"Rulesets that include Campaign Games" Topic

Slow day at work has me thinking about wargaming campaigns. I am curious which rulesets include campaign games and if they are any good or not.

1. Which rulesets (any time period and era) also contain rules for fighting campaigns? The campaigns can be generic, like the one in the back of DBA; or specific, like that in Age of Reason.

2. Which campaigns from rulesets have you played?

3. What did you think of the campaign? Was it playable, or did it bogdown in needless, burdensome bookkeeping? Was the strategic situation interesting? Did the campaign give all sides a chance (not necessarily equal, but a chance) to win?

4. What, in your opinion, was the most interesting aspect of the campaign rules?

5. Can the campaign be modified to cover other periods?

6. Did you/your group enjoy the campaign? Would you play it again?

Many questions, I know, but I think it will be a very useful thread for gamers looking for information regarding campaigns.

Have at it!

I just finished running a series of three campaigns… one at my house and two at conventions. Generally speaking I think they went pretty well.

We used DBA rules for the battles and my own version for the campaign rules.

Now all of these campaigns were what I would call single event campaigns i.e. they took between 6-8 hours and that was the end of the event. No reason they could not go longer… but this was what I wanted (a one day campaign game).

1. Warhammer (most versions there of including 1644 for ECW) comes to mind, good campaign rules, but not sure it translates to a playable campaign in a reasonable amount of time…
2. DBA, and my own adaptation from DBA
3. Like I said it worked well with DBA, no book keeping, interesting situations arose, and yes anyone could have won
4. hmmmmm, not sure the random turn sequence maybe
5. yup
6. yes, and the same core group as played the basic rules 3 times and we plan to do some more

The CWG books (Flower of Chivalry, Rockets red Glare etc…) all have period specific campaigns.

Most Two Hour Wargames rules have campaigns within them, though their paths are randomly determined.

All the Impetus books have era specific campaigns in them

The best campaign game I've ever played was the one contained in the Volley and Bayonet ACW supplement. It went on for many months via eMail and generate several excellent battles.

There are a couple of campaign games included in various editions of Command Decision, as well, in addition to the notorious Barbarossa/25 supplement.

I've played DBA campaigns a bit over the years. First we played a bunch of one-day campaigns back in the 90's. Then we played some a few years back that went on for several weeks.

While fun, it is rather like a Petri dish. Everyone jumps the leader.

Aside from that I played several campaigns years ago with board games for the strategic game and battles resolved with tin soldiers, American Revolution with AH 1776 and France 1814 with OSG Napoleon at Bay.

Also some short DBA campaigns using the variant "Conqueror" system from DBA Resource Page. Those were fun.

I actually played the command decision Barbarossa supplement as the Russians and stopped the initial German attacks cold. It helped that they walked into all the ambushes.

Both Maurice and Might & Reason have campaign games in them. Skipping through other genres, so does Mighty Armies, many of Too Fat Lardies' recent rulesets, Bulkheads and Blasters…and probably more that I need to think through. I'm only good at answering question #1 right now though.

Might and Reason had two campaigns, although the larger one required use of a 'Clash of Arms' board game on the SYW. Both times we played, I lost the war for North America (as the British) in the first one or two battles. I even tried to blockade the continent to prevent the French from sending more reinforcements, but to no avail.

Maurice and now Longstreet have what I consider a more interesting mapless campaign, in which you are more concerned with your military career than moving units around a map. No more campaigns where you have to waste a game night fighting 30 enemy battalions with 2 of your own.

Also, Song of Blades and Heroes has a campaign game in the rule book, in addition to the expanded rules in Song of Deeds and Glory.

Nation on trail had a system like that you tracked your progress

"No more campaigns where you have to waste a game night fighting 30 enemy battalions with 2 of your own."

I will say some of my most glorious games were ones where we were heavily outnumbered but managed to survive until nightfall. You never heard the retreating team cheer like us. But we didn't have 30 against 2. The other side used the board game when outnumbered. We fought.

Dux Britanniarum has a good campaign system. I hope to play it this year.

I've played a Maurice campaign. We had eight players in the end, but didn't reach a conclusion: various things conspired against us and in the end one player had dropped out it was difficult to get the games played. As one player was significantly in the lead, it seemed best just to drop it. But we had a lot of good games, and I'd try it again quite happily.

Both are abstract reasons for battles rather than detailed map-based campaigns, but they both give a degree of progression and in both you have to consider the effect that casualties will have in future games.

But I agree with vstaogames on uneven battles generated by campaigns: it's what makes map-based games interesting.

Corps Command has a separate campaign system.

I have only ever really played in one campaign. It was okay but a tad too detailed for my tastes. I would be inclined to use a simple game like "Waterloo" as a basis for a campaign.

@ vtsaogames: I agree that some games fighting as the underdog, waiting for nightfall, can be exciting. But at some point resistance becomes futile and unsatifying.

In the example I cited, when the strategic moves resulted in exremely overwhelming forces, the player being overrun wanted to resolve it with the boardgame rules, while the other side insisted on getting out the figures. For my own part of the SYW campaign, for weeks on end, I was nothing but a speed bump for the French army. Not fun

Might of Arms. Actually not sure it is in the rules or free download?

"the player being overrun wanted to resolve it with the boardgame rules, while the other side insisted on getting out the figures."

It should be the choice of the outnumbered side. In one campaign we played, the larger side could wipe out the smaller side in the board game (AH 1776) if they knew what they were doing. On the table the smaller side had a decent chance of surviving. We even managed to deal out more hits a couple times. Of course, you have to let your team know that an escape is reason for cheering before the game starts.

My own rules for my favorite periods, The 18th Century (Mon Die Tout Saif un Six! "Oh God! Anything but a six" and the slightly modified ones for the Renaissance and 17th Century have campaign systems as background. The American Civil War game "Magnolia's Mint Juleps N'Gritz" and the modern rules "The Shattered Centurhy" also have campaign the rules. The last one, The Shattered Century is an integral part of the table top rules. Can't run em without it. However none of these rules use a map, and basically are complex table top scenario designers" There are built in safeguards against the 30 battalions to two problem or the multiple contact problem. We use an arbitrary resolution system for them. In the modern game that usually never happens as well because of the structure . The campaign systems can be set up worked out and packed away in the first 15 minutes of the game night. I have a map for the 18th Century set up (all Imagi-nations) but we don't use that, finding the non map version much better.

Basically it's handled with "rounds." The campaign runs on "rounds." A round is completed when each player has taken his turn. In his turn he may do all sorts of things from trade, to skullduggery, to scandal attacks, etc etc., and make an offensive. If he makes an offensive, there's a fairly simple process to set it up. (Actually there are three or four ways to set it up). Anyway the game guidelines prevent it from turning into the 32 battalions to two problem and usually we get a nice battle out of it. That completes the players turn and next time it goes on to the next player.

The American civil War game is different. It uses a flow-chart. Each side has a master order of battle, and the courses on the flow chart, the decisions made determine which units get knocked off the OB for that action.

It works. The campaign game is set up primarily as a tool for scenario generation and the umpire can use it solo to do so and players who wish can participate as a campaign entity.

The "Oh God! Anything but a Six" Campaign system for example also uses an "Order of battle" system as I've described elsewhere. Basically it would create a maximum disparity match up of 32 battle field units to 7. However we probably would never take that to a table top and would let the umpire decide, usually allowing the smaller force to retreat and give the enemy a minor victory. Most of the match-jups come in the 25 to 14 unit range.

Several people have asked for copies of these and I am glad to give them out, but I am in the middle of rewriting all of them. This is so people can have a clear idea of how to run them. I can't wrap up a little bit of me with each package to tutor them through it, and some of the concepts are very hard for people to wrap their heads around- chief of which is that you're really working backwards in some way, starting with a scenario and filling in the back story.

It just goes to show that campaigns can be complicated.

Another late reply…

Section 21.0 (page 35) of Snappy Nappy discusses campaign games using the SN rules. In addition, if you have access to MWAN 78 (1815 campaign), 88 (1809 Bavaria), 94 (1813), 116 (1809 Italy), and 122 (1806), complete AARs are in those issues.

In addition, in March 2014 I published Campaign Secrets of Wargaming Design (#4 in the Wally Simon series) that covers a variety of campaign systems for a variety of eras.

You can get Snappy Nappy ($29) and all four of the Campaign Secrets of Wargaming Design ($19 each) from:

onmilitarymatters.com
caliverbooks.com (UK)

SN also has a nice Yahoo Group with feedback, suggestions, OBs, etc -- worth a sign up, and I usually answer questions about SN within a day or so of posting.

Russ
Disclosure: author of Snappy Nappy, editor of SofWD series.