Campaign Phases

Map of Europe showing previous campaign phases

To avoid the tedium of a long running campaign I have broken my 1813 campaign into what I call “phases”.    Each phase is a mini campaign of about the area and time scale of the Waterloo campaign.

Each phase will feature a different French and allied army to ensure that I use them all in rotation.   A phase will usually provide 4-6 battles to wargame, and will last about 10 campaign days.   Most of them took about three months to complete.  

The current phase is set in North Germany and is the First French Army attempt to take the town of Wolfsburg, and the Prussian attempt to stop them doing so.   This is sixth phase set in this area.   At the start of the phase I post an introduction, which includes a brief history of the previous campaign phases.   At the end I will post a summary.   The campaign diary blog has reference to each of the five areas, so it is possible to follow each campaign phase and refer back to earlier phases.

The next campaign phase will be in Central Germany and will feature the Second French Army and the Russian Army and the aim will be to take and hold Erfurt.   This will be the fifth campaign phase in this area.   At the start of the phase both armies will be at full strength and fully supplied.   Casualties from the previous phase are not carried forward.

The use of this type of mini campaign has meant that the overall 1813 campaign has run for almost ten years.   It has grown and evolved during that time, but still retains the original five campaign areas and the ten original orders of battle for the French and Allied armies.   But the campaign rules and the maps have changed considerably.   This has provided me with a fresh campaign and two new armies every three months or so.  The framework of each phase is the same, and saves me a lot of administrative work.  But the objective and the armies change with each phase.  And if we encounter a problem with the campaign rules they can easily be changed at end of the phase.

Next time I will explain battle casualties and campaign reinforcements

You will find my campaign rules here

http://napoleoniccampaignrules.blogspot.com/