Wargame Rules Review – Current Rules

Battle of Merida on the campaign map 

First thanks to everyone who commented on my last post.   Your observations and suggestions are very welcome.   Thanks in particular to Bob Cordery who sent me a copy of his rules with permission to use them as required.   My new rules, like the previous ones, will eventually be published  as part of my 1813 campaign diary blog.   They will of course be free, and be available to anyone who wants to use them.

All of our wargames fight battles from our 1813 Napoleonic campaign.   It is important that the battles are easily moved from the campaign map to the wargames table and back.   To this end my campaign maps are a series of squares, which can be reproduced using the 2x2 scenic squares which make up my 6x6 foot wargames table.

Just before we moved to Spain in 2006 I started using Le Feu Sacre wargame rules.   As a commercial set of rules they were not ideal for my campaign concept.  But I really liked them and wanted to continue to use them.   This required considerable alteration over the years, but I have always been reasonably happy with the result.

17 years is a long time to use the same rules, particularly when you actually play most days for a couple of hours.   It says much for the design of LFS that they have lasted so long.   However over the past year or so I have become increasingly frustrated with them. 

To work with the campaign each wargame lasts a maximum of 12 moves, which equates with 12 hours in the campaign.   It has been obvious for some time that this is not long enough to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the wargame. 

Battle of Merida on the wargames table

Each wargames table represents a district in the campaign.   Each district has a town or city, and that is always the campaign objective.   Far too often a game results in a draw, mostly because the winner has beaten the enemy, but does not have sufficient time to take the town or city.

I have always been reluctant to create a new set of wargame rules.   I would rather adopt a commercial set.   However I have now decided that I will give it a go.

I will keep the current orders of battle, and the current campaign map system.   The one map square equals one table scenic square will remain.

When I created the campaign I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve.   The key was one square on the table to one square on the map.   So I recreated a series of maps which would reflect this.   

Now I want to create a set of wargames rules which are designed to achieve the game objective within 12 moves.  

By next week I hope to have an outline of how to achieve this objective.