American Revolutionary War Preview

Today we are bringing you a look at the upcoming American Revolutionary War (ARW) title. As with all our previews we are reasonably certain this will hit the streets within the next six months. Also, many things are still in flux, so what's presented here should not be considered final. 

We announced last February in a blog post of our intent to replace the Campaign 1776 game as well as the balance of the EAW series, in time. We also announced in our 2nd Quarter Review that we were pulling the EAW games from the Store. Today brings you a view of the work that has been happening to make those plans a reality.

We'll begin today with an introduction to the "tip of the spear" - our Scenario Designer.

Mike Cox is a veteran of this type of work and has been a part of the team for several decades now. He's designed Squad Battles: Dien Bien Phu, was also a contributing designer on Soviet-Afghan War, and has made multiple contributions to Tour of Duty as well. Mike was a primary designer on Naval Campaigns: Wolfpack plus he's been a long time player & custom scenario designer for the Early American Wars series and Napoleonic Battles. Mike has spent the last three years immersed in this topic - gathering research resources, building maps, and bringing this all together to make what we believe is going to be an exceptional product covering the American Revolutionary time period. We would venture to say that this will be *the* defining work on this topic in the gaming world, from a detail and completeness perspective. We're not aware of another product that comes close.

The scope of the game covers the North, Central & Southern theaters. From Québec all the way down to Savannah, the conflict will encompass a diverse range of actions, from minor skirmishes to the most significant battles. 

(All images can be clicked for full-sized viewing.)

Many battles will be covered at two scales as well - both Battalion Level (BL) (100 meter hexes) and Company Level (CL) (40 meter hexes). What this allows is for larger battles to be played with a more manageable counter density at the BL, or to be able to zoom down into pivotal portions of those larger battles in more detail at CL. Not all battles will have both scales included, however. Some are small affairs and will lend themselves to being covered only at CL. Here's a list of the battles that will be included (at minimum):

• Watertown
• Concord
• Lexington
• Bunker Hill
• Ninety Six
• Great Bridge
• Québec
• Moores Creek
  
• Long Island
• Kip's Bay
• Harlem Heights
• Pell's Point
• Mamaroneck
• White Plains (Chatterton Hill)
• Fort Washington
• Trenton
• Princeton
• Ticonderoga
• Hubbarton
• Fort Anne
• Fort Stanwix & Oriskany
• Bennington
• Gloucester, NJ
• Coochs Bridge
• Brandywine
• Freemans Farm / Saratoga
• Germantown
• Bemis Heights / Saratoga
• Fort Mercer
• Valley Forge
• Monmouth
• Rhode Island
• Kingsbridge
• Savannah
• Kettle Creek
• Brier Creek
• Charleston (Sullivan's Island)
• Stono Ferry
• Stony Point
• Penobscot
• Paulus Hook
• Moncks Corner
• Waxhaws
• Connecticut Farms
• Ramseurs Mill
• Springfield
• Rocky Mount
• Hanging Rock
• Camden
• Fishing Creek
• Musgroves Mill
• The Village
• Charlotte
• Kings Mountain
• Blackstock
• Cowpens
• Cheraw Hills
• Clapps Mill
• Wetzells Mill
• Guilford Courthouse
• Blandford (Petersburg)
• Hobkirks Hill
• Spencers Ordinary
• Green Spring Farm
  
• New London (Groton Heights)
• Eutaw Springs
• Gloucester Point
• Yorktown

We have not ventured too far west onto the frontier as most of those actions there were tiny skirmishes in most cases. We're also not including actions in the Caribbean, for a variety of reasons.  

Pictured below is White Plains (Chatterton Hill) in BL on the left and CL on the right.

Which is a good segue to look at another aspect of the game:

Graphics

Nick Ferry, our Graphics Coordinator for the pre-twentieth century side of the house, has been pouring time and effort into the various graphical assets to deliver a stunning presentation. The Burden of Command graphics have been leveraged as a starting point in many terrain aspects, coupled together with new elements created by Nick and others on the team. Nick's passion for the topic along with Rolf Hall, the artist behind the 3D units, has made a very historically accurate and immersive environment. The file sets for seasons and regions have been polished to give a very 18th century "feel" to the maps. Examples of the four climates included with the game are below.

Many more screen shots will be included at the bottom of this post.

As part of this new game we will be featuring the unit art of the world-famous artist Don Troiani - https://dontroiani.com/ - we have secured rights to use his "Soldier Study" series of images from the American Revolution and they look wonderful in our game setting. Below is a sampling of some of what you will see:

Maps

And back to speaking of maps - an immense amount of work has been done in the mapping department. The game map can "make or break" a gaming experience, IMHO. The effort that has gone into generating topographically and historically accurate maps for this title really shines through. Not only will the battlefields be covered, but an extensive amount of terrain is also included for you to make your own battles on entirely new fields.

Engine Changes

When I (Rich) made my post last February I alluded to significant changes we had planned to include with this release. A new User Interface among them. Well, work is progressing on that front, but it's not ready for prime time yet... so we are releasing the game with our current UI, and when the new features are ready they will be rolled out to ARW as a free update. With the game content being near complete and the 250th Anniversary upon us, we just didn't want to hold things back further.

With that said, there have been quite a few new engine enhancements made since War of the Austrian Succession released in early '25, that will make their appearance here. For example:

• Added ability to shade Fire Range for a selected unit, Shift + F.
  
• Added the Push Skirmisher routines, now a default Optional Rule.
  
• Adjusted so that Abatis/Trenches/Breastworks/Stakes are subject to LOS visibility rules.
  
• Adjustment so that Divisional Leaders can remove the Detached status from troops within their chain of command that they are stacked with or adjacent to. Corps, Wing & Army leaders may do so for all units on their side when stacked with or adjacent to. If in a Company Level scenario then this is increased to a 3-hex radius.
• Added 3-hex distance limit for member units forming Extended Line.
• Adjusted Retreat logic to prevent units from routing towards hostile units.
  
• Adjusted so that Disordered infantry can't move adjacent to cavalry in the open (clear or field) if the adjacent hex is empty or only has leaders/skirmishers in it.
• Adjusted Cavalry Charges so that the charging units can only continue their charge (after initial melee) if the next hex is Clear or Field terrain.
• Added new “drag path” movement feature. See section 5.2.1 of the User manual for more information.
  
• Added Graphical Unit Counters as a 2D display option, removed the Alt symbol set.
  
• Added 3D slopes.
• Added Night Shading feature, a graphical overlay for Night and Dawn/Dusk conditions.
  
• Added check so that Recovery from Movement Disorder will occur on following turn.
  
• Added AI artillery fire check before movement begins, in Turn mode.
  
• Added support for shallow draft ships. These ships fire fore & aft, as opposed to broadsides.
  
• Added Column of March formation.
  
• Added the ability for Leaders to dismount.

As you can see, it's been a very active development cycle bringing this title to the publication stage!

Now we'd like to share some resources with you so you can begin polishing up on your knowledge of the conflict and getting ready for the game's release!

First off, a few websites of interest:

And then a few battle / campaign specific titles:

Now here's a few videos to check out. Epic History has four new videos out this year on the topic. Here's the first:

And Kings & Generals has an 8 video series:

So, we'll wrap this preview up with a variety of screen shots for you. Again, upon initial release this title will have the standard UI found in the rest of the Musket & Pike series, which provides three 2D views and two 3D views, three different 2D Symbols Sets and a variety of other commands to customize your view and convey the information you are looking for.