What do gamers took for in a campaign? More properly, why do gamers take part in campaigns? Oh, there are the usual elements of the "Rommel Syndrome", and there is the image of one bent over a map just like the generals in the periods we simulate, but the real reason, as faras I can tell, is boredom. Only so much pleasure can be had in stand-up, head-on slugfests. And a campaign can bring about uneven battles. There is a certain satisfaction in being faced with 2 to 3 times your number, and escaping reasonably intact. Try setting this up as a regular wargame, and someone will scream bloody murder.
Other reasons exist for campaign games, one of the most important being to give a reason for the battle. Normally this is handled by assigning some objective to one side or the other, such as "hold the crossroads" (a refight of Quatre Bras had this objective... and the British did, forming square around the crossroads, the rest of the British forces having been driven off. By the objectives announced it was a British victory.). In a campaign game this can be a valid objective, but the thought of having enough men to hold the crossroads the next day is an important consideration. Holding the crossroads may work, but the loss of 75% of your force in doing it may make it pointless.
Wargamers like to know that their efforts today have an effect tomorrow. A gamer with a British army, for instance, and the typical British reinforcement method, (i.e., none until winter), may not be so eager to fight bloody battles in the early months of a campaign. The thought of having your favorite Highland unit cut to shreds is made more painful when you see them the next battle, 4 figures left out of 28. it makes you do things that you'd never do in a one-off game, such as retreat to preserve your army.
Campaigns have several features in common. The map is one, but this can vary from something elaborate either bought in some store or made over several nights of patient labor, to something a little more than a sketch run off on the nearest copy machine. Bookkeeping is indispensable. There is no other way to keep track of the number of men in a unit over the course of a campaign. And bookkeeping leads, naturally, to supply. Logistics are present whether you have a road and the note "supply line here, if cut army retreats until it gets to that point" , or something that would resemble a monster game out of SPI.
Campaigns give rise to uneven battles. This is one of the most important elements of the whole idea. There is a certain glory attached to holding on with a small force against a larger force, and then either escaping during the night, orseeing the larger force cease its attacks. Colonialgamers have little trouble with this; gamers in more formal periods have to get used to the idea, but it can catch on quickly. The whole idea is to generate battles that aren't worth fighting. In the Vickysburg campaign, for instance, probably the most important engagement consisted of a few pistol shots fired for effect as 600 cavalrymen ran from 14,000 infantrymen.
At one time or another, those of us in V.O.W. (Various Other Wargamers), a non-group loosely based in the Seattle area, and with outposts in Tulsa and Indianapolis, have tried just about every kind of campaigning published. We usually tried more than one time with each system, and we found good and bad features out of whatever we tried. We did this with periods from the Renaissance to the American Civil War.
The Charles Grant system of campaigning, as outlined in his books The Wargame, and The Battle of Fontenoy, has the virtues of being simple, the easiest to convert to tabletop, and is easy to set up. Most gamers can quickly grasp the rules, and a group can get on with campaigning with scarcely more pause than to draw up the map and allot the sides.
The basis of the system is a road net and grid. With the exception of some cross-country movement, troops march along the roads or are ferried down the rivers. The grid is laid over the map after all hills, swamps, streams, towns, main roads, secondary roads, and forests are put out. It is for intelligence purposes as well as an aid to determine where contact takes place. Movement is written down and players alternate calling out the general grid squ~re a force is in. (This simulates dust, questioned peasants, and other forms of very limited intelligence.)
The smallest part of the grid is a box the size of the table being used. Four of these can make a large rectangle in a form not unlike the same grids used by air defense establishments. The map can be of virtually any size. For the Relief of Frumpburg the map was 2'x2'.
For the Vickysburg campaign we had to graduate to an even larger map (five 2'x2'maps). We made our maps first, then laid out the grid, and then corrected the map to make sure that some form of road or navigable river touched or entered each box. Once contact is made a rectangle the size of the table is centered over the point of contact, and all the terrain inside that rectangle, and likewise all the forces inside that rectangle, are placed on the table.
Movement is measured along the roads. Typically heavy cavalry will move half again as fast as line infantry, light cavalry will move twice as fast, and artillery will move at the same speed as foot. Gamers can introduce weatherto slow up movement, and different rates of movementwill exist for travel upstream and downstream. Supply wagons will have their own movement rate, generally just a little slower than the foot, and gamers with referees will soon have couriers galloping all over the landscape.
A little experience soon teaches gamers that it is best to push out small patrols ahead of the main body. When contact is made all of the forces within the rectangle are placed on the table (concealed units are noted and shown to a referee or, lacking such a person, are noted and sealed in an envelope to be opened at the appropriate time). This means that keeping the main body a distance back of thevedettes and patrols is often a good idea. All units on the table are identified by name, number, and type (armies kept color plates of their opponent's uniforms to show peasants and uneducated officers). if you have to place your entire army on the table, and your opponent only has to place a patrol of 3 figures, on turn 1 he will cut and run, and will know the location of your main body, while you will have identified only a simple patrol.
Skirmishes can quickly develop out of these little contacts, and this, sometimes, can be quite a change from the large clashes. In a group gamers will quickly find those who have a talent for the small actions, and entrust it to them.
Other operations can be done with this system that are harder to do with most other campaigning systems. A gamer can pick the terrain for his battle and sit on it until his opponent comes to him (this was done with the Relief of Frumpburg). Cavalry raids can be tried (as was done during the Vickysburg campaign). Light troop ambushes can be prepared, and sprung, and even combined operations and naval battles can all be accommodated on the same map. The problems come out only through experience.
More Campaigns
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