Monday 16 May 2011

Campaigning

I would wager that every wargamer who ever rolled a dice in anger has embarked upon a campaign. I seem to be inbetween periods and projects (other than a WW2 German/Russian painting venture) and was thinking about starting a full blown campaign.

I have a tried and tested method of campaigning, its very simple and relies on commanders writing standing orders, an order of march and goals. Officers and junior officers are named and given specific orders. Maps and routes must be marked...one chap in our mess insisted on writing out a list of ammunition and food requirements for any command he was given-I found this to be excessive but he was very thorough!

Once the grand plan is in place a random event chart can be constructed to add some problems for the commanders...also a weather chart...and then of course there is the enemy. Often the practical problems of manouvering and billeting an army are forgotten when one plays only single battles. Ametuers talk tactics and professionals talk logistics is so true!

It is of course all a learning curve, no plan survives contact with the enemy (or the elements or even the terrain) and how we as commanders (all be it of miniature armies) learn from dealing with these problems is for me what wargaming is all about.

So why am I rambling? Maybe a campaign could be run via the blog system? Every participant could be given the strategic overview and generate his own plan along with his details...the campaign organiser could then refight a situation (or just give a result for movements etc) and send a report back.

Very little effort would be required from the generals unless they wanted to play out the games themselves-which would be just as good. My question is has this been done before? If it has could you tell me what happened? Did it work? Have you any tips?

OK thanks for reading this far...lets face it we all need quality time away from our problems even if its just in our head and on our wargames table.

4 comments:

  1. We have played a few campaigns among our group, the main thing is a good umpire and lunatics to take orders but the umpires decision is final, make it interesting and they will come.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've played in an email campaign just like you've mentioned. It was the Sport of Kings campaign in the Age of Reason rule book. You were sent your troop dispositions and you sent back your moves, then the campaign master, plotted the moves. If there were any battles, he would either roll dice with added factors if the battle was small or play the game at his local club. I thought it was a great idea, and had a lot of fun playing.
    PS I play wargames with the ugly monkey above, he is the lunatic he's talking about!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hehe....glad to see that someone is using the internet for campaigning-though I think both of you could be insane!
    It gives me food for thought if I ever get two complete opposing armies of the same era.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes your totally right about the insane bit!!!

    ReplyDelete