Happy Birthday 1814 Campaign

The campaign is one year old, more or less.   That is to say the first post on the campaign diary blog was posted on 22 June 2013.   Obviously the work on the campaign started earlier, not to mention recruiting the twelve players to fill the role of CinC.   But as there is no record of when all of that took place, the official birthday is 22 June 2013.    Which is a coincidence, because that is also my birthday.   Or at least the 22 June part is.

I must admit that I am very, very pleased with the campaign.  It started with the objective of providing Jan and I interesting wargames to play.   Well it certainly achieved that aim.   In fact it has provided us with 49 wargames, including the current one.   Not quite one a week, but pretty close.   And the standard of wargame has also been very good.   It has often produced battles which we would not have chosen, and they have always proved interesting and challenging.

I keep a record of when each wargame starts and ends, and I can see that throughout the year there has always been a campaign wargame on the table.    Most have taken no more than the target one week to complete.   Obviously some have taken much longer, but only if we have been on holiday.

My aim was to achieve one campaign day each week.   We are on day 31, so we have obviously failed in that objective.   But there are good reasons.   Not least having to fight each battle as a wargame.   When there is one battle per campaign day it works quite well.  But there have often been two, three or even four battles to fight in one campaign day.   This has resulted in putting the rest of the campaign on hold whilst we fought the wargames.   Then we have had holidays throughout the year, and that has also eaten into the one day per week objective.   Everything considered I think 31 campaign days in 52 weeks is a pretty good achievement.

The whole campaign is a “pen and paper” affair.  The administration is not in any way computer assisted, other than being typed and stored on the computer.   There are twelve sets of orders to be processed each campaign day, and twelve umpire reports to be written to keep the commanders updated.

I would not say that it has been hard work, but it has required two or three hours work most days.     I no longer paint wargame figures, I now wargame with them.   So the campaign has filled the hours that would previously been spent painting. 

Most important it has been a labour of love.

Thanks to all those who have taken part in the campaign over the past year, and to those who took part in the earlier 1813 campaign.   Without your support it would not have been possible.   Your contribution has kept my interest in the campaign alive, and made me determined to celebrate a second birthday in twelve months.