Sunday 23 October 2016

AWI campaign and trees

In preparation for my American War of Independence campaign I have drawn up my campaign map.  This map will be used to track the battle wins and losses and help create a narrative to the games being played. I could have just kept a record, but this seemed much more fun and I can draw on lines as the armies march around with crossed sabres for where battles occur. Essentially it is my visual record.

Campaign map
The next steps for me now are to write up the rules for weather which will for the most part effect the likelihood of a battle occurring and the availability of troops from a campaign point of view. The games themselves will be effected by weather, for example - when there are heavy rains (reducing shooting ability) and fog (reducing visibility for artillery).

The battle set up will use a dice generated terrain approach which worked out really well for my WW2 campaign battle games. I need to make some changes to those rules to better suit the nature of AWI terrain.

The final part of the campaign puzzle is the calculating what is a drawn game or victory. In my WW2 campaign it was the capture of terrain features. For this campaign my thinking is leaning towards the number of units lost with a couple of modifiers for some terrain features.

During the week I had an opportunity to visit to a model shop where I came across some cheap trees. So I have spent most of my remaining free time basing and getting them ready. These will be very useful. Some of my games can have a fair number of woods (thinking ACW here) and my tree layout on the tabletop gets rather sparse. These will remedy that.

Adding bases fro stability
All the trees based and flocked


8 comments:

  1. That is a really attractive map to game with (the boardgames in me I suppose), it evokes a sense of the campaign even before the first word is written and I am looking forward to following this.

    With the map not being gridded, are you using point to point movement between the black dots?

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    1. The British will move from dot to dot based on winning a game. If they lose they will be rebuffed and will have to move on another dot. So there is a risk of them getting hemmed in and seek another landing on the coast or a rather long march which I would incur a penalty on the tabletop - yet to be determined. Regards, Peter

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  2. Norm stole my first reaction: a very attractive map! This AWI campaign of yours is starting to stir my mind & imagination a bit.

    Next week I set out to enter the map on the north east corner and drive down to west of Philadelphia. Glad I'm not marching, its a long way.

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    1. The map turned out better than expected and should help with creating a narrative for the games. Looking at some of the maps available online of the campaigns it is staggering how far the troops marched.

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  3. Great looking map. I am looking forward to following this campaign. Being in a funk and not getting anything done, maybe this will inspire me to get gaming again.

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    1. Thanks. I too am looking forward to starting the games. There are still a few more rules for weather and victory implications to be pulled together. Hoping to get them sorted this week.

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  4. Peter,
    Splendid AWI Map you have presented here - you've got a real talent at drawing and colouring it! Like the Whale! Very nice trees...looking forward to the opening of the Campaign with the P. Lainge 15mm Figures too. Regards. KEV.

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    1. Thanks KEV - looking forward to starting the campaign this coming weekend. Most of the campaign rules are now jotted down so I can get going. Regards, Peter

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