I have just bought the Hat set of Colonial Indian figures (8203) and I am very pleased with the sculpts as they are similar to the colonial German but these figures seemed to be moulded out of rubber? The Germans are so hard and brittle they could almost have been cast in glass! Oh well at £4.25 I am not going to complain....indeed the range of plastic figures is now amazing-next on the list is a box of artillery and some Russian cavalry.
Has anyone ever run a solo campaign? I have read a couple of books in the past but any tips or links would be useful! As blogger is still not letting me join any more blogs or even leave comments my email is carlulverston@hotmail.co.uk thanks chaps.
What sort of campaign, how many players etc......
ReplyDeleteI've never played a solo campaign, not really sure to go about it??
ReplyDeleteYou've probably already tried it, but delete all cookies and try a different browser, for me to do anything on my blog I have to have it opened twice, for some reason that lets me open the Dashboard, very weird??
I've done a couple of solo campaigns in the past. The trick is to keep the framework and administration as simple as possible so it doesn't bog down and stop you from getting to the important bit, i.e. putting figures down on the tabletop and fighting a battle.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a fairly traditional campaign experience, an invasion or attack on a defended region is a good scenario to try, because it's easy to split yourself between the two sides. Get your campaign area map and work out how you're going deploy your defensive forces. Then you swap hats and work out what troops the attacker will have and where the initial assault will be. After fighting the first battle(s) you then swap hats back to the defence and work out how they're going to respond to the initial assault, and so-on with an action-reaction pattern.
Alternatively I've played a few solo campaigns where the "enemy" forces are entirely randomly generated - good for a counter-insurgency, colonial or zombie apocalypse game. Exact mechanics varied, but typically there was a map with various areas that needed to be patrolled/explored, with various levels of risk. Units were deployed, then rolls were made to see if any hostiles were encountered and if so a battle was fought, with the exact nature of the enemy forces rolled randomly. There's sometimes a penalty for areas of the campaign area left un-patrolled (such as an increase in "native unrest" points). The one problem with this sort of campaign is that you need to have enough figures to hand the possible random enemy combinations. I had one promising colonial Sudan campaign grind to a halt because a freakish set of die rolls called for the whole of an enemy force to consist of Hadendowah fanatics, when I only had a single unit of them painted and ready.
Finally I'm nowadays a big convert to the idea of "Narrative" campaigns, as found in the Two Hour Wargames series of rules. You just fight a series of separate battles, linked together by a narrative thread, following the exploits of a particular character or unit. You can decide that the results of one battle will have an effect on the next (e.g. if one battle ends in a rout, the next battle might be a "pursuit" scenario with one side trying to evade the other. Or you might determine that since the one side managed to blow up the enemy fuel dump in this game, in the next game the enemy vehicles won't be able to move for lack of fuel.) This narrative style of campaign is ideal for solo gamers, since you're free to adapt or fudge things on the fly if necessary, and nobody's going to complain if you're too generous or harsh with your consequences.
Just a couple of ideas for you, hope they help.
Thanks Doc, the idea of a traditional campaign is useful as is the narrative. looks like you have had plenty of experience with this, my son is only 8 but plays zombie games so I think that will be useful as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks again