"Using operational boardgames to generate scenarios" Topic

Some miniatures gamers devote a lot of energy to finding (and creating) good battle scenarios.
I've always liked the idea of using other games to do that -- a campaign game that would generate the scenarios automatically.
Do any of you use other games to inspire or help stage your tabletop battles?
I designed one for the Naval War of 1812, called "A Glorious Chance: The Naval Struggle for Lake Ontario, 1813." For anyone interested, the game just went up for preorder today at Legion Wargames:

link

Most interesting. Thanks for the notice.

I agree with you in principle, and I'm always thinking about ways to do this. A solitaire game might be a good start. If you try that one, post again and let us know how it works.

In general board games don't make good battle generators. The way to win a strategic or operational game is to make battles as lopsided as possible, which means they don't make good tactical scenarios. Large scale games do occasionally generate relatively even battles, but you might play an entire game without getting one of those. Board games also tend to be overly complex and involved if the goal is just to generate campaign battles.

Of course, this hasn't stopped me from trying, repeatedly. I've been using the Great War At Sea system as a campaign mechanism for about 15 years. Some attempts have used the full (modified) game and some used a simplified version of it, but none were terribly successful, mostly because there was just too much "game" between the battles for the players involved.

I do think many of the maps made for boardgames would be perfect for attractively regulating strategic movement. Every time I get out the Columbia game 1812, I want to use the map for a miniatures campaign. I'm also still determined to use the GWAS maps for steam- and sail-powered fleet games, and I specifically bought Great War at Sea: Plan Gold so I could use the map of the Caribbean for AWI fleet games. But strategic rules for Age of Sail campaigns elude me.

The only successful "board game" campaigns I've played have been DBA campaigns, which of course are extremely simple and geared for generating miniatures battles. I've made several somewhat more complex variations on those that worked pretty well (the Duelling Republics Punic Wars campaign, the Age of Arthur post-Roman Britain campaign, and the Syrian War Diadochii campaign), but haven't yet extended any of these designs to other eras or genres.

- Ix

I've been doing this for years. It gives my battles a purpose and makes them far more "realistic" in that if you are getting beat you need to think about living and fighting another day. This eliminates the all too typical war game scene where one guy just pushes lead at you regardless of casualties in an all out effort to win right then and there. GMTs Successors is great for this, as is GMTs Wellington and Kutuzov. I just did one using Hellenes for the Peloponnesian War. Very Cool! BTW, If you just want the maps GMT will sell them to you.

A previous post mentioned campaign-generated battles tending to be lopsided -- which may be realistic, but not balanced for gaming purposes.

This is the fundamental dilemma of wargaming, and there's no right answer to it. I prefer the realism, and I accept unbalanced battles as the price for it. Others want a better game, and care less about how rare it was for two sides in the AoS to be evenly matched and equally determined to give battle (extremely rare).

When I read naval history, I find that much of the skill of an AoS commander involved seamanship and maneuvering skills so as to force a reluctant enemy to battle. Unfortunately for gamers, this prebattle phase took hours, if not days, to accomplish. So most AoS games focus solely on battle.

Personally, I'd like to see more of the maneuver and prebattle phase brought into wargames. I think things could be done with variable time scales, etc., to make such a game playable. And since there's no combat in this phase, it saves mental bandwidth for a more realistic and interesting modeling of winds, points of sail, interactions with land, etc. I see it sa something like the old 3M "Regatta" yacht racing game, only with warships. It could be a fun sailign game in itself, or serve as a "bridge" between an operational campaign game and battles using tactical miniatures or tactical boardgames.

Frigate56 that is a great idea…Regatta! I bet I could even use those game principles and apply them to a land campaign. You are totally correct. The pre-battle maneuvering is half the fun and realism, especially with Napoleonics. Thanks for turning on the tiny light bulb in my head, lol

Personally, I'd like to see more of the maneuver and prebattle phase brought into wargames. I think things could be done with variable time scales, etc., to make such a game playable. And since there's no combat in this phase, it saves mental bandwidth for a more realistic and interesting modeling of winds, points of sail, interactions with land, etc.

We've actually done this sort of thing using ODGW's Post Captain. Started the game at a point when two opposing ships just came into visual range and then ran it from there using accelerated turns until the ships came into combat range.

Jason and Charlie -- I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this type of game or play aid would be fun!

I have tinkered from time to time on something like this as a solitaire aid or add-on to accompany A Glorious Chance. I call it the "Maneuver Level," for want of a better term.

It takes each of the 6 operational Lake Ontario zones and turns them into separate maneuver maps, each with a 2km square grid…

I used real data on Lake Ontario's prevailing summer winds to create a number of Wind Zones within each map. The 1813 ships are classified by their sailing characteristics, with the counter for each ship showing its speed at various points of sail (like SPI's Fighting Sail)…

Random card draws and die rolls determine possible wind shifts, calms, etc. The sequence of play is like the old Victory Games "Tokyo Express" -- i.e., 6 impulses of simultaneous movement, each representing 10 minutes, to make a 1 hour turn…

There's an orders phase where you place a maneuver marker (Ahead, for example, or 45 Port) and a speed marker, and the ship has to execute that order by the time the turn is done.

The game has several basic types of AI movement: Battle Movement (maneuvering aggressively to close the range and fight), Mission Movement (programmed movement toward its own destimation when the AI loses track of you or it has a higher priority than engageing you), Regroup Movement (automatic movement on the best path to rejoin the friendly flagship), and Withdrawal Movement (programmed path to flee home, used by an inferior AI force or one that's been beaten).

The AI's maneuvering "brain" for Battle Movement is a wheel chart -- also known as a volvelle…

-- that takes the current wind direction, AI ship's heading, and the relative bearing of the nearest enemy threat, and generates an order (actually it generates a 3-digit number corresponds to a line on a chart showing a range of plausible options, and then you roll a 1d6 for the actual order). It covers 223 specific situations, and with 223 x 6 dieroll possibilities that's 1,338 possible results. It's smart enough to not turn the AI directly into the wind, and to move in a more or less aggressive manner to respond dynamically to your own maneuvers.

The game ends whenever ships of opposing sides occupy the same square -- and then it's time to set up the miniatures for the tactical battle.

I'm not sure a game like this would be commercially viable, since it uses 6 maps (costly to print), it's more simulation than game, and it doesn't have any battle in it. But I could imagine it as a play aid or add-on that could be VASSAL-only, for example.

Wow, that is wild! Great concept. I'm gonna try and make up some rules for Napoleonic land warfare.

That's astonishingly sophisticated. Bravo!

Are you bringing this to Navcon? :-)

- Ix

Frigate56
I can see something like this applied to the Caribbean for AoS games during the Napoleonic war. A strategic method similar to your new game Glorious Chance would be favorably received I believe.

Yellow Admiral
Thanks for the ideas/hint…I never thought of using my Plan gold map for AoS.

If you figure out a good way to play AoS strategic campaigns on a GWAS map, I'd love to hear about it. I may just want to steal your ideas for my own nefarious uses. :-)

- Ix

I have been using board games, mainly ground based, to provide OBs and maps for scenarios since the 1970s.

The GWAS tactical map is of interest to me as a maneuver map for AoS, because it provides a hex-shaped "arena" to deploy AoS ships to once they have sighted each other. The side without the weather gauge places his force in the center, and the side with the weather gauge gets to deploy in one of the map's entry sides. I've seen player-made mods to GWAS tactical maps that superimpose them over actual coastal areas, to bring the effects of land into consideration, too.

Since there seems to be interest in my "Maneuver Level," here's a bit more detail about my wind model:

Each map has a number of wind zones, based on different prevailing winds or effects from coastlines like funneling or crosswinds in that part of Lake Ontario.

Within each wind zone you see boxes with colored arrows. Each of those arrows indicates one of the possible wind directions. (In this version the arrows point to the wind origin, but I'm changing it to the more conventional way, in which the arrows point to the direction the wind is blowing TO)…

One of the steps in initial setup is to roll a die for initial wind condition. This is the general condition, which might be Prevailing, Light Airs, or Land Breezes (dieroll modifiers increase the chances of Land Breeze later in the day, as the summer heat builds up over the lake. It's also affected by the calendar month)…

Then you draw a card to give you the specific wind/weather event for this turn. Note the color in each condition column. If the color corresponding to the condition and month is, say, magenta, then all the wind zones on the lake go to their magenta direction (which could be SW in one zone, S in another, and so on, depending on the zone)…

How winds change: From turn to turn, the card draws might shift winds while the overall condition remains the same. But once each turn you also roll a die, and if it matches the number of the last condition die rolled (called the change number), then you'll check the Condition Chart for a possible condition change.

The cards can also throw in random events, like this example where a British force drew a Becalmed event…

This only affects that force, while a US Force in the same wind zone remains unaffected.

I also had storm events in the cards to provide a random end to the game, where "Storm 3" meant a storm would end the battle in 3 turns, for example. But I might remove those because it's no fun playing this and closing with the enemy, only to have a storm cut it short and make the whole thing feel like a waste of time. But perhaps they could be left as optional events for those who want things painfully realistic.