"Battle Size Limits in Campaigns" Topic

Most gamers are constrained in the size of battles they can play in a given scale/size by the size of table available to them. To avoid allowing a campaign battle to become too big, do you think it is better to enforce a limit on the size of battle (e.g. no more than 24 units of one side can be on the table at any given time) or design the game in such a way that the situation never arises (e.g. armies have to act independently and can't exceed a given size, or the maximum force that could fit in a single game becomes the total campaign force for one side etc.)?

Regards

After reading both of your posts, I seriously suggest you look at Theatre of War by Piquet.

link

It has a very nice built in way of eliminating the 'campaign arms race' and 'campaign creep.'

It all depends on the type of campaign, and the rules involved.

If your campaign rules don't prevent players ffrom building an immense army and steam-rollering the opposition then that is likely a good strategy.

Depending on the rules you use and the granularity of the campaign, it might be possible to scale battles so that the size of the battle on the table remains roughly similar, but I find this lacking in flavour – the epic final battle seems much the same as initial clashes. I much prefer limiting the size of armies with supply and movement constraints, or presenting mutiple threats which have to be addressed simultaneously.

Dear Whirlwind.

That's what I do with OGABAS. I have a narrative campaign system that limits the MAXIMUM number of units on a side to 31 (for one side along with up to 13 officers. It's used with my system of tactical rules, but it is completely applicable to ANY system in the world. It also provides a lower limit of 7 units and 3 officers so nothing gets out of balance. I game in 30mm on a 6 x 12 surface. It also govern's itself by the number of units you can have and by extension, have to paint for an army.

It's simple, direct and it works. Used it for over a hundred battles and, best of all, it requires NO rebasing, and NO change of rules, and -- oh yes-- it's all on ONE SHEET double sided. If you want a copy just send me your postal address at sigurd@eclipse.net

A couple suggestions:

scale up – have each unit represent two, figure out losses that way.

Logistics – make it difficult to support a large force concentrated in a small area. It was, and is.

Movement limits on roads, etc. Large forces must disperse to move with any speed. Large numbers of troops on few roads = traffic jams.

Design the forces so that there's just barely enough troops to cover the area they need to protect/attack.

Players will still tend to try to consolidate. But that allows their opponents to slip through in some areas.

Logistics and road capacity problems will only help if there is an umpire to keep track. Otherwise, the players will forget.

Another thing we have done is to switch rules depending on the size of the battle. For example, in an ACW campaign we ran we used Johnny Reb (regimental) for most of the battles but when we had a Large battle we switched to Fire & Fury (brigade).

For our first ACW campaign we had wayyyy too big armies so we scaled down the recruitment so the second campaign had smaller armies – that being said, in the Western theatre both the Union and Rebs collected every last trooper into two massive field armies who are currently hammering at each other

Ah, this is a question that keeps me up late at night, pondering. For practical purposes a strict limit on the size of a battle is the simplest and most effective. That way the tactical battle can be resolved in a timely fashion and the campaign can move. Armies that are too big for the table top just have some reserves they can't deploy at the time of the battle but can use to shore up the ranks after.

The ideal solution though would be to engineer the campaign in such a way as to encourage reasonably sized forces; either logistical or transport concerns, or setting the campaign area to army size ratio so as to discourage one giant army per side. I have yet to find an ideal solution to this, and it's totally dependent on the tactical rules set being used.

-Will

Russ here at the OMM shoppe…

Maintenance. I find that if you charge amounts for maintenance per unit you'll be able to limit armies. For ACW that would represent the ability to feed and restock troops. Given a limited amount of resources, players will find that just recruiting will result in large, unfed/unsupplied armies.

The amount depends on the type of system you are running. In a sci-fi game I ran, I charged a set amount per unit (spaceship or ground), but the higher the tech level, the higher the cost per unit for maintenance (in addition to the higher the cost per unit).

Russ at OMM