Thursday, February 2, 2012

An Attempt at a Campaign System Part 3: Weather, Supply, Reinforcements, and Campaign Turn Sequence

Weather

Every system I have seen for generating weather for wargames, decries the lack of said systems - which I find ironic. Maybe that's just me though.

In any case, not to be one of those heathens who thinks weather is unimportant, I wanted a simple system limited to the kinds of weather one might encounter in the tropics.

So, for each campaign turn (representing one week you may recall) roll 1d6:

1 - 2 Clear - -1 on battle weather roll
3 - 4 Rain - +/- 0 on battle weather roll
5 - 6 Stormy + 1 on battle weather roll

This is just the general character of the weather for that week.

For weather relevant to a specific battle, roll 1d6 and apply modifier from above:

<=1 - Humid, hot, clear - pretty much what you'd expect in the tropics - no effect
2 - Foggy - visibility reduced to 1d3 grid spaces, roll each game turn
3 - Light rain/ drizzle - no effect
4 - Steady rain - limit visibility to 1d3 + 1 grid squares
5 - Heavy rain - reduce visibility to 1d3 grid squares each game turn, movement reduced 1/2
>=6 - Torrential rain/Winds/Etc- reduce visibility to 1 grid square, reduce movement 1/2

The limit on visibility applies to attacks only for the most part.

If this all seems arbitrary, it is and it isn't. It isn't based on any particular truths of climatology or study of military history, but it does feel right after reviewing several other systems for calculating weather for war games.

Same for my supply rules.

Supply

I have no intention of dealing with supply minutiae. Maybe next time. For now, I just want a simple system that can impact the next battle without the need for complicated calculation.

So, for a super simple game effect, I'll roll 1d6 each campaign turn for each side:

1 - Supplies are low - one unit suffers morale penalty (in MoB, I'm thinking I may reduce the strength of a unit by 1)
2 - 5 Adequate
6 - an unusual abundance - one unit gets morale bonus, full strength units are not eligible.

Reinforcements

I intend to use the ideas as presented in this post at Saxe-Bearstein (the same post upon which this entire campaign structure rests)

Excepting Reinforcement Composition:

When receiving reinforcement of a unit per the link above, roll 1d6:

6 - receive 2 companies of native units (4 stands) which rate as poor
5 -receive 1 mixed company (2 stands, 1 native (poor), 1 European (avg) )
1-4 - receive 1 platoon (1 stand) of European troops(avg)

The exception to this exception is when the Capital/Base is reached - then you get a guard class unit and gun per the link. In my case, that's 2 elite platoons of European units.

No more than 6 stands of Native units per army (because I only have enough minis for 12 stands of 4 total). Substitute 1 platoon of European troops.


The Campaign Turn

This is how I imagine each turn will go:

1. Campaign turn weather
2. Supply
3. Event (I may remove this and simply play out things that seem logical / interesting as a result of the prior battle, or I may change the list I came up with etc. I'm thinking forcing events that require playing out might hinder the completion of the campaign)
4. Battle Weather
5. Battle (MoB, possibly Morschauser's Frontier Rules for a game or two, with his weird combat rules)
6. Recover and Reinforcement







No comments:

Post a Comment