Everybody's Gotta Start Somewhere

Inspired by blogs such as the Grand Duchy of Stollen and the Kingdom of Wittenberg, as well as a number of others, I decided around the end of last year to engage in an "imagi-nation" wargaming project.  I originally considered chronicling the fictitious struggles between the Republic of West Florida and Fredonia, but found that War of 1812-style miniatures were rather rare in the 1/72 scale plastics I wanted to use.  

After doing a bit more research on rules, the availability of miniatures, and the history of wargaming I settled on a project: the early nineteenth century wars between the Grand Duchy of Rotland and the Kingdom (formerly Electorate) of Blauland.  The names of the countries - Redland and Blueland - are taken from the opposing sides in the original Prussian wargames, and I plan on having a number of German color pun related countries orbiting the two main players.

Kristina Grand Duchess of Rotland in her typically outdated fashions

Johann I King of Blauland, a well meaning crazy person

The two states are pitifully small and are often forgotten by even the most minor powers of the Napoleonic wars.  They have, however, taken the opportunity presented by the current hostilities in Europe to settle old scores.  Neither the Grand Duchess nor the King are really sure who this Boney guy is, but surely their rival must be in league with him and stricken with this "French madness."

The armies of Rotland have begun marshaling an invasion force which they hope will cross the Grosseblau in mid September, a mere six months after the declaration of war.  Below you can see the first company of the First Fusilier Regiment of Rotland drilling before the upcoming invasion.

I am unreasonably proud of those little guys, which I just completed last night.  I've written a scenario, which I will put in a little sidebar, that I'm using to dictate what troops I'll need before I get a game going.

I thought about starting a blog solely to chronicle my wargaming experiences, but figured there was probably enough overlap that I could put my stuff up here.

The Brownstone Campaign

This is an extended pitch for a wargame/pseudo-rpg campaign idea I had the other day.  I posted a shortened version of this on G+, but I wanted to work up something that would explain more of how I planned on running it.  The battles will be fought using Richard Borg's Battle Cry: 150th Civil War Anniversary Edition while the campaign will be resolved using a hand drawn map and a Matrix game.  It is obviously heavily inspired by Dave Wesely's Braunstein campaign.

The idea for the Brownstone Campaign is that it takes place in a valley in the fictional Cumberbatch mountain range.  The valley is dominated by the town of Brownstone, which controls a major rail station that runs the length of the valley and connects two parts of the Confederacy; however, Brownstone and the smaller towns in the Northern Cumberbatch are largely supporters of the Union, and Lincoln has ordered one of his generals to seize the valley.

Six players in my home group will take the role of both Union and Confederate generals.  Each side will have a major commander with a large force and two minor commanders with smaller forces.  These forces will be composed of varying amounts of Battle Cry infantry, artillery, and cavalry units.  The commanders themselves will have individual names, sub officers, and command values determined in advance of play.

Each turn for these guys represents one week of time, and they can move 1 point at a time. - unless their argument includes some reason they would be able to move faster.  Battles only occur when arguments say they do.  The goal is to get the most victory points by holding towns, winning battles, and completing other objectives, after 4 months.

I'm going to draw a map of the valley that will contain c. 20 points or nodes.  Each point will have a board setup decided on in advance for use with battles, with the events of the campaign deciding which side enters from where.  Before a battle, I will secretly ask each commander involved what there general plan for the battle is, how many men they're willing to commit, and how many units they're willing to lose before giving up the field.  I'll use this information to place the units myself, taking into account the properties of different troops, commanders, and terrain in order to decide things like which of the two sides starts closest to the hill they both want to take.

Battles involving more than one general on a side will (until I can acquire another copy of the game) mean that only a small contingent of one commander's forces will appear on the field, and the battle will be controlled by the superior ranking officer (not the officer with the superior command score).

In addition to this, I plan on running a G+ game where players take the roles of one of the following people:
Abraham Lincoln (who is constantly wiring the union commanders with his instructions)
The Mayor of Brownstone
The Confederate "General" in charge of the administration of the Valley Department
an Abolitionist
the Editor of the Local Newspaper
Or others if someone has a better idea

The newspaper editor, the mayor, and any additional figures created by the players will have to roll to see what their loyalties are, since they are not immediately obvious here.

Between sessions of the wargame campaign, I'll contact them (either through hangout or play by post, not sure which yet) and inform them of what happened in the war.  They will in turn, give me a number of actions they wish to take - some of which will be in the past in order to catch the G+ timeline up with the wargame one.  I'm thinking these will also rely on the matrix formula but will be a great deal more freeform.  These players will want to win their own victory points based on their role, so the abolitionist wants to see the valley taken by the Union and to see the slaves held by the smallholders in the southern part of the valley freed, while the mayor simply wants to advance his political career.  This will obviously be harder to score.

Anybody have any thoughts/advice?

Factions in the Dark Country

Much like Scott, I've been thinking about the combination of wargames and Roleplaying games quite a bit recently.  There are a number of reasons for this, but the main ones are that I'm a bit of an armchair general and I'm rather curious to see what kinds of armies I can come up with for Nightwick's World.

Thinking about this has also helped me coalesce my ideas about the Nightwick campaign and the milieu's various movers and shakers.  12 out of the 25 squares on the large map I made are devoted to the Dark Country, so there is some room for armies to move about and battles to be had.

Here are some brief descriptions of the various factions and/or leaders.  These only cover the ones that can be found in the Dark Country parts of the map.  There are other factions to be found in the World, but they won't have a large enough presence in the Dark Country itself to warrant an army list yet.

The Seven Cities  -- The Sword Brothers and the merchants who funded them founded these cities at various points during the attempted conquest of the Dark Country.  They are\ still controlled by various Westerners, but settlement has slowed to a trickle due to the disbanding of the Sword Brothers and losses to the barbarians.  The cities are not unified, but usually band together against their common enemies.  Some cities are ruled by bishops, others by merchant houses, and others by exiled Western nobles.  I would most likely do up one army list, but paint different armies to represent the different cities.  Culturally speaking they are Western European c. 15th century (particularly French and English) sans gunpowder.  Their fantastic troops are probably going to be various clerics and magicians rather than out-and-out monsters.

The Petty Kings  -- Barbarians who lived in the Dark Country before the arrival of the Sword Brothers.  They're who the Brothers wanted to convert.  They aren't the natives, but threw out the natives centuries before the Sword Brothers set up their monasteries so they might as well be.  They're even less unified than the Seven Cities.  Culturally speaking they're Germanic tribesman (think Saxons and Goths not Vikings).  Their fantastic troops will most likely be things such as Giants, giant wolves, and bone witches.

Novgova -- A pseudo-Russian City-State that lies across the mountains.  They hold a key mountain pass to the East and use it to trade with the Petty Kingdoms and the Seven Cities.  They worship the God of Law but their Church is considered heretical by the West.  They're similar to the Rus c. Alexander Nevsky and have some Steppe People allies.   I'm not sure what kind of fantastic troops to give them.

The Mountain King  -- The last Dwarf King who still retains his hold.  His army doesn't move that much from his hall because of constant goblin threat.  Still, he might be persuaded if something was to threaten the place of Law in the Dark Country.  I'll probably have to settle for the typical Norse style Dwarves, but if I can find some that resemble ancient Semitic peoples I'll snap them up in a second.

The White Lady  -- Fairy bitch from hell.  Her army issues forth from the Witch Wood and carts people off to God knows where.  Mostly Orcs but the elite troops are elves and fairies of various types.

Nightwick Abbey -- For Roleplaying purposes, the Abbey is more or less dormant, but I can see wargaming scenarios in which the unquite dead ride to ruin and to slake the blood lust of their demonic masters.  The Sword Brothers are modeled after the Teutonic Knights, so some of those minis painted to be ghostly and blood covered should work.  All of their troops are fantastic (being undead) but some demons and ghosts will help to add to the other-worldlyness.

Thats all I have for now.  Again, that's only the factions that are in the Dark Country itself.  The West will have a number of different kingdoms, and the Desert Lands and the remnants of the old Empire haven't even been touched yet.

Fantasy Wargaming and the Crusades

Zak's post along with my recent ramblings about miniatures have given me a neat idea for a miniatures campaign.  The particular impetus of this idea is found in the episode "Pilgrims in Arms" of Terry Jones's documentary on Crusades.  In general, Jones's treatment is good, though I have some issues with his presentation of the papacy and a few other things.  On incident discussed in this episode is a miracle, which Jones hypothesizes is the product of starvation-addled minds, in which armored saints and risen dead crusaders come to the aid of their still living brethren.  Now, I've not read the account that reports this, and Jones does not name it specifically but his use of other sources is good enough that I don't think he just pulled it out of thin air.

Here then is my idea:  use Hordes of the Things to model a kind of psychedelic, fantasy version of the Crusades.  The Crusader army list would be roughly modeled on the above story.  They would have normal men and knights, but also be accompanied by zombies and have the ghosts of martyred saints leading their armies into battle.  The Byzantines could have mastered strange sorceries and sciences allowing them the use of arcane weapons of war.  If I want to buy into Crusader propaganda, and add further fantastic elements, I could also have the emperor make a pact with the Adversary giving them access to demons of various sorts and heretical fanatics.  This is a tad offensive to the Byzantines, but I doubt Alexius Comnenus is going to pound on my door tomorrow asking for an explanation.  The Saracens possess fire sorcerers and genies.  Again, not the most enlightened view, but I like Sinbad movies too much so I'll deal.  Plop out a big map of the Levant with various towns, cities, castles, holy sites, and other points of strategic import and have at it.

I might use some of the material I generate for this in the Nightwick Campaign.  I can see this setup working very well for the Desert Lands, though obviously with a severely edited map.  If I do decide to use this material, then it will have some pretty big implications, especially in regards to the portrayal of the Sword Brothers.

EDIT: Weird timey-wimey stuff happened to this post.  Not sure how.