun. Funducational.

Originally I was going to write some blurbs on the four battles, but as just the bit on Queenston Heights took a couple of hours, I will break them apart over a number of days.

Tyler