Colonial Campaigning

by Richard Brooks

Starting a Campaign

There is one extremely important question to ask yourself before you begin any campaign. How much time will I realistically be able to set aside to plan, then run this campaign? You must remember that a campaign take a lot of work, especially paperwork. Keeping track of men, supplies, and equipment is a large task, sort of like being chief of staff. If you answer yourself with hesitation then do not proceed with your campaign planning, because it will eat up a lot of time for a long time unless of course you have help. The campaign planning discussed below is for a long term project.

There are lots of first steps to campaigning, however, the REALLY first to consider are typically reporters' (well, good ones anyway) questions -- who, what, where, when, why, and how.

WHO -- Either real foes or totally fictitious, it really makes no difference, except that I have found over the years that you bring too many assumptions to historical campaigns and that can get kind of confusing. For the Defense of India (see MWAN # 56) situationally historical enemies were the obvious choice. England during the most of the latter 19th century worried about Russia trying to invade India either through Persia or Afghanistan. The idea has always fascinated me so I gave it a try.

For my current Tafrindian Campaign new foes were needed to fight against European colonial rule and the British rule in particular. Most of the Tafrindia foes are fictitious with little basis in reality. For Tafrindia's placement in the world I had to know what might have happened to it dunng history. My immediate concern was to read Arab historians, travelers, and geographers of the 10th to 13th centuries. I found that Tafrindia would have been known to Arabs of that period, therefore, the continent would have been invaded by Islamic armies. This was a perfect opportunity for me.

The basic definitions of the 13th century of town (would rather talk then fight, good city life) and country (would rather fight then talk, real butt kickers) Arabs were applied to parts of Tafrindia. This then gives a basis for all Moslem native armies. With this information I made up a poetic histonc narrative or Muqaddimah for Tafrindia, put Capt. Richard Burton's name on it as translator with a short analysis for military purposes. This then is given to my field commanders to use in interpreting native intentions. Not all commanders bother with it, thinking it useless and they pay for it in dead troops or they get lucky and a city will surrender with just the right kind of negotiations.

WHO 2 -- This refers to the characters you will create to command, fight, and die for you. There are several avenues of approach. First, and least useful is the, who cares, they're only lead figures. As you can tell this is not the way to go for a long term campaign. Preference should go to one of several role type games. Use Howard Whitehouse's "Science versus Pluck", GDW's "Space 1889", "Castle Falkenstein" by R. Talsorian Games for the colonists and perhaps from AD&D's "Al Qadim" or "Arabian Nights" from Iron Crown Enterpnses for important native characters. These role playing games do have some good information and can help in determining how a character will react.

WHAT and WHY --These two should be combined to bnng the campaign off in the first place. What is the situation that causes the war/campaign in the first place. Why are they foes? Why will they fight? It can be almost anything. A study of history shows that perceptions of a threat, trade disruption, and territonal expansion are the biggies that cause war. If you have other than an European foe - religious fanaticism will be a good start followed by wanting to be relieved from oppression. For a good idea of different reasons for war or for making alliances read about the various allied coalitions against Napoleon and why these nations went to war against him, there's lots of good material there.

WHERE -- Gives you the idea of terrain and logistical problems and the space you will use during your campaign. With historical places you can easily get printed maps of the area. However, you also have pre-conceived ideas of the place and times which will eventually cause campaign assumption problems. You assume something will be there or will happen here because you already know that it did, much better to create your own place. For non-historical places you have to make your own maps. There are lots of different ways to handle this.

First, is to take a printed map, redraw the terrain on graph or tracing paper and place your own roads and towns etc., but make sure you do this with some sense of geographical understanding about where things will develop if this was a real world.

Second, pick a map and use it.

Third, and most involved as well as interesting, design and map your own continent, island, or whatever. I found this to be extremely satisfying. It gave me the ability to create a place where nothing was known about it, so there are no preconceived historical ideas or assumptions to confuse any campaign or new historical line of reasoning that can come about from campaigning.

I mostly game solo and because of that, and to keep my mind active, I needed to create a world for myself to game in. To that end Tafrindia was created four years ago, being unsatisfied after using real world maps and Jack Scruby's Mafrica to create new situations to game.

To create Tafrindia three things were needed - a knowledge of geography, how native cultures developed, and history of place. The basics here are how islands/continents develop and what happens to them during a typical year. The geographical position in the world you place your island/continent will allow you to chose the proper flora and fauna and native types. Continents are formed by plate tectonics which in turn form mountain ranges, volcanoes, deserts, plains, etc. Place will also give you an idea of the yearly weather patterns, which can be rather important in planning campaigns. For this, a world atlas that gives monthly weather information was perfect.

In creating a representative type of people a little anthropology can be pretty dangerous to your mental health, so I decided to read late 19th and early 20th century travel accounts of Africa and India and read a few 10th-13th century Arab travel accounts. These helped me greatly to determine the type of native populations on Tafrindia. National Geographic can be a big help with their pictorial studies of native tribes. You should have a good idea of their dress, daily life, housing, weapons, trade, and customs (with regard to warfare and diplomacy). Further, you should know whether your natives have an advanced civilization in the present or past, natives could be anything from stone age tribes to something to equal Europe.

History of place is important, without this you will not know what has gone before, what the natives might do, how they live, it could give reason to the campaign. It will also show how the area developed - - roads, cities, agriculture, standing armies could all be important. It will also bring you some pleasure in dreaming this all up, as well as giving you new periods to game in to develop the history. Having this knowledge will enable you to make informed decisions concerning the natives rather than rolling a die and not understanding why they did something so illogical. This will give the natives a logical, to them, choice, that you know without rolling a die.

WHEN -- Timing. Obviously will give you your logistical, weather, and weapon abilities. These make the game more interesting and could give your enemies an advantage, since you already know you are going to win, right! Time is very important. You don't want your campaign to last too long or you may lose interest. On the other hand, if you are solo gaming what difference does it make?

Most play-by-mail games will last at least a year. Some of my solo games have lasted three years with no loss of interest on my part. It's all really a matter of keeping the storyline going, if you can't, it's over.

HOW -- How in this instance means how are you going to put it all together and keep it moving. It is not just the rules that you use. Rather, what are your actions going to be, umpire empire, good guys, bad guys???? Will this keep the action moving smoothly, or will it be like a real war with hellish action followed by quiet in various repetition? This really depends on your personality. Sometimes after planning a campaign for months, as soon as it starts I know something's wrong and have to quit, at other times, it will flow smoothly and last years. Your campaign goals have to be pretty carefully thought out. They must take into account all of the above plus you must become a diplomat to determine the actual goals, then turn to your military side to determine if they are realistic and achievable.

How long it will take to put all of the above together is anyone guess. I enjoy the organizing and planning stages, each time getting better at it, so I take my time. Sometimes the thought process can take over and in a day or two you can think about the campaign from start to finish fighting the battles in your mind's eye, it's like reading a really good adventure story.

I have done this several times, each time hardly doing more than handling some of my favorite figures, thinking how their past history would force them to react in new situations. Still quite fulfilling even without the table top game.

CAMPAIGN MAPS

MAPS -- With all of the above in mind the next step is to create the where in maps so you can translate that to the table when necessary or use it as a board game. The first step in this process is to find maps you like of places. Holiday brochure maps, USGS (topo) maps, travel maps, it really makes no difference.

1) With brochures in hand, cut the maps out and start to fit them together to form a whole island or continent. The areas between places on the maps can be small countries, lakes, rivers, whatever. With these pieces put together trace it on to tracing paper.

2) Trace an area from a USGS topographic map and add a coast line or make it an entire countries map.

3) 3D Graphic travel maps can be harder to deal with but are worth the effort if you can find two or more that are similar to form at least a two-country island. Transfer this to tracing paper.

4) Trace the outlines of several countries, islands or whatever and put them together to form a continent and trace them.

Using whichever method suits you best transfer the tracing to graph paper. Depending on the size you start with will determine the size of graph paper you will need. I found that you can get half inch square paper in 22 x 27 inch sheets or on a pad. Regardless of starting size you can transfer the onginal to a larger size by copying each small square to a larger square.

Tafrindia started out on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet it now takes up 24 sheets of the 22 x 27 graph paper. Map scale is important to determine at this point, because other calculations will be based on this. Tafrindia's maps are 1 inch = 5 miles. This makes Tafrindia approximately 750 miles across north to south and 550 miles east to west.

It is now time to fill in some detail. You can use Avalon Hill's "Source of the Nile" board game, if you have it, my tables from The Heliograph #76 or make up your own method. However you do it, make sure that it is all geologically and geographically correct. (Rivers don't generally run across mountain tops or have a swamp in the middle of the desert type of thing). I use those tables to give me a general idea on how to fill-in large areas on my maps.

Using the tables can get pretty time consuming. So the remaining areas are either left blank, to be filled-in by expedition, or I just put what I think is reasonable. This, of course, gives you an advantage, you know the terrain. Since you know the terrain you might as well take the other side for a change and become the natives. Don't let the Europeans determine, without ever having seen the terrain, that there is a very defensible position over the hill saying 'let's get there quick'. The natives would know this, but not the Europeans, unless they had good scouting parties.

With the mapping base started each sheet should be numbered, the horizontal squares lettered and the vertical squares numbered. So if the marker for the 1st battalion is accidentally moved you can refer to the campaign diary for its last location (i.e., 1st btn. 3C6, means that the battalion marker should be on square C6 on map sheet 3.

Using the half inch squares you can create your own board game/map movement game lor your campaign. This way you can keep track of all military units within your island/continent by purchasing blank counters and adding the detailed information you need or just numbering them to keep track if other people in the campaign will view the map.

MAP MOVEMENT

Once you have made or bought your campaign map and determined its scale, you then need to think about how fast your army can move. There are or could be an awful lot of factors that go into determining how fast your troops can move. Weather will play a big factor, you should know what time of the year it is. Is it the rainy season, if it is roll a d6 1-4 it rains you can move hall your normal amount as long as you don't have to cross any rivers. If it rained the day before double or triple the time it takes to cross the river if you can find a ford or drift.

Even in clear weather you should roll a die to see how many turns it takes your wagons to cross, even at a lord at least one wagon will get stuck and need help to get across.

Infantry should only move as fast as your wagon train, at the most 10 miles a day. With water crossings I lose 1 mile per crossing. With wagons you will have to rest every third day to feed your animals. It will be worse if you have camels, mules or horses because they need to be fed food stuffs you will have to carry.

Oxen on the other hand, if you can get them, will eat available grass. But, oxen are really stupid animals and will die, harnessed, trying to go where you want them to regardless of how tired they are. While mules will refuse when they reach their limit. You really don't want your troops to have to eat oxen unless really necessary.

If the troops are carrying their own rations for a quick search and destroy they could make 20 miles depending on terrain. For that rate your troops would have to be veterans in top shape. Cavalry can probably move about two-thirds further, however, I think that you would really be pushing your horses and men too hard. If your troops make 10 miles or cavalry 15 miles a day that is probably best with a days rest every three or four days. Particularly if you want them fresh for the battlefield.

On the tabletop your troops will be able to move about 100 yards per two minutes in column march order on a road. Off road in shrmish order they could make 100 yards in three minutes. Through jungle or rough terrain figure on 100 yards per five minutes. Through open woods figure on four minutes per 100 yards. Up hill in rough terrain I would use ten minutes for 100 yards. Not all your troops are going to be able to keep up with the main party. You should probably figure on ten stragglers per battalion on a march day on a road, double that off road. In skirmish order cross country on the battlefield, I would drop back one figure every turn, under heavy fire two to three per turn.

GAZETEER

The gazeteer is an encyclopedia containing information for geographical locations and population centers. This should include: location, characteriscs of the population, ruler, wealth or tax base, allies and enemies, militia, and army. With this information in the gazeteer there can be no argument as to the status of a place or its terrain features. Charactenstics of the population refers to the age of the population which relates to military, number of people, racial make up, religion, and major occupations.

Information on the ruler should be similar to the determination of the effectiveness of a military commander. Wealth and tax base refers to the exports and occupations of the population. If 90 percent of the population are subsistence farmers than the tax base will be low. On the other hand, if they are growing crops for export than the tax base will be higher.

Similarly if the country or city has mining and manufactunng then they could also have a high tax base. The tax base is then used to determine the number of troops the city/state can afford on a yearly basis. Notations on allies and enemies is important on a country level, diplomacy could become an important aspect of the campaign. This is particularly so if you use the continent over and over again with the same countries.

For militia, this could determine whether or not the population will fight a guerilla war or be easily conquered. Finally, the army's size is determined from the tax base. The entire tax base should not go to supporting the military, however, although this is not inconceivable.

You will also need to consider military information on each city and village:

This will give you an idea of where to start with the gazeteer. It will also offer you a solid basis for your countries. Each country should able to be completed within a few hours.

CAMPAIGN SUPPLY

Campaigns run by Wolseley's 'Ashanti Ring' were smooth running affairs after much trial and error by many commanders. A small missed item could spell disaster for a campaign hundreds or thousands of miles from a well stocked supply depot. In some instances, like the 1873-74 Ashanti campaign, engineers cut through the jungle and placed depots well in advance on the path of lhe major troop movements. Thus facilitating movement and cutting down on disease rates among the troops. Although a number of the troops were from West Indies units. A well protected advanced supply base could mean the difference between winning the campaign and disaster.

Don't go overboard in determining your supplies or your manpower. The Home Government was very cheap and campaigns were generally bare-bones affairs. Whitehall didn't like sending troops overseas because it was expensive. Your number of units should be on the lean side, sufficient to do the job but just barely.

CAMPAIGN DIARY

For me this is a situation report from each unit after a campaign day or week depending on the situation. The information should at least include - orders issued, date, weather, location, food supply, ammo supply, and condition of the troops. This information can also be put into a table using a column pad. Also include an after action report, which should be in essay form.

The Swansea Bay Evening Mail gets all of its copy from the after action reports of unit commanders which allows the SBEM to pnnt misinformation to confuse commanders. While this section is short do not confuse this with little importance.

A campaign diary of some sort must be maintained, otherwise you will never know the condition of your troops, where they are or what they have seen. It is most interesting to look back after several years to read about an old campaign, it gives me ideas for new ones.

I have tried several different ways to record this information. I have used spiral bound composition books, diaries and loose leaf notebooks. The most effective for me is the loose leaf binder as you can easily add and subtract pages The next best would be a diary or date book. This is good for obvious reasons--keeping track of events from the day the campaign starts and follow in chronological procession. The biggest drawback to this and the other bound notebooks-you cannot add lo them, maps go missing or have to be redrawn on small pages.

I also keep the campaign diary for week long movements, general orders and major engagements. This is where I get most of my info for the Swansea Bay Evening Mail. Sometimes the entries are short and to the point. Other times if there is a particular figure that has fought off six natives or something extraordinary in a melee or whatever he gets mentioned in dispatches and receives a medal. This is also where I can keep commanding officers ideas and personality traits. Which makes it more interesting to have of ficers and troops with personality than a piece of lead. Of course, you have to be careful not to go too far with it all or over the edge we go.

I issue orders from Whitehall to set the tone of the whole campaign. Sometimes you want a punative action against a certain group or Whitehall has a delicate situation to be handled with kid gloves. This can easily frustrate any commander, which can put them in some very uncomfortable situations (like not firing back when being sniped at).

Everything pertaining to the campaign should go into this book. Including all your preliminary notes, background information, unit roosters, OBs, orders, false information to be handed to commanders, enemy force information, map references and any other special information necessary to the campaign.

ROSTERS

If you don't plan on having a long lasting campaign you can probably skip this. Orders have to come from some place so I start with Whitehall and work my way down to company commander on my master chart (which I think I stole from one of Donald Featherstone's books). The following is a small part of my command structure for "The Defense of India 1890". Each infantry brigade was made up of two English regiments and two Indian regiments.

1st Brigade Commander BG Stevens

1st Battalion Black Watch (Lt. Col. Bradley) - Kohat

2nd Battalion Royal Hampshires (Lt. Col. Oliver) - Kohat

A B C D E F G H

Major Wayne Major Weller
Fort Lockhart Capt. Stans
Fort Lockhart Capt. Hart Capt. Palmer Capt. Adams Capt. Bullers Capt. Wood

1st Battaion 2nd Punjab Infantry (Lt. Col. Vincent) - Fort Lockhart

A B C D E F G H

Major Bonus
Fort Clive Major Foss
Fort Lindy Capt. Decker Subadar Lol Singh
Fort Clive Capt. Stall
Fort Gulistan Capt. Black
Fort Lindy Subadar Singh Subadar Gildah

You will notice under several of the companies there are fort names. These are the company locations, under the command of the highest ranking company commander.

By now you should have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing. Most companies have rosters similar to the one below. This helps me keep track of unit strength which is very important on campaign because replacements were very slow in coming. Some of the Lts, Sgts and Pvts are named and have received medals for their actions. Each column on the sheet is for a particular battle and whether or not the individual was wounded, killed etc.

Regiment: 41st Foot CO: Lt. Col. Greene

Company B CO: Capt. Nigel

Platoon 1 POST: Fort Lindy

Name & Rank Khyber 1875 Fort Thal 1877 Tirah 1880

1 Lt. Fuzz W - -

2 Sgt. Knight - - M

3 Bugler Boye - Medal for bravery under fire -

4 Pvt. Bailey - - W

5 Pvt. Zero W - KIA

W= Wounded; M=Missing; KlA=Killed in Action

This helps me keep track of what units are where at the beginning of a campaign for the best effect. Also, once you have the basics done the rest is simple and the idea can be used over and over.

BOOKKEEPING

For a long time I used to keep my orders for one campaign in several different notebooks and it became very confusing and I threw it all out. I could never keep track, sheets would fall out or I would forget an order and then not have a place to put it in later. This all made me feel like I was cheating myself, so for a while I quit writing orders and just fought. Welllll, that was ok for a battle or two but then it wasn't enough, and I certainly couldn't remember anything. I turned some other ways I had seen in wargame books but they never seem to have it just the way I want it. Then I found engineer's notebooks at the university bookstore. These little gems have lined pages on one side and tenth of an inch grid on the other. So when you open it up on the left is grid paper and the right lined. Perfect.

Well not quite. Because you still don't know whose getting what orders because you have no system to keep it straight. So I borrowed from Charles Grant's Wargame Campaigns. This is the best book on campaigning to be printed. Grant attaches to the cover on one side of his notebook a list of units that will stay the same for the duration of the campaign. I cut a strip of cardboard about 2 inches wide and eleven long. I then wrote on a sheet of lined paper all the units, cut this to fit the cardboard and using wide clear tape attach it. Using another wide clear tape strip as a hinge I tape it the the right side of the engineer's notebook. This is perfect, now you can see how things progress unit by unit in the same place each time you turn a page.

The lined side has unit orders, positions and movement by day, 1/2 day, week or however you make your campaign moves. The lined side has several columns added: unit location (using map grid coordinates); movement direction (either by arrow, compass heading or grid location); brief orders statement (engage, halt, defensive position, et c.); and comments which takes up about half the page column wise. The gridded side is for maps and locations of enemy units that have been sighted and small actions.

The campalgn diary, rosters, chronology, and maps are all kept in a looseleaf binder. I see I forgot to mentlon the chronology. Before the campaign begins I make up a rough calendar of events. Since I umpire the game, I need to know how long it will take for certain actions to occur. For example: if there is a riot in Tafrindia, the ambassador cables London. It takes a day or two for cables to reach London. If London orders troops to Tafrindia from India, they must cable India - another three days assuming they make up their minds immediately, we're up to campaign day 5. It takes the troops four to five days to get ready to leave once they are notified and another five days to reach a port by train - we're now at campaign day 14. Sailing time to Tafrindia is three days, that's assuming there are troop transports available along with naval escorts - may be by now we are at campaign day 20 when they reach Tafrindia--that's if everything goes right with the troop, naval, and transport orders. In that 20 days cities could have been over run, small outposts fallen to the enemy and so on. Time cannot stop while you get the troops off the shelf and on to the table.

The umpire must have a chronology of events to keep the game moving in a logical progression. The enemy is not going to wait for Britsh troops to arrive Enemy leaders will have definite goals in mind before they start the rebellion. This means the enemy must have a well thoughtout plan of action and response. Their responses will usually follow from their heritage.

For example - city arabs will be less likely to keep up a prolonged action without moral support from the fundamentalists or power support from the desert dwellers. Conversely, desert dwellers will need support from the city dweller - money for guns, enemy HQ intelligence etc.

Other information necessary for a well run campaign includes: casualty lists by unit for both sides, tabular form works best; profile of enemy units, this helps build a picture from intelligence reports of enemy units for both sides; order book for full orders, this is useful ior campaigns particularly since orders are not received as soon as they are issued, it takes time to reach the unils, the order book records not only the order but time sent and time received; cultural features book, this records effects on towns dunng sieges, blown bridges, downed telegraph lines, and actions to fix them; and finally, unless you're running a campaign involving finance and politics, logistics accounting for supplies and animals.

These book-keeping chores should be done for both sides. Neither side should have an unlimited amount of food and ammunition. The amounts should be in keeping with individual army doctrine.

For natives it will be more difficult to determine ammunition sources but not food sources. This allows the enemy natives to attack all your ammunition trains and causes you to divert needed troops to guard against such actions.

If you want a really good discussion of campaigning in any period read Charles Grant's new book Wargame Campaigns, Tony Bath wrote another good book Setting up a Wargames Campaign that is mostly concerned with ancients. Both books are full of great information and ideas well worth stealing for your own campaigning. If you are interested in colonial-era campaigning and wargaming check out The Heliograph.

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