War of 1812 was designed by Tom Dalgliesh, developed by Ron Gibson and Lance Gutteridge, and it was published in 1973 by Columbia Games. IT is owned and copyrighted by Columbia Games, and we present it as a Vassal mod with their permission. Please visit the Columbia website at http://www.columbiagames.com/. You can find there the latest rules and a forum to answer your questions. They sell a whole line of block games, and if you enjoy this one, you owe it to them to buy a real copy! This Vassal mod was created by Stan and Carl Hilinski in April, 2005.
PRESS YOUR SIDE'S "FLIP" BUTTON BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR GAME. All your blocks are laying flat on the table to start. Press your Flip button on the buttonbar to flip them upright. You should only have to do this once in the game. Upright blocks will have a border and a colored spot in the top left corner. You can see the faces of your upright blocks, but your opponent will see only their backs.
If you right-click on any unit or marker, you will get a menu just for that piece. Some markers can be flipped over to a reverse side.
If you play by email, each turn you create a log, which is a snapshot of the current game plus each move you make that turn. You email your log to your opponent as an attachment. When you receive a log, you load into into Vassal (File/Load Game), and then you step through your opponent's moves. You then turn on your log (File/Begin Logfile) and do your turn. When finished, you save your log to email to your opponent (File/End Logfile).
Each player has a units pool. Drag and drop them to their starting locations. Although your units will appear faceup to you, your opponent will see facedown blocks. Right click on any unit to access its menu. The game automatically shuffles each stack before each draw.
The "1st player?" button randomly chooses a starting player each turn and may be used instead of having each player roll two dice -- useful in PBEM.
When you fight a battle, you may do it right on the board (don't forget to turn your blocks face up!), or you may drag them to the battleboard window (the "Battle" button on the buttonbar). The battleboard has buttons to turn all your units faceup or facedown, and there are helpful markers.
You may the red numbered-circles to designate hits in PBEM play. You can right-click on a red circle to clone it. Simply drag red circles totaling the number of hits near the defending units so your opponent can apply them on his next PBEM turn.
Use the target marker as a general pointer.
You can put the battle marker on the main map where the battle occurs as a reminder.
When you kill/destroy a unit, it will either go to the dead pool or back to its draw pool. You can see the dead pool by pressing the "tombstone" button.
The turn marker is reversible, red or blue. Right click it to change its color. You may do this to remind you who went first.
Choose Solo as your player side. The flip buttons do not in solo mode. To hide or reveal the American or British units, press the solo hide button on the buttonbar. The solo buttons only work when you play the Solo side.