Campaign Plans

I've posted previously about wanting to run a club campaign and judging by the interest it looks like it's all systems go. So all I have to do now is write it!

The campaign is going to have club members acting as commanders only. That is they will plan things, manage resources and issue orders to their forces. They will not be fighting any of the battles. I plan on asking people on various forums to fight out the battles that arise. So one battle might be fought with FoW and another a Saga game or a 40K battle or even a Blood Bowl match. The people who fight the battle will report the result with the casualties incurred by both sides and maybe even a batrep with pictures.

You may be wondering how you could possibly run a campaign with such diverse game systems. Well everything will be done with resource points (RP). If the commander commits 120RP of troops to an attack and his opponent commits 100RP the attacker will have 20% more troops available. So if the battle was going to be Saga the attacker would get 6pts worth of forces while his opponent would only have 5 pts. If it was Dystopian Wars you could have 1200pts to your opponents 1000pts or 600 to 500 or any other matching ratio. This way we can move the campaign along quickly and club members aren't tied down to playing the same game system week after week. There's also no issues trying to arrange a time when both commanders are free to play out the battles.

So now I have the players sorted out as well as how the battles will be resolved I need to sort out a campaign map. I also need a way to record what army is where and in what strength. In addition I will have to be able to produce copies of the map for the commanders. So I will either have to draw the map by hand and photocopy it or find a ready made map which suits the needs of the campaign. I thought about using a map from a board game but discounted it as it would be difficult to make copies and also probably a copyright violation. I've found a few maps online but none of them really suited my needs so I'll probably just draw up my own.

Once I get the map sorted out I need to decide on the ground scale. How long will it take an army to move from X to Y. Will that time be increased by bad terrain or shortened by roads and will these times be affected by the weather. The problem here is making the campaign complex enough to engage the people playing as commanders, as they won't be fighting the battles, but not making it so complex that they need a real general staff to keep track of things.

Once I have the map and the scales sorted out I can decide on how many RP's each country produces each turn and how many armies they start with. This has to be a balancing act. Too few resources produced each turn could mean a couple of bad results could wipe out a player as an effective force far too early in the campaign. On the other hand too many resources each turn and you have a situation like Russia in WWII turning out tanks faster than the Nazis could kill them which would mean the campaign would never end.

Luckily I have a number of books such as 'Setting up a Wargames Campaign' by Tony Bath to help me make these decisions. My feeling is to go simple rather than complex as this is the first campaign we've run as a club. Also if things go well I can add in complexity as the campaign progresses.

The first thing I intend to do to start the campaign off is to ask the commanders to name their countries and write me a brief history of their domains to get them to feel a connection to their country and it's citizens. I'll then post the map with brief descriptions of the countries here. I also plan to publish regular updates here for those that are interested.

Quick Review: Old Man's War by John Scalzi

There's nothing I enjoy more than reading a good book while sitting with my feet up in my favourite chair, the warm sun streaming through the windows and great music playing in the background. In fact after I took early retirement just about all I did for the first few months was sit and read my way through my extensive book collection. One time I counted up and I'd read 15 books in seven days!

Although I've always been interested in military history I read very little of it today. Most of my time is spent reading science fiction and fantasy and that leads me onto today's review. I've been doing a lot of painting recently so I've decided to take a break and spend a few days just reading. After a quick perusal of my bookshelves I decided to read Old Man's War by John Scalzi again. I first came across this book while I was browsing through my recommendations on Amazon. What intrigued me was the strap line for the book

"John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army."

How could anybody join the army aged 75? I had to find out so I bought the book and wasn't disappointed.

Humanity finally made it to interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce and there are lots of alien races willing to fight us for them. The war for available real estate has gone on for decades. Earth is quarantined from space 'for their own good' by the Colonial Defence Force (CDF) and  only those of retirement age can join the CDF. The new recruits are taken off Earth to serve two years at the front. No one on Earth knows why the geriatric pensioners are accepted and not fit young men, or how the old are made young enough again to fight. The old go for the chance to be young again and if they survive, they're given a generous homestead on hard-won colony planets, never to return to Earth. John Perry is taking that deal with only the vaguest idea what to expect.

The science is clever and interesting and forms an integral part of the story rather than something that's just included to allow things like space travel to happen. But I'm not going to go into great detail about the book as to do so would spoil many of the surprises it contains. The story itself can be described as many things. It can be called military sci-fi as there is John's training and the many tales of his combat experiences (my favourite is when they have to fight one inch high humanoid aliens). It could be called a love story about about a man and his dead wife who maybe isn't quite as dead as he thought. It could be a story about friendship and death. It could be a morality tale about power-hungry organisations manipulating people for their own short sighted aims. But the book is more than the sum of it's parts. It's funny, touching, exciting and makes you think. Best best of all it's a great read.

It's also part of a three book series the other two books being 'The Ghost Brigades' and 'The Last Colony'. If you enjoy good sci-fi do yourself a favour and get this book you won't be disappointed.

Pendraken New Releases for May

Pendraken have announced their new releases for May. This time it's more figures for their excellent League of Augsburg range. I'm more and more impressed by the quality of Pendrakens 10mm figures. The amount of detail is better than you find on some 15mm figures and when you combine this with the price it makes it hard to justify going for 15mm instead.

League of Augsburg
LOA12 - Flintlock firing line
LOA13 - Matchlock firing line
LOA14 - Grenadiers, fur hats, advancing
LOA15 - Grenadiers, cloth caps, standing
LOA16 - Scythemen

For those of you not familiar with the League of Augsburg here is the info on it from Wikipedia.

The League of Augsburg (also known as the Grand Alliance) was a European coalition, consisting (at various times) of Austria, Bavaria, Brandenburg, the Dutch Republic, England, the Holy Roman Empire, Ireland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, Portugal, Savoy, Saxony, Scotland, Spain and Sweden. The organization, which was founded in 1686 as the League of Augsburg, was known as the "Grand Alliance" after England joined the League (in 1689). It was originally formed in an attempt to halt Louis XIV of France's expansions.

The League was officially formed by Emperor Leopold I, acting upon the advice of William III of Orange. The primary reason for the League's creation was to defend the Palatinate from France. This organization fought the War of the Grand Alliance against France from 1688 to 1697.

The Alliance was twice installed. Between 1689 and 1698 it fought the Nine Years War against France. After the Treaty of Den Haag signed on September 7, 1701 it went into a second phase as the Alliance of the War of Spanish Succession. The War ended following the Tory political victory in 1710 in Britain which led to the Peace of Utrecht — the peace with France which granted Spain's crown to the French candidate but divided Spain's external territories. In Spain the war continued until it was decided by the Siege of Barcelona, on September 11, 1714.

The Grand Alliance gained enormous cultural and political importance as an example of a possible European union supported by (most of) the German territories, Britain and the Netherlands as well as by many French intellectuals dissatisfied with the absolutist rule of Louis XIV, the eviction of the Huguenots in 1685 and the union of Catholicism and the French crown at home.

The end of the Grand Alliance was due primarily to a growing dissatisfaction amongst the British populace having to finance the wars abroad. The balance of power doctrine eventually resulted, however, from the wars Britain proved able both to begin and to end on its own terms. The Grand Alliance (and wars fought by the Alliance) also contributed to a new sense of how wars would be fought in the future. The death toll of the most important battles and sieges was enormous[peacock term], yet none of the three wars fought from 1689-1721 led to a repeat of the atrocities of the Great German war (Thirty Years' War) fought in the early seventeenth century. Instead, the generals of the Grand Alliance became heroes of a Europe "civilized even when at war" - an ideal which would last, with some exceptions, to the early days of the First World War.

Dystopian Wars: EotBS vs Prussians

Had my second game of DW last night.  It was a 1200pt game and I used my EotBS while Phil used his Prussians. My force was my BS, 8 Frigates, 3 Gunships, 2 Ika, 3 Inari, a War Gyro and 10 Tiny Flyers while I think Phil had a BS with 3 Escorts, 2 Gunships, 6 Frigates, a Sky Fortess, 3 Scoutships, a Fleet Carrier, 3 Bombers and 20 Tiny Flyers. The photo below shows our starting positions.

I planned to use my Ika to attack and board either his BS or Fleet Carrier supported by my BS and Gunships with the Frigates running interference. On my right flank I massed my aerial force to threaten and distract from my main attack. However these plans were pointless as we only managed two turns! I quickly realised that we were never going to get the game finished with 1200pts each on the table. I suppose if you're really familiar with the rules and know what your doing things would go quicker. But DW doesn't strike me as a game where you can expect a quick resolution with forces much above 750 pts, especially not on a club night. That's not to say I didn't enjoy playing, I did, it was good fun and I learnt a lot. I especially enjoyed the look on Phil's face when I rolled double '1' for crits twice in the game and watched his ships explode.


The position at the start of turn two

After two turns Phil & I had both lost most of our frigates I'd also lost my BS while Phil had also lost a scout blimp, a gunship and a bomber with various other models taking damage as well. As time had run out we called it a night with Phil having the advantage.

I'm looking forward to the next game but that one will definitely be much smaller