"Online Peninsular Campaign - Progress update." Topic

Our Peninsular campaign is warming up and we have our first battle to play this coming Wednesday.

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My guess is that despite my best efforts in getting the players to play aggressively, its going to be a cagey affair. Both sides know that they have reinforcements within a day or two's march, so it could be that they try to avoid defeat rather than grasp victory and hope that they can bring overwhelming forces to bear.

Great stuff…looking forward to the dance!

There is further risk that with players playing for campaign objectives, they may act less decisively on the table top. It might be useful to encourage extra decisiveness (which does not equal recklessness), but don't let them be so afraid of taking casualties that they do not fully commit to battle.

Well, that's real, is it not?-my two cents would be that, hey, some generals were afraid of casualties, some less so. For the purposes of a miniatures campaign I would keep recklessness or timidity in a player/commander as an unconstrained variable-It being outside of what the rules may or may not require. The rules constructs should force the player/commander to consider the options and consequences, and may 'encourage' a course of action due to the probabilities of success in meeting an objective, but in this case, if the destruction of battle is realisticly modeled, I think it has to be up to the commander to decide his level of committment, and not the umpire's job to influence it (particularly if he is also a player).

I don't know….I'm not sure how one might encourage extra decisiveness, actually, unless it would be to use a decision engine to generate (or not) additional intelligence for a particular commander. I suppose you could also just make combat less distructive, or change objectives, but that would not be a great alternative in the middle of things, more of a 'before' type fix.

Maybe all I'm really saying is to make sure that the player's understand that caution will result in indecisiveness. Taking players and putting them into a campaign environment when they are used to one-off or scenario fights will tend to generate overly-cautious results and indecisive battles. At least make the players aware of this tendency.

Have you thought about hiding opponents forces? Each player could get a brief with their forces, and intelligence about what their opponent had, before the battle.

That's kind of what's been going on for the past 25 days Chortle. Now the British have decided to attack, they're closing to contact.

Malcolm, I think that's a good idea, and if I may borrow it I think I will include a paragraph regarding player tendancies and mindsets in transition, from 'one-off' familiarity to 'campaign thinking', in the campaign guidebook for players and umpires that I'm putting together now. (It's actual author is N.O. Singleman)

Given that most tabletop generals make Mr Haig look like the Duke of wellington, a little more caution would be a good thing. As for indecisiveness, let them find out for themselves that if you dont pay the butcher you don't get the meat!

True that Griz, and they will. It usually seems one battle is sufficent for folks to rethink cost/reward equations and decide on a price for objectives. The difficulty, always, is determining the correct price. For that, a well considered 'budget' is required beforehand. That can't be properly done after the 'shopping' begins, so it is usually the second campaign in which players begin the type of planning that accounts for the unexpected gouge and keeps them from running out of 'money'. Having said that, I realize campaigns are far more like poker than grocery shopping, but experience is everything still.

Well, unfortunately the game last night was pretty disappointing. The Anglo-Portuguese decided that they didn't have enough troops to risk attacking, and the French similarly wimped out, so we're running another turn to get more troops there the next day. This has the potential to turn into a serious design flaw, but I'm not sure what else I can do to mitigate it.

That's a real shame.
Can you introduce some incentive to fight / adjust the campaign victory conditions?
Or is this itself quite realistic with neither side wanting to risk battle unless they feel they have a large superiority in troops?
Does each side accurately know the size of the opposing force?

Cheers
Aubrey

Courage, decisiveness, and bold aggression are qualities that define great military commanders. They are a rarity.

What would Suvarov or young Napoleon have done with that table?

When you stand across the table from an opponent that thinks they have not the strength to risk an attack, you can also bet that they will fold up quickly in adversity, and so you must attack them swiftly and decisively.

The same think that makes a campaign player be cautious and passive, also makes them quick to surrender the initiative. Therefore the initiative must be seized at earliest opportunity and never released.

You didn't have a Suvarov commanding at the table. Maybe challenge one of your players to be that kind of commander and show what a difference it makes. They crack everything wide open.

I concur wholeheartedly with Malcolm's assessment/ advice, except that perhaps an e-mail to ALL the players, passing along the above and challenging them ALL, would be best. Then see who takes up the challenge, and let the results complete the lesson :)

Resource:

Link to Clausewitz, on 'Boldness'

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The issue is that with both commanders knowing that their reinforcements are coming up, neither wants to take the pointless risk. What will happen "tomorrow" when the turn runs I don't know. I suspect that there will still be reinforcements on their way so we may get another no show.

I had thought that the side which entered the node should be on "attack" orders in Principles of War, but as the British players pointed out, that doesn't make much sense.

My disappointment is probably down to having such a terrible couple of weeks at work and looking forward to this game all week, building it up in my head. I do think that both sides had opportunities to win, one had cavalry while the other had more artillery and infantry, one had more commanders so I think it could have been an interesting game. I'd certainly have tried to play it out had I been the commander.