Strategic Level Campaigns? Recommendations wanted

[Warren Abox]

I'm looking to recruit a few friends to play national leaders and strategic commanders of a continental scale game.  I'm getting into horse and musket for the first time ever, and it's long been a dream of mine to play an actual campaign with more depth than a narrative campaign.  I'm hoping that they'll enjoy the strategic level game, and that it will generate some organic and unusual tactical battles that I can play through solo on the tabletop.   

It will be a horse-and-musket era campaign in the Ruritanian/Elbonian style.  The strategic game would be run largely as a PBEM or online game among friends, so it can be pretty loose, but it needs enough structure for the players to be able to make informed choices.  Preferably something with a map that we can push counters and armies around on, and that opens up the possibilites of ra bit of strategic maneuvering.  The battles will be run using some fast play rules scaled for Corp level using 2mm figures.  Maybe throw in a few skirmishes if the strategic game allows for the chance to have some "Richard Sharpe" level fun missions, but that's for later.

The prospect of running such a campaign is a little daunting, particularly given that my horse and musket gaming is largely limited to participating in games hosted by men with a lot more experience in the era and a lot more brains than myself. 

Any of you fine fellows have a recommendation for reading, or for strategic level rules that wouldn't suck up all my game time with logistics and fiddly number crunching?

[carlos marighela]

Have a look at Warfare in the Age of Reason by Scott Bowden it had a strategic campaign built around the Seven Years War plus in a supplement a mini campaign based on the War in Silesia. Great little campaign system, easy to run and well suited to PBEM if you have the resources to scan the maps. The tactical rules are also elegant and enjoyable, with a seperate module for running sieges, which is a big feature of the age.

Dunno whether they are still in print somewhere but shouldn't be too difficult to find and would probably suit your purposes very well.

[Dan55]

What types of questions are you interested in the most?

One thing I can recommend for an instant campaign background set of rules is large scale board wargames.  For example, the old 1776 boardgame makes for a great campaign just by transferring big battles to the tabletop and making 1 strength point equal 1 battalion.

[Warren Abox]

Have a look at Warfare in the Age of Reason by Scott Bowden...

Sport of King's, right?  The WitAR battle rules I know are by Kershner and Wood.

There's a great time by turn AAR series of Sport of Kings on YouTube that helped inspire me, but it looks a little too tied into European maps and politics.  You think I could bang out my own map and file off the serial numbers to make a more Ruritanian style game?  I'm also not sure how tied to WitAR that campaign is.

[carlos marighela]

You’re quire right Kershner and Wood not Bowden best not to rely on failing memory alone.

Quite playable as a campaign system without using the WAR tactical rules themselves as the campaign system essentially provides locations, economic points.  Control of areas creates money called tricorns which have a fixed value in terms of purchasing units. Five tricorns buys an infantry battalion or cavalry regiment, ten or 15 buys a fortification. It’s all  pretty simple and painless but good fun.

[Warren Abox]

All righty then!  After reading through some Tony Bath and Don Featherstone and rewatching a couple of videos of Sport of Kings, I threw together a blog with some rules and setup.  If you see any glaring holes in this, feel free to point them out.  Still a ways out from kicking this off - don't even have the figs yet! - and so I'll be tinkering for a while.

https://trossianwar.blogspot.com/

[LazyStudent]

Hi,

I would recommend checking out the material from 6mmACW.com. I am working on a 100days campaign 1815 using their Vicksburg campaign rules as a basis. They are simple enough that you can run them simply, but also allow for additional parts to be added if you want something more crunchy. The rules are currently set in the ACW (oddly enough), but they are fairly easy to port over to whatever map/area/period you want.

Also I really like how they deal with reinforments and arrivals into battles. It feels like the arrival of Blucher at Waterloo could actually happen!

https://www.6mmacw.com/vicksburg-campaign.html

[Mindenbrush]

The Montreal and Ottawa groups I game with have used Age of Reason Sport of King’s a few times and it always provides some good battles.

Jim Purkey aka Der Alte Fritz used the basic Sport of Kings mechanics to run a small solo AWI campaign a couple of years ago.

[Warren Abox]

Hi,

I would recommend checking out the material from 6mmACW.com. I am working on a 100days campaign 1815 using their Vicksburg campaign rules as a basis. They are simple enough that you can run them simply, but also allow for additional parts to be added if you want something more crunchy. The rules are currently set in the ACW (oddly enough), but they are fairly easy to port over to whatever map/area/period you want.

Also I really like how they deal with reinforments and arrivals into battles. It feels like the arrival of Blucher at Waterloo could actually happen!

https://www.6mmacw.com/vicksburg-campaign.html

Never thought about looking into ACW, but I love when you can port rules from one era over into another.  I'll check it out.

For the tabletop rules, I'll be using Eric Sprague's fast play Napoleonics.  It gives that "feeding units into the firestrom" feel that you mention, with late arrivals not guaranteed, but capable of big changes to the flow of the battle when they do arrive.  It's right at the operational level that will port over to the strategic game, and looks to have DBA levels of replayability.

[LazyStudent]

It is in the end a fact that pre-industrial horse and musket era general all faced a similar dielma. How to move massed number of men, horses, and guns to concentrate at a certain location in time to engage the opponents!

An added benafits of the 6mm ACW system is that their campaign sets are free! Although I have since purchased some of their other products because they are worth it

I actually don't know that set. It sounds interesting though. We play with General d'Armee, which is a great set. But we are looking into using 321 - Fast Play Napoleonic Rules (http://chasseuracheval.blogspot.com/p/321-fast-play-napoleonic-rules.html) for larger games.

[Warren Abox]

I actually don't know that set. It sounds interesting though. We play with General d'Armee, which is a great set. But we are looking into using 321 - Fast Play Napoleonic Rules (http://chasseuracheval.blogspot.com/p/321-fast-play-napoleonic-rules.html) for larger games.

I looked at that ruleset, but the Army Building was a little too fiddly to securely bolt into the campaign system that I had in mind.  The game 2 by 2 uses a simple AP point buy that should make it easy to translate from resources to purchasing units.  I figure that every rural countryside can generate a standard line unit each year, so they'll produce the 2AP needed to furnish replacement costs.  That should keep the armies running around pacifying enemy countryside while leaving the cities (+4AP per year) as more lucrative targets - and if you can catch one while the field army is away, you can reduce it by siege warfare without firing a shot.

[warrenpeace]

My top recommendation for you is to use the board wargame "No Peace Without Spain!" by Compass Games. It's on its 2nd edition printing. Take a look at it here:

https://www.compassgames.com/no-peace-without-spain-96.html

That system has spun off some other games such as "Nine Years: War of the Grand Alliance." See it here:

https://www.compassgames.com/nine-years-war-of-the-grand-alliance-1688-1697.html

And "A Pragmatic War" (War of Austrian Succession). See that one here:

https://www.compassgames.com/a-pragmatic-war.html

This is a quick simple system in which turns represent a year but each turn has multiple impulses generated by card play. Maps are point to point, so you can maneuver across most of Europe from area to area. There is a great system for resolving sieges, perhaps the best I've ever seen in a strategic horse and musket era game system. Each troop unit represents a combined arms corps of about 10,000 men, and these can be at reduced strength or be demoralized after a battle. There's a few key leaders in each game. I think these games would be great battle generators, because resolving battles using miniatures would be more satisfying that using the dicey system in the games.

Many alternatives exist if you want more detail. There are some much more detailed games of the War of Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, and the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, there is a system for using the old Avalon Hill and Australian Design Group game Empires in Arms to generate battles for resolution using Napoleon's Battles. Empires in Arms is a pretty great old game in and of itself. I recently posted a review of it on BoardGameGeek. I also recently posted a variant campaign for it which runs from April 1796 to March 1801. That game has monthly turns and strength points that represent about a brigade of troops. It also has a pretty intriguing diplomatic system. So campaigns are a series of wars with periods of enforced peace in between.

[WuZhuiQiu]

My top recommendation for you is to use the board wargame "No Peace Without Spain!" by Compass Games. It's on its 2nd edition printing. Take a look at it here:

https://www.compassgames.com/no-peace-without-spain-96.html

warrenpeace, those seem like great suggestions. One question that I have been pondering with respect to using boardgames to run campaigns is how do you feed miniature battle results back into the campaign system? For example, some rulesets entail a fixed number of turns or victory conditions that don't really put much emphasis on saving units to fight another day...

[warrenpeace]

One question that I have been pondering with respect to using boardgames to run campaigns is how do you feed miniature battle results back into the campaign system? For example, some rulesets entail a fixed number of turns or victory conditions that don't really put much emphasis on saving units to fight another day...

That is generally something that a game master would work out. I played in a War of Spanish Succession campaign early last decade, sometime around the 300th anniversary of Blenheim. The GM recorded how beat up the various battalions and squadrons were in the miniatures battles, and either merged some units, removed some units, or gave them less available hit points for the ongoing campaign. He used one of the older hex maps of a Marlborough game and translated it into a computer map. We made move orders not knowing where the enemy was going, and had some dramatic battles. The pro-Hapsburg side lost its siege train in one battle, I believe, and the French and Bavarians came out the ultimate victors after a decisive battle along the southeast edge of the map. You can go to this page about the WSS Campaign on warflag.com and click on the results of turns One through Five to see our maneuvers on the map:

http://www.warflag.com/blenheim2004/campaign.html

I know that there was an article in the Avalon Hill magazine The General about how to use the miniatures rules Napoleon's Battles to resolve combat in a campaign of Empires in Arms. I think the index to the articles about Empires in Arms in The General is on the game page at BoardGameGeek. But I can't access that from where I am. I think you can download articles from The General for free, if you can find the right volume and issue.

[warrenpeace]

warrenpeace, those seem like great suggestions. One question that I have been pondering with respect to using boardgames to run campaigns is how do you feed miniature battle results back into the campaign system? For example, some rulesets entail a fixed number of turns or victory conditions that don't really put much emphasis on saving units to fight another day...

I might have missed the import of this question somewhat in my previous answer. No Peacd Without Spain has its mixed corps of about 10,000 men flipped to a reduced side as a result of combat casualties. And the losing side gets demoralized. It can take the rest of a campaign year to recover morale, or it's done in the winter. Reduced corps can be rebuilt to some extent during the year, but a lot of the rebuilding is also done during the winter. I think you'd have to decide how to translate damage to the unit in the miniatures battle into effects on the game pieces. Since the game covers the entire war, players would be motivated to avoid losing their entire army in one battle.

On a different scale, the strength points in Empires in Arms represent between 1000 and 2000 men, in other words, about a brigade. It might be even easier to translate the effects of miniatufes battles back onto the game map at that scale. And Empires in Arms campaigns can cover as little 3 years or as much as 20 years, with turns representing one month. The main campaigns are the Revolutionary period from 1792 to 1802  or the Imperial period from 1805 to 1815.