1813 Campaign – Where Next

 1813 Campaign Areas

As with most things, this campaign has grown and changed considerably since I started it in July 2009.

The aim has remained the same.   To provide good wargames for Jan and I to play.   The general concept has also remained the same.  I have not painted a single figure, nor built one piece of scenery, in all of that time.   Our whole effort has gone into the actual Wargaming, and running the campaign.

The campaign itself has changed greatly.   Most important was making it PBEM rather than Solo.   Had I not done so I am quite sure that I would have lost interest by now.   Adjusting to the needs of the constantly changing corps commanders has made me review the campaign again and again.  

I have changed the maps.  The first maps were all hand drawn, and drawing has never been one of my strong points.   Discovering ProFantasy CC3 allowed me to make the maps on the computer.   But the principle of each map square looking the same as one scenery square on the wargames table has remained the same.

As you can see from the map above, the campaign is divided into five campaign areas, three in Germany and two in Spain.   Each has a different French and Allied army, so all of my collection of model soldiers is used on a rotating basis.

We have now played ten mini campaigns, two in each campaign area.   The French have lost time and again in Germany, and are retreating towards the river Rhine.   They have had mixed fortunes in Spain.

I have started work on a map of France, and am now considering whether to end the 1813 Campaign in Germany and move on to the 1814 Campaign in France.   But we have only reached mid September 1813, and I am tempted to fight another three mini campaigns in Germany, and two more in Spain.

Northern Germany is the problem.   The Prussians won the last mini campaign and took Hanover.   Fortunately the French retreated north.  So it looks like the next phase will be the Hamburg Campaign.

Two day campaign battles

The current PBEM Linz campaign continues to provide a good selection of battles to be wargamed.   But they are becoming increasingly complicated.

The ideal is to fight one corps per side and reach a conclusion in one campaign day, or 12 wargame moves.   This would normally give two armies of 8 infantry brigades, 2 cavalry brigades and two artillery batteries per side.   This size battle allows lots of space on the wargames table to manoeuvre and have open flanks.

However this campaign has produced a series of battles which have to be fought over more than one day.   This may be because the battle starts late in the day, and there are not sufficient wargame moves to reach a conclusion.

Or it may be that the battle opens with one division, and the second arrives late in the day.   This will often result in the first division fighting a holding battle until the second arrives.    Again there is not there are not enough moves left to find a winner.

This is not too much of a problem when there is only one battle per campaign day.  

It usually takes Jan and I a week to fight each wargame.  This is the same time frame for one campaign day.   So I can usually keep the campaign moving, and ask the two corps commanders involved in the battle for a quick decision what they want to do next day.

I can then leave the wargames table set up, and just fight a second set of 12 moves for the second day.

However now it looks like I will have two different battles which will both run into two days.

At the end of the first battle I have to change the wargames table for the second battle.   I can fight the second day of the second battle with the same set up, but I have to change it back at the end to fight the second day of the first battle!  

Fortunately I take photographs of each move for the battle report, so I can set the towns up to look like the first day, and I can position the divisions more or less correctly.  Any slight errors can be covered by night time redeployment.

March to the Sound of the Guns

Map showing corps operational areas

I’m pretty pleased with how our PBEM campaign allows fighting campaign battles on the wargames table, and moving the result back into the campaign.

In my limited experience of taking part in PBEM this has always proved a major problem, indeed caused all three campaigns that I took part in to end without comment from the organisers.

I designed my campaign from the wargames table up, and I suspect this is pretty unusual.   The whole campaign is designed to fight wargames on my size table using my size armies.

There are six corps commanders, three per side, and a different player takes on each role.  I try to make it as interesting and challenging as possible, and to allow them as much freedom of choice as possible.    I also encourage them to support each other, and here lies a major problem.

You can see the three corps boundaries in the map above, French on the left and Austrians on the right.   Each square on the map is the same as one square on my wargames table.   The table consists of nine squares, three wide by three deep.    The map has been carefully designed so that I can create a wargames table from any combination of squares.   But it does mean that my maximum table is three by three squares.

Each corps has two divisions, and the corps operational area is three squares deep.  So there should always be at least one free square north or south.    This is to allow for an adjacent corps to send one division to “march to the sound of the guns”.   This would be the only time that a corps commander is allowed to move out of his area of operations without the permission of the CinC (me).

To be able to do so, it must be included as an option in their current orders.   It will take one campaign move (four hours or four wargame moves) to react, and they must be able to reach the battlefield the same day.   So they would need to be very close to the battle at the start of the move.

I try to keep the campaign rules as short and simple as possible, but this means that not everything can be included.  

In previous campaigns this tactic was used quite often, but not at all in the current campaign.   I am not sure whether this is my fault for not making it more clear to the players.   I have done so in the past, but there are new players in this phase of the campaign and perhaps they were not around when it was discussed.

Anyway I have posted an explanation on the campaign forum, and will include it on the next set of campaign rules.

A Short Break

The blog is a few day’s late this week.   I try to post it each Sunday, but we had a break this week.

We have just returned from a ten day visit to the UK to look after our grand children whilst my son and his wife had paid their first visit to New York.   Not exactly a holiday, but certainly a break – from Wargaming at least.

Wargaming and things Napoleonic have been a constant part of our life since 1969.   Since then, it seems in retrospect, hardly a day has passed when I have not been painting, building, planning or reading about the subject.  I am sure that cannot be true, there must have been many days when it was not true.   But that is how it seems looking back.

Since we retired seven years ago the subject has taken up even more of my time.   But now all the armies are painted.   All the buildings are completed.  The final wargames room has been completed and the final wargames table built.   The final reorganisation of my armies and campaign system has been completed.   All of my time is now devoted to running two campaigns and fighting wargames.

It’s not exactly a 9 to 5 thing.   We do fit in a lot of other things.   But most days I fit in two or three hours on the computer updating blogs or running the two campaigns.   And there is, almost always, a wargame in progress.

We are fortunate to have a dedicated wargames room complete with 6x6 foot wargames table.  It could have been bigger, but we agreed that is the ideal size for two people to game on.  Our armies are organised to fight on that size table, with enough space to manoeuvre the armies, but not a long table to walk around.   We used to have one 12x6 foot.  Great for multi player games of 4 or 6, but much to large for two players.

We tend to play for an hour or two four or even five days a week.   In the hot summer’s here in Spain the games room is the coolest part of the house.   In the colder winters it is the warmest.   So our few hours Wargaming provides a welcome break in the day.

So leaving our comfortable routine and going to look after the grand children, aged 2 and 6, was quite a shock.   It was lovely to see them again, and to spend some time with them.   But you do forget just how tiring two young children can be.   Or perhaps they just get more tiring as you get older.

I brought my laptop with me, intending to keep the campaigns up to date when the kids were in bed.   But I found that by then I was also shattered and just wanted half an hour in front of the TV and then bed myself.

So it’s a real joy to be back home and back in my routine.    It was delayed by two days due to a flu like infection the youngest gave me as a farewell present.   This resulted in a very uncomfortable flight back to Spain, followed by two days in bed recovering.

But all is well now.   I may not feel much like eating or drinking, but I am very happy to be back on the computer and working on the campaign’s again.

Sad really.   But sad in a nice sort of way.

PBEM Linz – A Good Start

The campaign has got off to a good start, with two battles within the first four days.   So Jan and I have been kept busy on the wargame table.

Now we come to the more complicated part, when the corps commanders are confronted with the problems of supply

Supply in the campaign is really simple.   Each division starts the campaign with five days supply, which is the maximum they can hold.   To resupply the division must be within 15 miles (one days march on a road) of a supply base, not in contact with the enemy and have orders to do so.

During the first phase of the campaign, which we have just completed, it was all movement.   All of the corps started the campaign with one days march between their two divisions.   The French had to decide whether to join the two divisions before they attacked.    The Austrians had to decide whether to hold with their forward division and bring up the rear one, or the opposite.

No one seems to have thought about resupply.   For three days it was all movement and fighting.   All then realised that they had only two days supplies.   Worse still some were out of supply range of their depot.   They would have to decide whether to retreat to resupply, or hold and establish a new supply depot.

To establish a supply depot is easy.   It takes one infantry brigade one full day.   The rest of the division can do what they want whilst this is going on.

When I designed the supply rules I wanted to keep them simple.   I think these are as about as simple and easy to manage as any rules could be.  Each  player is reminded at the end of each  move how many days supplies he has left.   To resupply he only has to say so in his next days orders.  Yet most players seem to have given little thought to resupply until they have almost run out.

Supply is one of those subjects you read a lot about on wargame and campaign forums.   Everyone seems to think that they should be as complicated as possible, and take into account historical logical problems.   Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder how many have actually used them in a multiplayer campaign.   And more interesting still, how the players got on with them.

The more experience I gain of running a PBEM campaign, the more convinced I become that the principle KISS (keep it simple stupid) is by far the best to follow.