Review of 2016

One of the advantages of a weekly blog is that it is quite easy to review the year, you just look back over the previous 52 entries.

This year was dominated by converting my 1813 campaign back to solo from PBEM.   The PBEM campaign had started in September 2009 and had dominated not only our wargaming but also much of my spare time.   There were up to twelve players and I processed one campaign day each week.  So there was a constant flow of email back and forth, not to mention answering general questions and the ongoing task of replacing players who left the campaign.   Six years is a long time to maintain the interest and drive, and I was finding it hard going over the last six months.   It was also becoming increasingly difficult to find new players and increasingly annoying when one packed it in without a word of warning.

So I was more than ready for a new start.  The PBEM campaign had become an integral part of our wargaming, and would have to be replaced with a solo campaign.   It would have to be Napoleonic, we don’t have any other period figures.   I started with a clean sheet and considered the options.   

I quite fancied doing the whole of the Napoleonic Wars as a series of campaigns.   Some years ago I made a start on this project with the Italian campaign of 1796.   It proved too difficult to wargame the battles, as each battlefield had to bear a resemblance to the original.   Plus the orders of battle were difficult with the figures on our shelves.   You will find that campaign here

http://wargamecampaignsofnapoleon.blogspot.com/

I also considered doing each of the major Napoleonic campaigns as a series of mini campaigns, similar to our current campaign phase.  But again the orders of battle and recreating the battlefields were a major problem.

So I decided to carry on with our 1813 campaign.  It has been designed to make use of our current model soldiers and model buildings.   All of the maps had been designed to provide battles for the size of table and scenic squares we use.   Most important the campaign and wargame rules had stood the test of time.

I miss the outside influence on the campaign and the pressure of having other players involved.   The number of battles to be wargamed has greatly reduced.   In 2015 we wargamed 58 campaign battles.   In 2016 we gamed 30 campaign battles.

On the other I have enjoyed the actual campaign more.  Previously I had no influence on the progress of the campaign, nor on the battles it produced.  We did wargame the battles, but had to accept a large number of standard encounter battles.   I can now manoeuvre the map campaign to produce more interesting battles, and make more use of the terrain.  

So what about 2017?  

The campaign will continue to form the basis of our wargaming.   I no longer paint model soldiers, and we have made all of the scenery we require.   So the campaign itself will be the challenge.  

Online Napoleonic Wargame Rules

I am not sure exactly when I wrote my current Napoleonic Wargame Rules, but it must have been about 2009, when I started my 1813 campaign.   Prior to doing so we were using Le Feu Sacre (LFS) rules, a commercial set which were very popular around that time.   As often happens when we use one set of rules a lot we find the weak points and start to write our own amendments.  Before long they bear only a passing resemblance to the original rules.

The new campaign rules were designed to provide multi corps battles using the figures already in my wargames army.   And the new wargame rules followed the same principle, but in addition would provide the fast moving and fun type of wargames which we enjoy.

I freely admit that the new wargame rules were derived from LFS, though they have changed considerably since then.    The great advantage of writing your own rules is that you know exactly what you want to achieve, so you can amend them without upsetting the overall balance of the rules.  And we have done this time and time again in the past seven years.

It was always my intention to record the progress of the campaign online using a blog format.   This was done to provide me with a permanent record of the campaign, rather than because I thought that there would be any great interest in the project.

The blog would contain a daily record of each campaign phase, plus a battle report of each wargame fought.   It therefore made sense to publish the rules in a separate blog.  

This proved particularly useful when I converted the solo campaign to PBEM.   Players could not only follow the progress of the campaign online, but would also have easy access to both the campaign and wargame rules.

Right from the start I used Amazing Counters.   They record every visit to each blog, but ignore any that I make.   They show daily, weekly and total visits from the start of the blog.

I don’t often look at them, but I did today.  I was truly staggered to find that there have been a total of 36493 hits.   Last week alone there were 53 hits.   This is despite the fact that the last amendment was posted on 25 June 2016!

This does not, of course, mean that more than thirty six thousand people have read the rules.  No doubt many individuals have visited many times.   But it does show an amazing amount of interest in a set of rules that were never designed to be read by anyone other than me.   Little attempt has been made to make them easily understood by anyone else.  There are really more a series of reference sheets rather than complete rules.

It is also quite surprising that despite the large number of visits I have only had four comments or questions.

As with most things connected with blogging the reason for so many visitors will remain a mystery.   I would love to think that my rules were being used on wargame tables throughout the world, but I rather doubt it.  

However I am pleased that so many have shown an interest and I hope that they may have prompted others to write their own rules.

Start of Erlangen Campaign

 Deployment at the start of the Erlangen campaign

The latest phase of the 1813 campaign is set in Southern Germany, and deals with the Austrian attempt to take Bavaria and invade southern France.   So the rather dull green Russian and dark blue French uniforms will be replaced with the light blue Bavarian and white Austrian ones.

The campaign has been running since July 2009, and has provided us with 244 battles to wargame.  

Throughout that period the mechanics of the campaign has changed very little.   We still use exactly the same figures and orders of battle that we started with.   We still use the same wargame and campaign rules, though with minor amendments in response to tabletop experience.  Jan and I have wargamed all 244 battles. 

There have been three major changes.

The whole campaign has been recorded in a series of blogs, which are still available online.   When I started I had very little experience of blogging.  Nor did I imagine that it would still be going strong 80 months later!   I designed the blog to be a reference of the campaign, and used the labels to help in this regard.  This worked quite well for almost a year, but had to be reorganised when the campaign went PBEM in February 2010.   The change from solo to PBEM required a reorganisation of the administration of the campaign, to handle the extra work load to service 12 other players.  

 

The most important change was when I discovered ProFantasy software to make maps.    My first maps were all hand drawn on paper, followed by photocopies of a road atlas with a hand drawn grid.   However the software allowed me to make maps designed from the table up.   Each wargames table would become a grid square on the strategic maps of Germany and Spain.   On the tactical maps each square would represent a scenic square on the wargames table.   The new maps appeared in 2010 and made the PBEM campaign possible.

The third important change was the PBEM itself.   This introduced an ever changing cast of corps and army commanders to contribute and influence the campaign.  Jan and I always fought the wargames, and I always controlled the administration of the campaign, but the players controlled what happened where and when.   It worked remarkably well for more than five years.

I had run many solo campaigns over the years, but none has lasted more than a few months.   Right from the start the 1813 campaign, then solo, was designed to last.   I started planning it just after we retired and moved to Spain in 2006.  

I knew that wargaming would play an important part in our new life in Spain.   Jan and I had wargamed together for 40 years and were agreed that we would continue to do so in retirement.   I decided that I would no longer paint wargame figures, but would concentrate on wargaming instead.   The campaign would provide a framework for all of our future wargames.

We designed our wargames room and the 6x6 foot table, just the right size for two players.   The table would consist of nine 2x2 foot scenic squares.   I then designed the whole campaign around the table.   One scenic square would be one grid on the tactical map.  One wargames table would be one square on the strategic map.

Running the campaign, and wargaming the battles, replaced the many hours per week that I used to spend painting model soldiers.  The campaign diary blog was always part of the plan, and now takes up many hours each week.   I now post an update daily, except when we are wargaming a battle.   These usually take about one week to complete.

Despite all of the above, I am still excited to be starting a new phase in the campaign.   Fortunately we have never lost our enthusiasm for wargaming, I really don’t know what we would do without it.