As my discerning reader might have noted, I have been reading a little about strategy. In wargame terms, strategy is a bit of an oddity, at least as it is discussed historiographically. I suppose, as wargamers, we want to get the toys onto the table and play a game. How and why they got there is of interest, but perhaps less so than the drama of battle.
I do think there is much of interest in strategy, and to try to prove the point set up a little campaign. From the comments a blog or two ago you might have noticed that my imagination was captured a little by the strategy options of the American Civil war. Basically, both sides had to decide whether a direct assault on the enemy capital would win the war, or a more indirect approach around the west of the Appalachian Mountains would achieve the goals. If you look at the distribution of battles in the ACW you will note that a lot of effort and blood was spent trying the direct approach. Eventually, Sherman’s march to the sea cut the Confederacy in two and it was pretty well game over.
I do not, of course, have suitable ACW troops for this campaign. Indeed, I do not have any ACW troops at all. I do not think I have ever had any. As you might already know, anything after about 1745 is a bit of a mystery to me. The obvious choice was to switch the period to another one I do have figures for. Given that the ACW was fought between sides of roughly equal technical facilities, I decided that something with ancient Greeks would probably work. A bonus was that the Greeks have not been out for a while.
I have always had a bit of a soft spot for hoplite Greeks. I suspect it goes back to my early days of wargaming when a 25 mm Spartan hoplite sample figure (from Asgard Miniatures, as I recall) was my first proper wargame figure. He served for many years as my personal figure in Runequest role-playing games, even though my friends complained that he carried no weapon (he had a wire spear, but it vanished). 25 mm was quickly superseded by cheaper 15 mm figures and ancient Greeks by ECW.
First, for a campaign, you need a map. I knocked one up on the useful Hexographer software which, in my view, included the important bits of the eastern USA in terms of the strategic geography.
In the picture, you can see the two sides, the north (Athens) and the south (Sparta). You cannot really see the roads and city system, as they are simply drawn on in pencil. The red pins are the Athenians and the blue are the Spartans, with the two rightmost pins in the capitals.
I counted up the total bases in my Greeks box and divided up the results. The total was 42 hoplites, 7 cavalry, 21 light infantry and 8 peltasts. After a bit of humming and aah-ing the Spartans got 24 hoplite bases, 3 cavalry and 10 light infantry, while the Athenians got 18 hoplites, 4 cavalry, 11 light infantry and 8 peltasts.
Having learnt from previous errors, a points system for victory was also created. The capital city of each side was 20 points, each town (the Athenians had 4, the Spartans 5) was worth 10 points. An extra 15 points would be given to the Spartans if they had an army off the top of the map, or the Athenians if they had an army off the bottom. The Athenians would gain 10 points if they held the road from the town at the bottom of the mountain chain (point B) to the coast; the Spartans would gain 10 points if they held the equivalent road from the top of the mountains to the coast. Moves were to be 4 hexes for an army unless it was all cavalry (unlikely) in which case 6 hexes. Again, having learnt from the abortive TYW effort, sieges would take 1 move to invest the town, 1 to besiege it and then subsequently the place would fall on a 4, 5 or 6 1D6 roll.
Finally, to the strategy. Each side would need three armies, one for each north-south road. The make-up of the armies was decided by rolling 1 Dav for each except the main armies based on the capital. The Spartans left only a measly 4 hoplite bases to defend Sparta itself, putting half their effort into the western theatre and the rest into the centre (Shenandoah) road. The Athenians put half their force into the defence of the capital and divided the rest fairly equally between the west and centre.
Commanders were assigned initiative rolls, which gave a percentage of them moving each turn. The Spartan central army commander got an 80% initiative, which is why, on the map above, he has steamed his army (army ‘I’) forward in the centre to attack the Athenian army at H. The Spartan western army has also advanced, while the Athenian general at A seems to be doing a Meade and has failed to move against his massively outnumbered opponent.
The thing about campaign games, it seems to me, is that they work almost the opposite way around to an ordinary, stand-alone, game. In the latter, we want a game and we want a reasonable chance of winning it. In the former, actually, we do not want a wargame unless we have decent odds. The dynamic of the game is shifted quite significantly. In this case, both the Athenians at H, in a defensive position on the edge of the town, and the Spartans advancing on it could reasonably accept battle. The Athenians to defend their lines of communication, the Spartans, who outnumbered the Athenians 14 bases to 11, could reasonably expect a victory.
One of the things which foxes me slightly, and which is why the Machiavelli campaign has again been suspended, is whether it is rational for a general to offer or accept battle on equal terms. In the Machiavelli campaign, central Italy has been blocked up by four lots of mutually supporting armies, all of equal strength. For all of the sides losing a battle would be near disastrous, while winning might not achieve too much, there would still be two other enemies to fight. So my inner condottieri has come into play, and battle has been refused by all sides. Hence the switch to this campaign.
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