Wargame Campaigns

[thistlebarrow]

I would be interest to hear from anyone who has taken part in a wargames campaign

How long did it last

Did it reach its natural end, by which I mean when it reached the campaign objectives

If not, why not

[Harry Faversham]

We once had a campaign that took place almost every day of the six week holidays. Fought using Charles Grant's rules for both the battles and the map moves. We had some epic tussles including one with two forces of infantry being ferried down a river who bumped each other on a table sized lake and had a fight with boarding parties and and wotnot battling valiantly. In the end, after many and varied actions from skirmishes to full blown battles I was forced back to the sea. Each headland of the bay I legged it from, had an old ruined castle (Airfix Foreign Legion fort!) on it in which my rearguard made an epic stand, allowing my lads to leg it back to the fleet... that summer was wargaming perfection as we had a six foot square sandtable to draw conclusions on.

[WillieB]

I would be interest to hear from anyone who has taken part in a wargames campaign

How long did it last

Did it reach its natural end, by which I mean when it reached the campaign objectives

If not, why not

I'm not actually playing a campaign but I'm  game-mastering  one.
We are playing our second Dux Brittaniarum (TooFatLardies) multi-player ( about 20 Major and minor players in all) campaign right now. So far 25 raids and battles have been fought and most players are quite active with a lot of scheming, backstabbing and betrayals going on.
Each battle gets an AAR on our forum.

The first one ran  for 81 raids and battles and lasted the better part of 2 years playing almost weekly. Well some weeks we had two or three games going on at the same time others just one or none.
By that time however some of the players were showing signs of weariness and we jointly decided to end the campaign with 2 mega- battles pitching 8 Saxons against 7 Romano- Britons.
The first one was decisively won by the Saxons but the Romano- British came back strong in the second battle and nearly won the campaign.
After that I decided to take a break from Dux B. but after about 2 months the players were already asking for a second campaign. Preparation (maps, player sheets etc.) took me another 2 months and we started playing our current campaign  less than 6 months after the previous one had ended.

Without a doubt Dux Brittaniarum is the most successful rule-set/ campaign system ever introduced in our club, with several of the 'new' players buying Dark Ages figures and actually painting them especially for these campaigns.

 


 

[armchairgeneral]

I once did a Lord of the Rings campaign, long before the films, based on the final advance on the Black Gate of Mordor after Pelennor Fields.

There is a reasonably detailed order of battle for the 7,000 troops that set out from Minas Tirith in Return of the King as well of course detailed maps. Think I scaled them down to 1:50. The evil forces outnumbered them but their movements and actions were randomly generated using a grand “Pony Wars” type system. A mate had the good forces and I umpired the campaign taking control of the evil troops.

I also came up with a rule for a regular test based on strength of good forces against their proxity to the Black Gate over time to ensure the good player was sufficiently active. If you just sat in Minas Tirth the Eye would quickly turn to the ring bearers and so game over.

It all worked quite well over two days as it was for a fixed number of moves before the Ring was despatched. We had four battles culminating in a final battle in front of the Black Gate.

[Pijlie]

I played in many unsuccessful campaigns and a few successful ones. Amongst the latter were a several years long Battletech mercenary campaign in which my friend and I wrote missions for each others' mercenary companies and alternately played each others' opponents.

The other one was a WAB Age of Arthur campaign that was successful because I did all the preparation, bookkeeping and followups. Usually I even provided all the miniatures.

The secret of a successful campaign is either to find those rare people that are willing to invest in rules, figures and administrative work as much as you are yourself or do everything yourself instead.

[fastolfrus]

Occasionally run a campaign at school.

Last year we ran a pirates "On the seven seas" campaign for a term.

The year before we ran a Great Lakes/War of 1812 campaign.

The boys find a pen and paper campaign quite a novelty - and the 1812 was a real old-school affair (maps drawn with squares, hidden movement, campaign rules from Featherstone, the map was inspired by his FiW map too)

[Amonglions]

Easily the most successful was a 7 Years War campaign, which went on for several years. It was modified Fredrick's Empires in Arms, using a modified version of Warfare in the Age of Reason. A truly well organised campaign, every participant maintained enthusiasm and the battles were hard fought. I think we were lucky in that we had a number of venues to play the games and were incredibly lucky that one of the participants had massive 15mm armies for every nation in the period.

Played in some excellent Necromunda campaigns when the box set first came out. Prior to that my old club had several Sunday campaigns where we played the old Realms of Chaos - Chaos Warband narrative campaigns. Some fun times were had, but we were fortunate to have such good players and a good umpire or the lack of balance would have killed it dead.

Also played a few WHFB campaigns back with 3rd Edition, also a few narrative campaigns for Rogue Trader.

Those were the days!

Cheers.

[Harry Faversham]

Since this thread started I've been toying with the thought of going on the campaign trail. Charles Grant's campaign/map rules would do for gadding about, Neil Thomas' 'one hour rules' will do for pitched battles and SofBH for patrols and skirmishes. I've got a week off, after tonight, so it's likely the game's afoot!

[Amonglions]

Since this thread started I've been toying with the thought of going on the campaign trail. Charles Grant's campaign/map rules would do for gadding about, Neil Thomas' 'one hour rules' will do for pitched battles and SofBH for patrols and skirmishes. I've got a week off, after tonight, so it's likely the game's afoot!

That sounds great!

Finding a boardgame you can use to control the campaign mechanics, then use your chosen rules on the table top is truly a thing of beauty when it works.

I'm always on the look out for a boardgame I can use to run campaigns. Not been particularly good at finding them though.

[LeadAsbestos]

My dream campaign is the raiding action on the coast and islands surrounding Troy all culminating in the final.siege. Dux Brit w mods for the campaign rules and advancement, Lion Rampant for the battles. Greeks of various sorts, Trojans, and  Sea Peoples forces...
The downside is all the painting and planning wod be mine, along with it ending up a solo project!

[timlillig]

I have completed two campaigns of Necromunda, as it is presented in the rules.  It takes about 12-16 games to get to a point where players have maxed out the advancement of their warband to a point where the game becomes less fun.  That is basically what determined ending the campaign.  Since this is about one game a week over a semester, that worked out quite nicely since I was in college at the time.  I have started a third campaign that only runs occasionally, we have not set any sort of campaign goal.

I have completed three campaigns and am currently in a forth for Song of Blades and Heroes with the Song of Deeds and Glory campaign rules.  That one also does not set an end goal, we just ran for a number of game sessions until we felt it was time to move on.  The total number of games has been about 10-18.

Other campaigns I have been involved with have mostly been just a series of scenarios, where one person takes on the responsibility to come up with the next game, forming a rough narrative.

[Arlequín]

My dream campaign is the raiding action on the coast and islands surrounding Troy all culminating in the final.siege. Dux Brit w mods for the campaign rules and advancement, Lion Rampant for the battles.

I like your thinking! I remember thinking when I got them, that DB (with 'Raiders' supplement) would work for almost any 'Heroic' style warfare era... and indeed the LR 'army' set up would be great for representing a single chieftain and his followers.

  

[Elk101]

We played a Napoleonic Peninsular War skirmish campaign this year,  involving attacking a series of Spanish towns. We gamed maybe once per month over about a year. We were all French commanders during our 'points' games and were Spanish during the non-points games where we tried to limit the score of our fellow commanders.

Last year we played an ACW brigade level campaign which pitted 2vs2 over the year. Casualties counted in following games so it was often better to retreat than throw men against unassailable positions.

[mweaver]

We have played a few Mordheim campaigns out.  All the ones that have made it to their planned conclusion have been collaborative - the competitive ones generally ended early when players who were not doing well dropped out.

A couple of years back our D&D characters became embroiled in a war, and we used Mordheim rules and Warhammer to play out the skirmishes and several major battles.  Everyone seemed to have a good time.

We came up with some campaign rules for the boardgame Arkham Horror that we have completed successfully twice (and been all eaten by assorted Elder Gods a couple of times, as well).

Speaking of boardgames to set the stage for battles, my group is gearing up to try G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  I am planning on rummaging through storage tubs and digging out my old copy of the Avalon Hill board game Source of the Nile to frame the scenarios.

Interesting thread!

-Michael

[Jiron]

We (my brother and I) have started several campaigns but all of them failed due to lack of time and, to be honest, lack of the ruleset we would both liked. Now we are both building armies for Lion Ramapant for the Dark Ages so we will probably try once more.

We have played our custom campaign in W40K and a Badab War (Forge World books for W40K). Both have failed as the game was not good enough to make time for it. Now we play Frostgrave, in a loose campaign with two more people.