..the British and American first move..

...while I waited for the British first move, I sat down and had an enjoyable thirty minutes deploying my troops on the map (some of which was pre-decided by the scenario), deciding which unit to place my HQ with (important when orders need issuing), and deciding orders for all my remote units (ie. those not under direct command of the C-in-C).

For me this is one of the joys of campaigning, the decisions you're making are not the usual table-top one's - probably much closer to the decisions that the real military we are simulating (badly) would have to make... for right or wrong though, my basic set up is as follows...

• In essence the American response is based round the premise that if the British advance via the eastern route they will withdraw so as to consolidate & give battle at 9.; if the advance is via the western route they will consolidate at 7...
  
• As a result of the scenario requirements my numerically inferior forces (may as well start making excuses now...!) are scattered throughout the peninsula - all villages and towns are occupied by varying numbers of troops. In addition one cavalry regiment is deployed to patrol the road between 1. and 2. - I decided where it was by counting the road squares between the two locations and generating a random number in that range... by the time I finished, the Berthier deployment map for the Americans looked as follows ie. the red squares mark where the Americans are deployed (please click on any of the following for a better/bigger view)
  
  
• Most perplexing of all was the decision as to where to place my C-in-C, I must have changed my mind at least half a dozen times, but basically you have three choices -
  


• gamble on either a west or east advance and place the commander in 1. or 2. respectively - but putting the commander in either of the two frontier towns and then having the British arrive on the other flank didn't bear thinking about - it just didn't make sense.
  
• adopt the WWI approach and keep the commander well to the rear in 8/. where he's able to marshal his forces in a more relaxed and orderly manner. This is also the peninsula's major town so it has the biggest garrison, another plus point... my concern though is that you are a long way away from where the major action is going to be when located here... and that could add delays..
  
• the middle ground - and that's what I went for - I placed my HQ in 4/. where I'm near enough the front line troops to be able to influence their actions fairly quickly, and also central enough to be able to react to an advance on either flank. I'm also able to bring up my re-enforcements "fairly" quickly.. 'no brainer' as they say, lets hope it doesn't turn out to be a description of my performance!

...when the British move arrived - and I didn't have to wait long (DG is obviously keen!) - I was ready to go.. so without further ado..

09:00 Day 1..

When I fire it, the first thing I go to is the Red deployment overview map as that shows me where all my units are, and also any sightings that I may have - this is it:


..you'll notice that there is an ominous blue square just to the north of town 2/. It looks like the British have opted for an advance with at least some of their units on the east of the two roads - no idea who or how many though, so I need to find out what or who they are...

This move is a pretty easy one for the Americans - I only have two units that can move. I give the cavalry on the road between 1/. and 2/. orders to move towards 2/. and set them off on their way, I then order the American unit in 2/. to move towards the sighting - I need to find out who and what they are...

When I arrive at the square I find the following:
...British cavalry. My advance has brought a number of units within recon range and they are now known to me.

I send messages to all other American units advising of the British advance on the east axis, I then advise DG that it's my intention to break off from the engagement. In our campaign rules, where this happens and one side wishes to force battle, then the side breaking off takes 10% casualties and withdraws straight back (it's a fighting retreat) - we'll see what DG wants to do... if he doesn't wish to force battle, then we can both withdraw without taking casualties.. but I know what I'd do if I were him!

My plan is now to withdraw on 2/. then my orders are to withdraw to 9/. as above... it promises to be a long retreat!

Position at end of American move.. things are hotting up..

Campaign set up - part 2...

...so where I left off, we'd got the map, loaded it into Berthier, set the terrain, and decided the movement rates for each troop type in that terrain. It suddenly struck me as I was cycling home last night though, that I'd not actually told you what the background to the campaign was!

Suffice to say that the peninsula depicted in the map is held by the Americans (myself), and is about to be invaded by the British (commanded by DG in the guise of that legend amongst - fictional - British generals of the American War of Independence, General the Honourable Harcourt Wade-Smith) who have a clear mission of one, occupying all major terrain features and two, destroying or dispersing all American opposition.

...so with that, the next is to start adding some of that "fog of war" I mentioned.

1. In the "Campaign Options" menu, Berthier allows you to define how accurate your reconnaissance reports are going to be, so that's my first opportunity to inject some uncertainty into the proceedings (and this affects both sides, so I'm not sure what I'm gloating about!) For this campaign I've set the value as 20% which means that the reports can be anything between 80 & 120% correct... by the by, you can also define what kind of reports you want - just numbers of troops, numbers and troop types, full report (with unit names) etc. As I was using option for percentage correct reports I went with just numbers...
   
   The second opportunity for uncertainty lies in the option entitled "Terrain Modifies Recon. Range". Berthier works out sightings based on a distance in squares from a unit (more on this in the next step), by ticking this option, the number of squares it takes into account is modified by whatever the terrain features are in the squares around the unit, so, if a unit is in the middle of a wood, or up a hill, or the wrong side of an impassible river, your recon range is considerably less (an in the case of seeing a unit just across that river, nil)... needless to say I have elected to include this option.
   
   ..and that's basically it on this screen - there are a couple of other options that you can also set but for this campaign neither was required. Supply is "off" (the likely length of the campaign is going to be such that supply will not be an issue), and I ignored the options for combat casualties (Berthier will fight your battles for you if you want, it just gives a result with casualties per side) as in this campaign we'll be playing all the battles on the tabletop and tracking rosters on paper.
   
   
   
   
2. All that remains to be done now is add in the combat units for each side - Berthier can handle 18 "units" a side. The units can be anything you want - squads, platoons, battalions, regiments, brigades, corps, divisions, or even armies... in this game, certainly for the Americans I defined my units at the regimental level though it's fair to say that they'll be grouped into brigades by the end of the campaign.... hopefully... J
   
   At the same time you enter the unit you also define it's reconnaissance range, level of supply, and strength. The latter two I didn't bother with, as above supply is off, and as we're playing all battles on the table unit strength is not required. The recon range I set to be equivalent to movement range though - in essence then, a unit has the ability to "see" things within a single move of itself... the thinking here is that units on the march would always have some of their members off on the flank, or out front - this represents those individuals. It also gives cavalry an inherent ability to see further than other units (because their move is further), and therefore encourages their use in their traditional role... if I'd wanted more fog of war, then the shorter the recon range the more likely you are to blunder around trying to find the other guy!
   
   For this campaign the numbers of units are defined in the scenario, along with some specific rules on deployment for the Americans.. as mentioned before I'm not going to go into huge detail on what these are (you need to buy that book!), but in summary, the Americans are fewer in numbers and have specific requirements on deployment - DG is not aware of what these are, but he's been given a rough estimate of what numbers to expect (I've also told him he's not allowed to read the blog!)
   
   

...for anyone who fancys having their own attempt at this campaign - then I have saved a "blank" version of my Berthier Campaign file here (just click) This contains the whole of the campaign with the exception of the OOB's for the Blue and Red forces - but that's OK, because I'm guessing you would want to use your own forces anyway... all you then need is a copy of Berthier, which you can get from the links to the left (under resources). Berthier by the way is a DOS program, so it will run under Windows, and with a DOS emulator program I'm guessing it will also run under Linux (Jeff..J)

...and with that - the campaign is set, and I now await the British first move! I'll post further as the campaign progresses...

It's Spring, and a young mans fancy...

...turns to campaigning (well what did you think I was going to say??!) J

It must be the weather, but as I cycled into work the other day I was thinking that it had been far too long since I had last run a campaign (there goes that rush of oxygen again...). One off games are great fun, but campaigns are a great way of introducing the bigger picture, and they also have a habit of throwing up those lop sided games that provide such a mental challenge....

Last year I started the campaign in Charles Grant's "Programmed Wargames Scenario's" book ( highly recommended b.t.w, whether your a solo gamer or not - click on the link for details..), but somehow lost my way and never got round to finishing it. Rather than waste this effort then, I decided to pick it up where I left it, but when I looked at the campaign diary, and my assorted notes, I was struck with the idea that, really, I'd prefer to start it again, and rather than do it solo, I'd challenge DG.

Suffice to say, that after an interesting weekend tidying up the logistics, maps, rules etc. I banged off an email to him with the challenge. Now I don't know if it was DG being nice, but it happens that in his response he happened to mention that he'd just been thinking about a campaign that morning! Great minds....

Anyway, by way of an incentive, I thought I'd document the campaign here as a way of tempting you to start your own campaigns, and who knows, perhaps giving some idea's that people haven't thought of before??

So where did I start...??

1. Step one is the map; with me it's always the map, as without an interesting map I can't summon the enthusiasm to launch my miniature forces across it. In this case I used the map from the book (hereafter referred to as the 'master map'), which I simply scanned into the PC and coloured (no reason to do this, but the original is just black and white, and I think it looks better now)....
   
   The map is shown above and to the left (clicking on it, or any of the other pictures, gives you a bigger image by the way), and as you can see it was already gridded, ten rows by eight.
   
   In the book Charles gives the size of these squares as being five "table" feet across, and if you were to solely use the map "as is" (ie. putting it on a pin board and using pins to mark units and movement)then a quick calculation from your favourite rules would allow you to figure out how far your miniature forces can march on a hourly/daily basis...
   
   
2. Next, I usually then work up the reason for the campaign, troop numbers, period, etc but in this case most of this was provided and I only needed to decide on "period".
   
   In this case, because of the numbers of troops required, it's going to be set in the American War of Independence; I wanted to make it Marlburian, but don't quite have the numbers required yet.
   
   NB. The book has a huge amount of detail, that allows you to play the campaign solo, with programmed responses depending on situation - I have no intent of duplicating that here, and in fact will give as little information from the setup as I can get away with by way of an incentive to go out and buy the book... J
   
   
3. As I'm playing against DG (who lives in deepest darkest Wales) then email is going to play a part, so I knew I would be using Berthier to manage the campaign.
   
   There are a number of other applications you could use, but Berthier for me has some distinct advantages - most importantly all movement is hidden until sightings are made, it has scouting rules, the ability to use couriers, ability to use email to send move files, etc etc. Some of these I'll cover later..
   
   I loaded the master map image into a little application that comes with Berthier (which you can get by clicking here) called GridMap. GridMap allows you to open any map graphic (bitmap format), superimpose a grid of any size you want, and then define each of the squares in the grid with a terrain type. What it means in this instance was that I didn't have to stick with the bigger grid, but could go to a much smaller one to allow greater control of movement/time... this resulted in a Berthier map that looked like the following:
   
   
   
   Once you finished that, GridMap then allows you to save the file as Berthier Campaign file.
   
   
4. Now it starts to get (even more) interesting - opening up Berthier, and loading the campaign you just created, you can then edit your campaign to set up the final pieces of information that Berthier needs; there is also the option to add in some fog of war... (NB. Berthier comes with a very handy instruction manual which shows you step by step how to do the following, and what each of the variables does.... far more informative than my updates following!)
   
   First, I set up the movement as I'd already done a little of this above, so it was a quick and easy... a quick calculation gave me the ratio of Berthier squares to master map squares, which then allowed me to work out how far my miniature forces could march across the Berthier map in any period of time. Once I had that I then took the basic move, and modified it for the terrain types that I had present on the map. Again, this is fairly straight forward, and basically I just used the modifiers from the wargames rules (click here) I use, which happily are expressed as a percentage. You can then enter these in the "terrain effects" table, see mine following - these are hourly rates:
   
   
   
   You'll also note that supply is "off" (more on that in a minute) and that I defined five troop types (Line Infantry/Light Infantry/Cavalry and two types of Artillery); you can define up to eight but these were the only types that are present in my campaign so that was all I set up.
   
   Finally - at the bottom of the screen you can see I've set a courier rate for messages. DG and I use an honour system - only those units in the exact same geographical location as the C-in-C can act as desired - all other units have pre-defined orders, so couriers are required if you want to change them. Berthier handles all that for you, you send the message, and at the proscribed point in time that it decides the courier has reached you, you get the message - very neat!
   

Stay with me - in the next post I'll be going into a little more detail on "fog of war" etc. and finishing off the campaign set-up

Rabble in Arms...

..for Christmas I got a pile of books, one of which was "Rabble in Arms" by Kenneth Roberts.

I'm always on the lookout for good readable fiction to provide colour and background to the wars I re-fight on my wargame table, and I seem to remember that this one was amongst a number of books set in the American War of Independence that had been recommended..

I'm pleased to say that having just finished it, I would definitely agree with those far off recommendations.

The book is set against the Saratoga campaign and Burgoyne's invasion from Canada and is it is chock full of background. The book is told from the first person perspective by Peter Merrill a ship captain and seaman from New England and tells of the events that he experiences while serving as one of Bendict Arnolds scouts, including capture by the British, imprisonment with the Indians, and eventually escaping...

This was the first book that I have read that has gone into a lot of the background into why the fledgling American army was in such bad condition, the bickering and politicking of congress, the policy of paying militia bounties rather than focusing on the Continental/regulars, etc. Although it's a novel, Robertson is scathing on the activities of congress, and their ineptness in those early years of pursuing the war - all very informative, but more importantly quite readable.. He is also very good on the career of Arnold, his undoubted qualities, bravery, and how poorer performing men were consistently promoted above the American generals who actually won the battles (Schuyler, Arnold, Morgan and others)

On the wargaming front, there is the action on Lake Champlain (where Arnold's rapidly built fleet took on, but ultimately failed to stop the more powerful British fleet from moving south), Freeman's Farm, and Bemis Heights...

It's a big book, 600 odd pages, and it's also a very "gentle" read - Tom Clancy this is not. Once you get into the flow of it though, it's very difficult to put down. The book is the second of a trilogy, and on the basis of this book I shall be seeking out the other two!

February totals..

...and there goes February - a short month I know, but this is turning into a short year..

...before I have a look at how the numbers changed this month though, see following for some new tanks that have just joined the armoured forces in the Western Desert - these are the first fruits of that delivery I mentioned from Minifigs.. 12mm scale.. featured are an A13 Cruiser with accompanying MkVI Vickers, being ambushed by an early Panzer IV.. not a happy situation to be in!


On the blog front - I did quite well... despite the short month I had more visitors to all of them - main blog aside though the Teasers continue to be of most interest to people - Charles should be proud..

As always "thanks!" to all my visitors, I don't think I could blog in a vacuum so the visitor numbers, and comments people leave, are kind of important.. J

The painting points are looking quite good as well - with that new armour, I painted 78 points this month which for me is exceptional, I now make my total for the year to date to be 144..