1776: The Game of the American Revolutionary War

1776 is a two-player, turn-based war game played on a hex grid map of the thirteen colonies and Canada. It is primarily concerned with the military aspects of the American Revolutionary War. There is a basic game, various scenarios with advanced rules and a campaign game.

Avalon Hill Complexity Rating - 7

(from the back of the box:)

The shot heard round the world at Lexington set off more than just another brushfire war in England's scattered dominions. It gave birth to a struggling new nation led by a comparative handful of patriots whose refusal to bow before tyranny set the tone for an American heritage preserved from defeat to this very day. But victory did not come cheap.

After showing the British the color of their mettle at Bunker Hill, Washington's little army was plagued by one defeat after another, shunting from one battlefield to the next; always beaten but never destroyed. No power of the period believed that the upstart colonials and their unborn nation had the slightest chance of emerging victorious against the strongest military machine of the era after the dismal summer of 1776. But then came the cruelest winter of the decade when even nature seemed to join forces with the British against the tattered American troops. Undaunted, Washington led his small force in the historic crossing of the Delaware to twice surprise and rout British forces at Trenton and Princeton. Their resolve thus strengthened, the ill-clad Americans retired to Valley Forge to face winter beset by the hunger and deprivation that cost the lives of 2500 patriots. But the coming spring found Clinton facing a revitalized and strengthened rebel army which proceeded to chase him across New Jersey in the Monmouth Campaign. Reassured by news of the French alliance and the great American victory at Saratoga that fall, American troops dug in for what they knew would be a long and bitter battle for independence.