Friday 11 November 2022

Generic multi-period scenario creation

 


There was a time when teaser sized / type scenarios were a staple of both wargame books and magazines, but that seems less so these days.

Perhaps they have simply been replaced by those ‘similar’ scenarios that we commonly see now for Sharpe Practice, Lion Rampant, Rebels & Patriots, The Men Who Would Be Kings or Bolt Action type rules, that have a sort of mission based plot.

Anyway, I thought I might create a group of around four scenarios, that work with a 6’ x 4’, small forces and multi periods, which I can refine through play testing and then have them on stand-by for mid-week throw down style games.

For the first, an impassable river with a bridge has just gone onto the drawing board and to see how it works with mirror forces, I placed out the ‘Pocket Armies’ ACW collection.

I laid out a workable table and then sketched it onto the iPad.



The bridge is obviously the focal point of the scenario. I suppose I should give it a name!

Click for the larger version.


Above - In real life, it looks very much like this.





Forces

At start, both sides have the same units, these being;

5 x regular infantry units

1 x elite infantry unit

1 x medium cavalry unit

1 x foot battery

2 x average commanders so that 2 commanded formations can be formed PLUS 1 x average commander to work with the reinforcement

Optional rules for forces

At the start of play, each player rolls a D6. 1-2 the player loses one of their regular infantry units. 3-4 no effect. 5-6 the player gains an additional regular infantry unit OR can upgrade any one (only) existing unit to elite status.



Admin 

All units except one, start the game by being set up anywhere along their baseline and up to 4” in from the edge. See special rules for the one unit that does not begin play on the table.

The game will end the moment one of the forces loses 50% of their units.  At that time check to see which player controls the bridge (defined below) to establish a winner.



Special Rules

The river is only cross-able via the bridge In a modern setting, amphibious capable vehicles cannot be used to cross the water.

The ditch counts as a linear obstacle and provides cover when attacked frontally.

One unit from each side will not be set-up on the table at start. That unit is off table manoeuvring on the flank. Starting on turn 2 and on each subsequent turn, at the start of their turn, a player will roll a D6 on and a score less than the current turn number, their reinforcement will arrive along either of the short edges of the table.

The player chooses which end of the table the unit will come on and at what point, so it can arrive on the enemy flank or the player might prefer it to arrive on their own flank as a reinforcement to shore up their own position. The reinforcement is given its own commander, who will be of average quality. 

The armies will set up on their baseline (one of the wide table edges) and before play, both players will each roll a D6 adding +1 if they have chosen elite cavalry. The winner chooses which of the two table edges they will play from. Re-roll equal modified scores.




Winning - This is a meeting engagement and victory will be based upon the capture of the bridge. Once the game is called, based on a side suffering 50% casualties, check who controls the bridge. Controlling both ends of the bridge (i.e. the road bit at each end) will be classed as a win, anything else is a draw.





Conclusion

The above is just the basic layout of a scenario idea. It looks like a good start and some continued tweaking by playing a couple of Horse & Musket and WWII games will help refine it.


                       



Being able to pick which side of the table to have as your baseline not only needs thought about terrain related to the bridge capture, but also as to where the reinforcement will arrive, as that bend in the river effectively refuses the flank to units without ranged weapons.

Note the term ‘unit’ is loosely used, allowing players to choose the sort of game they want. So in a WWII game, a cavalry unit might be a single tank or we might be using units as platoons, in which case it might be 3 - 5 vehicles and therefore an infantry unit would be a platoon with three sections.

A Hetzer takes up an ambush position at the Ditch


The whole point of doing this is that I get something of a fast play ‘throw down’ game, that has a modicum of being successful due to it having been refined over several playings.



I will review all of this in a few months time and do an update if the play and tweaking proves interesting enough.



Edit - (Ford Discovery).

I am a couple of playtests in now and a bit more development has be exploring the addition of a hidden ford to open the game up and create a new dynamic and give reason for troops to be deployed further along the bank.

Provisional Rule - At very start of a turn, a unit that is touching the river bank can test to see whether they have discovered a fordable part of the river. A ford cannot be discovered within 12” to either side of the bridge.

Roll a D6 and on a result of 1 or 2, a ford has been located. Each player may only ever make two discovery tests and once a ford has been located, further tests can’t be made (i.e. there can only ever be one ford).

I will be trying this is the next few games ….. If a ford even gets found!

Resource Section

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’ is being re-configured to showcase various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current ongoing projects are up to. LINK


https://commanders.simdif.com



37 comments:

  1. Fantastic stuff Norm, good ideas great for inspiration.

    Willz.

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  2. Thanks Bill, a very enjoyable afternoon of putting things together.

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  3. Great idea Norm, getting the right mix of terrain and positioning it to produce an interesting game is a bit of an art form. I can see the advantage in having a ready designed battlefield - which for me is half the pre game planning - and testing it out over multiple periods should be interesting. You may have to add or remove some aspects of the basic terrain depending on the period or rules used. Do you see this set up as scale agnostic by the way?

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  4. Hi JB, Many of the home grown scenarios that I have played out have fallen directly from situations created in boardgames and in that regard most have been successful, but I am less successful with the just made up one. Also I seldom revisit a scenario I have made up, so if it was a stinker, it remains so. So I thought even creating one with warts would be smoothed out to something better by deliberately seeking a path of repeat playings, even if some of the terrain has to be pushed around a little to get a better scenario, that can have a useful life.

    From the outset I wanted this to be scale agnostic, so I didn’t grid the table so it could be visually interpreted as 8x6, 6x4, 3x4, 2x3 etc allowing for different scales and different sized units depending on preference. I also kept the special rules and conditions minimal, so that they didn’t start to interfere with differing rulesets, being careful not to introduce terms that subconsciously were linked to rules I use.

    I am hoping the rule to lose or gain a unit, together with the flank manoeuvre will mix things up a bit.

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  5. Norm -
    This scenario looks to be the type of combat that might occur as a part of, or more probably apart from, a much larger engagement. Of course 'Burnside's Bridge' comes to mind (and whatever battle is supposed to have happened in 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'), but so does the bridge at Lodi.

    I once had just such a situation crop up in a Peninsular War campaign. I thought I had posted something in my blogspot about 10 years ago, but can't find a trace. That involved forcing a bridge defile against strong opposition. The account is not in my blog, but may be found here:
    http://vlerules.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-02-21T16:38:00%2B13:00&max-results=7&start=11&by-date=false
    Cheers,
    Ion

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    1. Because the item was written into someone else's blog (of which at the time I was a co-contributor), I've taken this opportunity to copy it into my own blog spot. Just because...
      Cheers,
      Ion

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    2. Hi Ion, well remembered and I appreciate the work that has gone into lifting that post over into your own blog, especially in copying the photographs. That is exactly the look that hits my nostalgic sense of figure gaming, helped by the excellent map. Good shout,

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    3. While the battle in the G,B,and U is fictionalized, I believe it was meant to represent the Battle at Glorieta Pass in 1862.

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  6. Very interesting Norm. A great table top as well.
    Great idea to complete the same scenario with different periods. Saves resetting the table 😊
    Also could make a good story line. The battles between country X and Y over the millennia. Who wins in the history books.

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    1. Hi Ben, I realised that I hardly ever re-visit a played home brew scenario, probably because there is just so much new stuff to think about, but I think it will be nice to create a few ‘old favourites’ to keep in the back pocket and roll out every now and then.

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  7. Totally agree with all the preceding comments Norm. I think when you started the Piggy Longton series, I commented then, that it was a good opportunity to have various British conflicts occur over roughly the same terrain eg your WotR, then maybe ECW, then possibly the Jacobites could get that far south ....and so on. right up to Seelowe and maybe even a "Cold War Gone Hot" Soviet invasion force?!

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    1. Hi Keith, I have been surprised just how much has been able to be squeezed out of Piggy Longton and there is another post in the draught stage, so yes, there is much mileage in this sort of thing and I would like to see Piggy move on to ECW or back to 1066 in the first instance.

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  8. It will be interesting to see what modifications you make as you test this scenario and apply to the other planned scenarios. Very nice terrain and troops by the way.

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  9. Thanks Peter, I had planned to do an ACW set-up and really didn’t want to get drawn into doing a sole ACW scenario, so it will be an interesting ‘test to destruction’ to put a WWII force onto that battlefield and see how the basics cope with those demands.

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  10. Very interesting project. I always bemoan not getting the old Grant scenario books.

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  11. Hi Gary, I did recently get the new addition of Grant’s (young) programmed scenarios, which I was browsing just the other day and have promised myself that I will get it to the table soon.

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  12. Great looking table, Norm. Are these your 28mm ACW figures on maneuvers?

    In DIY scenario design, which comes first for you? Is it an idea on the terrain to fight over, a prescribed OB, a tactical situation, a nugget from a historical battle, or something else?

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    1. Hi Jonathan, yes, just trying out the ACW re fit to the table / scene and measuring out turns etc based on movement allowance.

      For scenario generation, I am pretty much always approaching it after a brush with ‘a situation’ that I have either read about or seen unfold in a boardgame. Of course things like my Piggy Longton are just formed from an idea, such as the raid on the treasury after the taxes had just been collected. The theme helps build the special rules and the rest just seems to fall into place. Most are story driven, which I think helps believability for the player.

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  13. Looks good Norm, it will be interesting to see how it pans out. Food for thought to do similar.

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  14. Hi Phil, I can see one side gaining both ends of the bridge and the game will actually become about holding on to that far end. Will it stand the test of dice? I think it will be more successful with those rule types that have units that either can or can’t do something - depending upon activation. I will follow all of this through, so a later discussion may be revealing.

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  15. Great stuff as usual Norm! Years ago I had a little booklet my group made up with about 10 throw down scale agnostic games. We played them quite a lot, refined over the years. Unfortunately long gone in numerous moves, if you refine them as you go you will be rewarded with many games over a longtime without getting bored. We used them from 1/300 to 20mm in a way similar to what you suggest. This article has inspired this old duffer to dig out some troops and play the scenario you suggest on a small table, all I have available with 2mm ECW and 1/200 WW2. Thanks Norm!
    Best
    Dave

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  16. Thanks Dave, I would be interested in how either ECW or WW2 cope within the environment of this scenario. The 10 scenario booklet sounds ideal, especially with each getting refined over subsequent playings. I have often wondered how much testing goes in to commercial scenarios and is it the case that after 5 or 6 rolls of the dice, it doesn’t make too much difference because if the chaos and permutations involved in dice rolling.

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  17. Thank you for sharing this, Norm. The map and table look great and the forces involved sound like something I can actually field (a rarity in a lot of scenarios I find). The variable reinforcement arrival and optional rule for the force composition will add replay value. Looking forward to hearing about any changes /updates you make as a result of playing. I am trying to think of the best way to give this one a go myself!

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  18. Thanks John, I am going to play it out as a 1:1 with the ACW first and then likely do a napoleonic epic upscaled to 3:1 with each unit being a brigade of 3 battalions, just to see what that does.

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  19. A fine idea Norm and look forward to seeing how these develop. Over the years I've used Grant & Asquith's scenario books as a good basis for pre-WWII games when inspiration has been lacking, ditto the scenarios from Thomas' OHW. Then there are the Table Top Teasers available online too.

    What I've learnt is that as you get to know a set of rules, it helps you to tweak a scenario to suit these and the period played. This was brought home to me again when I played my recent 2' x 2' games.

    For bigger battles Warning Order! has loads, but to be honest I rarely look at these, which is somewhat remiss of me. I do find too that skirmish scenarios are hard to make interesting, as rarely do they provide much of a challenge, aside from KO'ing the enemy rather than gaining an objective. Maybe that's just me though. These days I prefer 'bigger' battles and ideally ones that form part of a campaign.

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  20. Hi Steve, I think my favourites came from the old Practical Wargamer magazine. Some things seem to go around in cycles … the ‘campaign’ seems to be getting a renewed appreciation of late. There used to be a lot of campaign gaming, but the reported problem seemed to be that the initial enthusiasm faded and players dropped off along the way. Perhaps for todays shorter attention span audience, simply smaller campaigns are the answer.

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    1. They used to try and run campaigns at my old club back in the late 190's and early 2000's before the internet really took off. After a week or two the enthusiasm certainly waned and all bar one died a slow death from memory. Certainly these days a 3-5 game campaign ticks all the boxes for me, whether solo or PBEM and not matter the period.

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  21. Great idea and nice to see your 28mm ACW troops out and about, I was thinking about your piggy longbottom set ups as I read this!
    Best Iain

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  22. Hi Iain, there are some Piggy Longton tie-ins with Smoggy River and Crown Hill appearing on the map ….. so who knows :-)

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  23. This is outstanding! Just the sort of game that inspired me to set up the table and try it out. Right now, with adjustments for the period I can see it provides an exciting game I can play with three different armies.

    Do you mind if I post thus in my blog, with link and references to you? I also play in playing UT and writing up the results for three time periods; Rev War, War of 1812 and Crimean.

    Looking forward to your permission.

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  24. Mark, of course, I am just so pleased that you enjoyed the piece, look forward to your posts. Norm

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  25. Another great morning read that Norm with wonderful supporting photos. 10 years ago or so I know I would jumped on something like this as just the kind of game size that I enjoyed. Sadly I have lost enthusiasm for the gaming side now but still enjoying reading pieces like this.
    Lee.

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    1. Thanks Lee - I hope with this particular post that it can give up a future post following a bit of play testing.

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  26. Great stuff, thanks for putting this together - I'm sure many will try it out ( including me, I hope!).
    Good to revive the great tradition of C S Grant's 'Table Top Teasers'...

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  27. Thanks David, I think this sort of thin does strike a chord with those who have trodden that path.

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  28. Nice idea Norm, Obviously I spend quite a bit of time developing battles and scenarios, your setup as you acknowledge is reminiscent of Some of the scenarios in books and magazine from 30 years ago (no bad thing of course). For me the challenge is having some context which also takes time. Finally if you have read Jon post you will know that I’m not looking to play any scenarios with stone bridges in them for a while 😀

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  29. Hi Matt,, I enjoyed your recent table and AAR very much - yes, stay away from stone bridges :-)

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