The Wargaming Erratic

My nearly mechanised campaign has a number of objectives.

First I wanted a solo campaign story generator as well as a scenario generator without too much effort.

So I guess a board game if you like, at least in ease of play.

A hex map with counters would seem the obvious solution in fact memoir 44 might have been an obvious choice.

Except I wanted some other things.

The second objective was to create a feel for the period. Reading some books of late – Rick Atkinson’s the day of battle, America in Sicily and Italy 1943/44 reminded me senior generals were often looking at maps with pins on! – no hex in sight and no stacking counters.

So what to do? Well the first problem was that they had printed maps of the battlefield and the whole theatre. Lower rank Americans went on buying sprees in bookshops for maps of Italy and Sicily when the invasion was finally disclosed at the last moment. The military mappers could not provide all an armies requirement either with resource or in fact access to documents.

I was not about to start producing my own imaginary maps (I do fantasy historical) in great detail either.

In my previous post https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/tag/abstraction/I mentioned a chance charity shop map find sent me down a fuzzy logic route. This allows me to repurpose any map I like.

So while my Fauxterre armies have only very slowly appeared I very quickly got a campaign going but then put it to one side as figure painting, scenery making and other periods took priority.

Recently I have restarted the campaign including reaffirming context and also actually meeting the final objective.

The final objective was to see scenarios and table top games spin out of the campaign story.

This campaign is all about Gombardia and its invasion of Greater Rugia. The Gombardians launched a series actions to effectively detach the whole south of Rugia from the wretched and ramshackle Rugian Empire.

While an invasion on the western seaboard stalled when their allies the Bosaran Republic failed to overcome the petty kingdom of Burgas and an insurrection in Rasovia failed the Gombardians had better fortunes when they invaded Gheria. The Rugians initially caught out had stopped the western seaboard invasion and suppressed the Rasovian insurrection and eventually halted the Gombardians in Gheria.

Suddenly the Gombardians felt they might lose the initiative and so they lost no time in trying a different approach.

Gombardia had enjoyed massive economic growth while embracing ever more authoritarian rule. The Zendrean oligarchy had focused on expanding Gombardian influence in the inland sea of Emor. Rugia and its long eastern coastline complete with various offshore islands became a tempting target.

Now Gombardia aimed at taking much of the southern Rugian eastern seaboard and there was little international interest in the matter except to sell the warring parties weapons and even troops.

The Gombardians had previously earmarked Dorinova as an invasion objective with another offshore archipelago providing a stepping stone to a mainland assault.

Now the high command were required to renew the abandoned plan albeit with slightly less forces.

In the event Dorinova’s ruling elite showed little enthusiasm for war and surrendered within days of the invasion starting. Resistance continued in pockets but was soon ended.

Too late the Corinovans, who had shifted their forces north to aid an expected Rugian counter attack in Southern Gheria, realised the threat on their southern border.

To make matters worse the Gombardians did not wait for spring before launching the inevitable attack into Corinova.

The Gombardian plan was simply to invade Corinova and then catch the Southern Rugian forces in a pincer against the Gombardians already fighting in north east Gheria.

The invasion commenced on the 1st February 1930 taking advantage of an unusually dry and temperate winter. The Gombardians could expect their forces to move swiftly on good roads heading north for Gheria.

“A” division still held station west of “B” division facing unknown forces to their front but yet to appear.

Further west 9th corps were making rapid progress into Corinova while 11th corps made more tentative progress in the foothills of the great southern highlands of Rugia.

With the demise of “B” division at Viana, coastal forces concentrated on Otorpica leaving “A” division hanging. The division retreated slowly northwards luckily without facing meaningful opposition.

That said, mobile Gombardian forces sought to control key junctions as they pushed north.

One such action led to rare encounter in “A” division’s sector at Vila nova Familica.

This will be the subject of the next Fauxterre post part 4.

Meantime “A” division continued its retreat to a position due west from Otorpica on the river Odrou.

The campaign uses simple measurement with a focus on the logistics tail of any fighting forces. The combat resolution is essentially the table from Avalon Hills 1954 “Tactics” board game. These can obtained online.

I used the games design notes also downloaded from the web. These helped me produce a very coarse set of rules.

Naval is currently excluded while air impacts are crude and aimed simply as a disruption result for ground forces.

To help the solo friction required I dice for variable division strengths only when action takes place and also the use of three separate corps for the invasion allowed random allocation of divisions leading to the uneven arrangement to be seen on the maps.

The defenders also have limited multiple choices in reacting to the enemy who are necessarily visible, although really obvious moves are still diced for with very low risk of unlikely alternatives.

The result has given me a rich back story that allows context for standard scenario driven table top games. The net result for this solo wargamer is more meaningful table top actions.

And the real map and pin combination has also worked for me in terms of avoiding the classic hex mapping which was too abstract for me in this case.