What Is THIS?

Here is where you post your suggestions about campaigns you'd like the Group to conduct. Campaigns don't have to take the place of other competitions, but be a long-term deal, with movement on a map or maps, and/or supply rules, and/or weather, and/or fixed objectives, and/or no objective except to force a crushing defeat on the other army.

Here's my thoughts, very generally, about what we can do for a campaign. Using an Operational Map that is made up of maps from the SOW program or additions - for example the four Gettysburg maps (the whole battle field divides into four ya know?) plus the Pipe Creek addition maps (which are also four maps - I think) plus a couple of maps from the New Kansas and/or East Cavalry and/or Alpine to give us a 10 mile by 10 mile Campaign Map. Use as much of the complete OOB for both sides as we can find players for - or just start with Army CO for each side and a more or less equal number of Corps CO's for each side and add to that as the Campaign goes along ultimately hoping for players to command at Army, Corps and Division levels or something else if you guys like it better - and start off with the armies entering from the map edges (West for Confederates, East for Unions - or somewhere else) with an objective of finding and inflicting a major defeat on the other army. Which was actually the historical situation that gave rise to the historical Battle of Gettysburg. Or we can use a larger map and fudge the battle maps as required from what is available or ... well, you guys tell me.

As dearly as I love the battles, I volunteer to be the first Campaign Umpire for this first campaign.

I would very much like to see some sort of campaign.

Plain stand alone battles are just to bloody, with out a campaign of some sort of campaign to make a commander justify the cost.

For now though maybe some smaller campaigns such as the "Shenandoah Campaign" are in order, until there are more people to fill slots.

Maybe a map like this one, as this is the best map of the Virginia I have found to date, but really any map could be used. Or maybe we could get a map made-up by one of the map guys at NSD to use in game (that would be sweet indeed), its just a matter of scale after all. Each side could have a copy of the map and move on that map until the umpire says there contact and a battle has started.



Another thing to consider is weather to put a randomizing factor such as one side gets twenty percent more troops without the other sides knowledge, or maybe both sides get twenty percent more, just to keep everybody on there toes.

As far as rules are concerned the skies the limit, but something like assigning a number to Southern towns to show what is lost if that town is occupied, such as recruitment lost, or a moral reduction, etc.
It would also interesting to have some rule that if the union were to loose a set number of battles (lets say eight), the chance of a U.K. or France intervention would occur, but this would be for the future, and rather large campaigns.

Anyways just wondering out loud.

I have played before with pen and paper campaigns where a map, while showing the strategic area to be fought over was laid out geographically, there were limited lines of communication linking battlefields so you got a kind of spiders web effect. Using SoW we would be able to declare about a dozen battlefields (if we could use all the maps from all the add-ons) and make up our campaign map using these where they best fit the known geography of the region. Say, as an example, we refought Jacksons Valley Campaign, then the Antietam map or the MacPherson Ridge or the Pickett map might be used for the valley bottom with a major town in the middle such as Winchester, Strasbourg or Newmarket. Culps Hill, Devil's Den or the Antietam South Mountain map could be used to represent higher up the valley or one of the gaps.

We therefore re-use the SoW maps in a variety of locations for which they're suitable and need only then to agree a strategic purpose, forces and various rules to cover movement speeds. A means of adjusting OOBs between battles to indicate losses and replacements would be needed as well.

Terrific ideas, both!

My first thought is to make our initial Campaign one of limited scope. For instance, use the SOW maps to make up a campaign map and have rules that leave out weather (I love the detail of weather and its effects, but K.I.S.S. for the first one, eh), basic logistics - e.g. 'if you can trace a supply line you're supplied; if not, you have 3 Days of Supply in all classes carried by your units and one DoS for Food and Fodder is used per campaign day and one DoS of Ammo and Shot is used per battle' .. or something about that complicated. Limited Operational intelligence, except for what your cavalry screens/scouts bring in and the occasional and random 'spy' or local informant - "I seen a whole passel a'blue bellies marching thata-way just this morning, Colonel!". Confer via courier unless the CO's formations are marching together, then have places on these forums where both sides can consult about what's going on and plan and plot and like that; private, of course, restricted only to those players on that side. With the Campaign Referee - must be me, by default - changing the access permissions when you're cut off or not close enough to scheme ... or something like those things. Emphasize the types of factors which arise just above the tactical battle-field level of the ACW. For instance, if you want to get a 20% advantage in numbers in your next meeting with your opponent's forces, do something sneaky like Lee used to do to the Union and make that happen by operational maneuvering. All kinds of stuff, but let's keep it down to operational movement, limited intelligence and very simplified logistics and have a campaign of - for instance - 14 days duration (not real life days, Campaign Days). With Campaign Two we can add weather, perhaps more sophisticated logistics, larger maps, more forces.

One thing I think we need to do for certain is limit ourselves in this first Campaign to an Army of two or three Corps on each side, plus cavalry division or two. Let's talk about it more and work out what we ought to do for this first campaign.