Wednesday 21 February 2018

A different approach for a campaign

Last week I wrapped up my French Indian War campaign. The purpose of the campaign was two fold. Firstly to provide a background narrative and context to the games, and secondly to work through my house rule modifications which based upon One-Hour Wargames rules. Sorting out the rules was successful for the most part (more of that later). However, the background and historical context to the games was not as compelling as I had hoped.

Following my post on the campaign and reflections, in stepped Jonathan of Palouse Wargaming Journal with an idea described as a "solo campaign relay". What is that you ask? Rather than repeating the concept I now point you to Jonathan's post here which summarises the idea and how it works.

I think this will be a fascinating wargaming collaboration, presenting me with a variety of battles and a context to games I have no control over. While providing Jonathan with a board game style campaign where tabletop dispatches inform him of a battle's outcome.

A recent game with an attack on a blockhouse (somewhat successful judging by the smoke).
I am planning to post this weekend the rules developed during the last campaign, which I will be using for this campaign. They are presently hand written. The only area of the rules I am contemplating changing is to do with army resolve. I had been playing games where an armies resolve fails when more than half their units are eliminated. At that point they effectively retired from the field of battle.

This can make the end of games a tad predictable. You know, eliminate one more unit and you win. So the alternative I am looking at using is this...

An army has resolve points. These are calculated by multiplying their number of units by 2. So an army of 10 units will have a resolve of 20. During the game whenever a unit is lost a dice is rolled and its score reduces the resolve. When the resolve reaches zero the army retires from the field of battle.

To add a couple of twists to the resolve:

  • Whenever elite units (eg grenadiers) are eliminated two dice are rolled and their combined score reduces the resolve.
  • If the commander is rated above average, then before the game a dice is rolled and the score added to an army's resolve.
  • If the commander is rated below average, then before the game a dice is rolled and the score subtracted from an army's resolve.
I plan to test out this modification over the next few days.

Finally, a few more Sci-Fi skirmish figures are ready to leave the painting table.

Some wild life to introduce into games.






12 comments:

  1. I look forward to our joint venture!

    I have a few thoughts on game play for your consideration:
    - Native American, Ranger, Light, or Irregular troops should be more effective in woods.
    - Regular infantry are less effective in woods or mountains.
    - Native American, Ranger, Irregular, or militia troops should be less effective attacking units defending in a fort.
    - Native Americans are less likely to stick around in battle if one unit on their side takes greater than half casualties.
    - Militia are less likely to stick around in battle if another militia unit on their side takes half or more casualties.

    You may work some of these into your rules as you see fit. Of course, you may disregard too!

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    1. I too am looking forward to the joint venture. Glancing through the list of considerations, the OHW variant rules I use do have rule additions to cover them. I will be posting them at the weekend.

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  2. Great idea, nice to be able to pull up a seat and watch. Thanks both for sharing.

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    1. I am looking forward to seeing how this all plays out.

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  3. I think this is going to be fascinating. I am sure that there are a good few of us glued to your blog!

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  4. It will be an interesting journey as we see how the campaign progresses.

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    1. It will be interesting to see what twists and turns these games bring.

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  6. I like your suggested amendments to the rules, and am thinking about adding something similar to my version of the Portable Wargame rules. Looking forward to seeing how your rules and campaign develop.

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    1. Thank you. I have played out one game using these resolve rules and it produced reasonable results. My one thought afterwards was to use a D3 dice and have an army's resolve equal to their unit numbers.

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  7. Peter,
    Creating Rules and Play Testing is certainly an extension of the Hobby you certainly have embraced fully with gusto- looking forwards to your future Scenarios and further success. Cheers. KEV.

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    1. KEV, thankyou. I too am looking forward to working through the campaign.

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