I am always on the look out for military history books that connect to my wargaming hobby. While books often are thematically connected to wargames, rarely does a book translate directly into a wargame. A Game of Hare & Hounds: An Operational-level Command Study of the Guilford Courthouse Campaign, 18 January – 15 March 1781 by Harold Allen Skinner, Jr. from Marine Corps University Press in 2021 is an exception to that rule. Equal parts military history, National Park Service battlefield guide, and staff ride guide, A Game of Hare & Hounds takes any wargame on the Battle of Guilford Courthouse on 15 March 1781 to a new level of understanding.
The key to understanding the usefulness of A Game of Hare & Hounds in wargaming is found in the Forward and most directly relates to the staff ride portion of the book:
His approach brings us straight to the central purpose and greatest value of the staff ride, one not to be gained in any other way. Rather than being merely a review or catalog of decisions, at each of the aforementioned (in part three) stands, the author asks staff ride participants the classical questions: 1) Can you discern, at this particular stand or stage of the contest, that a decision was made (or if no decision was made, that in itself—the “no decision”—becoming functionally the decision)? 2) What exactly was the decision that was made? 3) Who made it? 4) Was it reasonable based on the information available at that time (as opposed to what is known today, after the fact)? 5) To who was it communicated? 6) What effect did the decision have on the outcome of the event? (Skinner Jr., p. IX)
The staff ride portion of A Game of Hare & Hounds nicely compliments a more tactically focused wargame such as GMT Games’ Battles of the American Revolution Volume III: Guilford – The High Water Mark of the Southern Campaign, 1781 by Mark Miklos first published in 2002. The balance of A Game of Hare & Hounds clearly explains the strategic and operational aspects of the campaign, and are complimentary of an operational-level campaign wargame like Supply Lines of the American Revolution: The Southern Strategy
by Amabel Holland (credited as Tom Russell on the cover and rules) for Hollandspiele Games in 2018. Even a more highly abstracted wargame like Commands & Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution by Richard Borg for Compass Games in 2017 benefits because a scenario is quite literally a single stand or two of the battle.



Recommended.
Feature image courtesy RMN
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there’s also this one, originally in ACG Magazine and later a standalone game from LNLP
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19452/the-battle-of-guilford-courthouse-the-beginning-of
Thanks! Added to the list of “someday.”