Campaign Rehearsal

In addition to individual historical battle games we have resolved to play a campaign. The campaign itself will be historical, but since our operational moves will be made freely the battles that result will not necessarily align with what occurred historically.

Initially, this was just a vehicle to create battle scenarios for the two of us to enjoy together.  But then I got to thinking, and naturally had to complicate things.  It was part of the original idea to use Greg Wagman's Vicksburg campaign.  I don't like orthogonal maps, though, for regulating movement, and have been working on an 1805 campaign using rules based on Greg's but more generic and more Napoleonic.  At the operational level these are linked to a mapping system that has roots going back twenty years, that I have used as a sandpit to test out various ideas.  So, I thought, how about I knock up a map covering the appropriate area for the Vicksburg campaign, and we play it on that?  No problem - just a few hours of enjoyable work.

The rules are written to play like a board wargame, but with a tabletop campaign as the objective.  Such campaigns work much better if the players can be kept in the dark as to enemy positions - not possible, or only awkwardly so, in a board wargame.  Nobody, as far as I know, has come up with a satisfactory solution to this problem using maps and cardboard alone.  With computers, sure, or before that using correspondence and an umpire.  I am happy to be the umpire, but then I will have a complete knowledge of the operational situation, and can't also be a player... operationally.

The solution is to introduce two more players.  Angus and I will fight the tabletop battles as Pemberton and Grant respectively (or their subordinates), and we will both have complete knowledge of the operational movements - in fact, Angus will assist me in running the game at that level.  The players at that level will be Ross and Gordon.  They have not yet decided who will play whom, but that will come - our planned initial meeting came adrift, so we will try again in a couple of weeks.  They will each manoeuvre their divisions on separate maps, with enemy forces only becoming visible when they are adjacent.  I will have both forces on my map, which I will maintain electronically.  This also enables me to take regular snapshots showing the situation.

In the meantime, having prepared maps and counters all ready to go, I have taken the opportunity of a trial run through at the monthly wargames club meeting.  Lawrence and Dennis were kind enough to play it through purely as a boardgame, with the double-blind movement system described above.  For major battles, which would normally be transferred to the tabletop, I jury-rigged an abstract resolution system based on that for divisional skirmishes, which worked well enough for the purpose.  I really wanted to test a number of things:

1. How long does it take to play such a game?
2. Does the double-blind system reflect the uncertainty of nineteenth century war, groping forward to find the enemy using scouts and probes?
3. Since the movement is turn-based, is enough happening, and the downtime of the other fellow's turn short enough, to keep players interested and engaged?
4. Can I, as umpire, hold it all together, conveying information promptly and accurately and not losing any?

The answers, it turns out, are Not Long, Yes, Yes, and Mostly.

The eight turns of the campaign we knocked over in less than three hours - long enough to be worth getting together, but not so long as to be tedious.  We can probably afford to approach it in a fairly leisurely and sociable fashion, I think.

The double blind system worked really well, to my mind, and Lawrence made comments to the same effect.  The players had a fair idea where the enemy was, often, but not in exactly what strength.  There were one or two nasty surprises when roads were not watched as they ought to have been, and at the one "major" battle that occurred, the Feds were able to bring more men to the battlefield than the CSA was anticipating.  That, after all, is just the sort of thing that happened in real life, especially when cavalry scouts are few or absent, as in this campaign.

Each "turn" is the movement of a single corps - three to six counters - so this doesn't take long.  Lawrence read a book when it wasn't his turn, but I don't think he got through many pages.  Dennis only once wandered off to check out a neighbouring game.

The biggest slowdown was my shuttling back and forth trying to record the moves of one player while informing both players of contacts.  There were no situations of my map disagreeing with those of either player, but I did feel that I was working like a one-armed wallpaper hanger.  Having an assistant umpire to handle the communications will be a great boon, I think.  On a couple of occasions I had to interrupt a player's proposed move to say, in effect "Ah, sorry - I forgot to tell you there is an enemy force occupying that square".

We did identify a couple of places where the map was badly drawn, with roads being a little ambiguous as to what squares they run through.  I have corrected two of these, and will make one more map alteration, I think (and re-print the maps), before we play the campaign.  I am glad to have had this as a rehearsal, and I daresay I will be able to treat the Vicksburg campaign proper as a rehearsal for 1805, taking learnings from one into the next.

I will be writing up the campaign here (avoiding spoilers for the operational players, so perhaps with a significant delay).