The Battle of Cowpens

Two critical battles were considered turning points in the American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Saratoga in New York and the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina. The Battle of Cowpens was a catalyst to a series of events that led eventually to the surrender of the British at Yorktown. Small BoAR Volume I, The Battle of Cowpens, puts players directly into the milieu of this decisive contest.

The goal of the Small BoAR design concept is to include small yet critical battles that otherwise do not fit the scale of the historically simulating and highly successful Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) system designed by Mark Miklos. This new system, aptly termed Small Battles of the American Revolution (Small BoAR), was designed by Bruno Sinigaglio working closely with Mark Miklos to preserve the continuity and popularity of the original Battles of the American Revolution game system.

Although extremely important to the history of the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Cowpens involved slightly over 1000 participants per side. In the Battles of the American Revolution system, which represents 100 men per strength point, this would equate to only ten or so combat factors per side. The scale for the battle of Cowpens, on the other hand, is 12 men per strength point, or one-eighth that of the BoAR system. The map scale is also correspondingly reduced to 25 yards per hex from the BoAR scale of 200 yards per hex. The time scale is approximately four minutes per turn as compared with one hour per turn in BoAR.

Although Army Morale, the game-within-the-game in BoAR, is faithfully preserved in Small BoAR, and the Small BoAR sequence of play resembles that of BoAR and will look familiar to anyone who has played games in the original series, certain novel elements appropriate to the new scaling have been added.