Rebels and Patriots: The Scenarios

By far the best part of this game, the even dozen scenarios elevate what would otherwise be a fairly routine warband style game. As with just about every wargame on the market, the first scenario is a simple line-them-up and run-at-each-other fight. These are great for getting your feet under you, working through the turn order and little details of a game, but quickly grow stale.

Looting the enemy’s camp

Dan Mersey et al always include a wide range of scenarios in the Rampant Family games, and although they typically amount to variations on the usual fare – escort missions, taking a fortified position, escaping from an ambush, egg hunts – having all the rules, and most importantly the scoring, lets the wargamer get stuck in a lot faster and with a lot less pre-game planning and discussion.

Assaulting the battery – that double-one ain’t gonna help

Even better, the scenarios in Rebels and Patriots are well suited to use in other games.  They lack the heavy reliance on the ruleset with which they come that often plagues scenario designs (I’m looking at you Rogue Stars), which allows this book to see some use with other rulesets.  It would be trivial to stat-up forces in Chosen Men or Fistful of Bigger Battles and throw them into any of these scenarios.

Boxcars on activation? That means free reinforcements. Nice.

Even if you don’t like the Rampant Family, you might want to give this ruleset a look, if only for the scenarios.