When I first started Ancients wargaming I played single battle engagements exclusively. Later, research showed me that battles were not entities unto themselves, but were a culmination of vast strategic movements of armies and navies. Now I only fight non-campaign battles to teach new players the tactical rules of ancients combat. Having recently added the standard of Napoleonic wargaming to my interests, I quite naturally started with a campaign after learning some tactical rules. For my strategic framework I used Avalon Hill's excellent game War and Peace. I quickly found out that my friends and I could not muster up the number of figures we needed to fight the huge battles the campaign created at the battalion level. To compensate, we tried proportional battles in which the whole army suffered losses in proportion to the casualties suffered by our battalions. We decided this was not realistic enough for what we wanted though; especially when considering all the hidden movement, arrival of reinforcements in the nick of time, supply problems, and all the other things that are so much a part of a huge Napoleonic battle. We were not interested in the larger scale rules because they did not give us the feel for the masses of soldiers the battalion level rules gave us. So I started searching for a solution, and that is how the "campaign battle" concept was born. The campaign battle lies somewhere between a purely tactical level battle and a purely strategic level movement of armies. In the campaign battle the entire area of avast battlefield is mapped out and commanders move the units of their armies around in an attempt to locate and engage their opponents. As opposing forces make contact over a wide range of area these encounters are fought as tactical level engagements, but are a part of a bigger battle going on all around them. These tactical engagements last only as long as the scale game time remaining in the current turn after opposing units make contact and engage in combat. When the next move starts, the positions of the engaged units are recorded on a tiactical map. Commanders then bring up reinforcements, retreat, or do whatever is needed int he next "strategic" turn. Never have I had the feeling for what a commander of one of these vast armies must have felt like till I tried this concept. The game we used for our campaign battle was Napoleon's Last Battles by TSR. The game consists of four games in one, that can be combined to make the entire Waterloo campaign; we used the later. The British, French and Prussian commander each had his own map of the area -- but only his forces were displayed! A fourth map with opposing forces on it was used by our team of umpires. All commanders (or their designated deputy) plotted their movement with grease pencils on their plastic covered maps. These troop movements were then copied onto the umpires' maps; the umpires then told the commanders what resulted from their moves: sightings, meeting engagements, ambushes, etc. Next, the units involved were identified by their game pieces on the map and unit strengths were looked up in a reference book. A unit roster was then made to track casualties throughout the campaign. At this juncture is where my idea paid off. The game markers were in the brigade and regiments scales, so any engagement did not require more figures than we could muster. This allowed us to fight battalion level tactical actions in miniature. Since we were operating on such a small scale map, any time we had an engagement the general terrain could be derived straight from the map display; we then filled in small details on the gaming table. It was not all work and no play for the umpires either. Each umpire was assigned his own corps in one of the armies and commanded its units in the tactical battles. During the strategic moves they worked with the other umpire/corps commanders to plot movement on the umpires' maps. All in all, it is the perfect solution to the problem of too few figures to fight a big historical battle if you are the kind of player that likes to fight battalion level battles with lots of figures. We used 15mm figures for our campaign, but this might be an even more excellent idea for the bigger and more expensive 25mm figures. Wellington's Victory is also well suited for this type of campaign. I urge all Napoleonic wargamers to try this concept sometime - you will not be disappointed. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IX No. 6 Back to Courier List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1991 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com