Setting up a Wargames Campaign

Hyborian War Elephant (photograph from Tony Bath 's Col/ection

courtesy of Rudi Geudens)

51
ORIGINAL FOREWORD by Phil Barker and Bob O'Brian
First pubfished in the 1973 edition of setting up a Wargames Campaign

Wargaming has become one of the fastest growing indoor hobbies,

and is now served by a growing number of firms making excellent
models in all scales and periods, as well as a vast and increasing !1.
literature, anda number of specialist magazines.

Tony Bath with Don Featherstone, and a few other hardy

enthusiasts, have been concerned with the hobby since the days when
the numbers were so small that most wargamers knew each other
personally! Tony was the founder member of the Society of Ancients,
which has now grown to lnternational status, and is also the presiding
genius of all the affairs of Hyboria, probably the longest running and
most successful (and nerve racking) campaign ever. We speak with
feeling, and sometimes bitter experience, both having major parts in
the production!

War, in all its forms, is rightly abhorred by the vast majority. For
all that, it will always be one of the most compelling of subjects for
study. We believe that the wargamer, who researches his subject,
delves into the history and causes of wars and becomes aware of the
colossal blunders and mis-chances of conflicts, becomes far less
belligerent than many who do not follow this hobby.

This book, written by an acknowledged master and enthusiast,

will enable the wargames campaigner to make his own decisions, and
produce his own particular flashes of brilliance, or abject disasters -
and with no one hurt-feelings excepted.

53
 Assyrian and Roman lnfantry 40 mm "flats" used as soldiers of the
Hyborian Kingdon (photograph from Tony Bath 's Co/lection courtesy of
Rudi Geudens)

54
INTRODUCTION

When Phil Barker first suggested to me that I shauld write a baok an

campaigning, it didn'.t occur to me just what I was letting myself in for.
The difficulty has been, not to decide what to put in, but in deciding
what has to be left out in order to limit this volume to a reasonable size!
There is so much to be said about campaigning that it is not easy ta
know where to begin, or indeed where to end.

I have decided to assume that the average reader is fairly

ignorant about war game campaigns and to explain things with a fair
amount af detail. lf this is annoying ta more experienced readers I am
sorry; but in anything as complicated as this subject can be, it is
essential to start aff with a firm idea af what you are trying ta do.

Almast all new wargamers start their careers by fighting a

succession of single, unconnected battles; this is inevitable since it
takes time to get the feel of the hobby, to learn the rules etc. But if a
new recruit is really going to take up war gaming, then before very long
he begins to feel that something is Jacking: that these individual
games, though well enough in their way, need same connecting link to
make them more satisfying and ta give an objective other than just
trying to destroy the other fellow's army. In other words, the desire to
fight campaigns rather than battles.

This is the point where the newcomer can make a mistake. It is

not wise to try and run before you can walk, and it can be equally
unwise to plunge immediately into complicated campaign rules. Same
people are capable of doing this, but for many it can end by getting
bogged down amang the complications and, in the ensuing frustration,
vowing never to go in for that sort of thing again. For that reason it is
often best to start off with a simplified campaign, and elsewhere in this
book you will find ideas and rules for these. lf you try these
successfully you will probably then find the urge to go on ta something
bigger and better.

Again, to indulge in a campaign yau need at least two, but

preferably more people who can engage in it on a regular basis.
Campaigns are ideal for local clubs to embark on, but they can also be
run by more widely scattered groups. ldeally, a complicated campaign
needs a fair-sized group with at least one, preferably two people who
do not participate in the campaign as generals or rulers but act as
impartial controllers and umpires. However, it is perfectly feasible for
two people to run a satisfying campaign; it is even possible for one
person to do so with the occasional assistance, for the purpose of
battles etc., of visiting firemen. Suggestions and rules for all these
eventualities will be found in this bock.

55
 What makes campafgning so rewarding? Why, if you have fairly
limited time available for the hobby, should you use time that could be
spent in fighting on the table-top in poring over maps and situation
reports? The answer is that no real-life general could limit himself to
the purely tactical problems of the battle-field, and a campaign is the
way in which the wargamer general widens his horizon.

The player who merely participates as a general or a ruter finds

the opportunity to practice strategy as well as tactics. He may find
himself having to solve problems of supply and finance, and, if the
campaign isa complicated one, matters of diplomacy etc as well. He
must learn one of the hardest lessons fora wargamer: when to cut his
losses and abandon a losing battle, instead of fighting on to the bitter
end.

The wargamer who either runs or helps to run a campaign gains

even more, for he can give full rein to his creative genius, both as
regards the rules he uses and the countries and characters he creates.
A radio interviewer once asked me whether the desire to runa mythical
continent of my own was a sign of power mania; I replied that this was
possibly true to some extent, since mast of us like the idea of playing
God to same degree, but more important was the freedom it gave toa
bent for organising things. Certainly campaigning will indulge many
complexes. Further, in running a campaign you have to learn to be as
unbiased as possible, and to find methods of solving tricky problems,
of setting up scales by which to decide just how successful a certain
move by a player will be. An example of this isa situation that cropped
up quite a while ago in Hyboria, my own mythical continent. Control of
the Sea of Vilayet is vital to the interests of Hyrkania, which naturally
maintains a large navy; they heard that Turan, on the other side of the
sea, was building warships in the port of Agrapur. Hyrkania and Turan
were at peace, so Hyrkania could make no overt move, but Charles
Grant, the ruler of Hyrkania, gave orders for same old merchant ships
to be scuttled in the harbour mouth to effectually block in the Turanian
ships. He was of course prepared to deny having any hand in this
fortuitous accident! I then had to sum up the chances of suctess of
such an operation, considering the possibilities of challenge by the
harbour defences, the accuracy of the scuttlings, etc. On this basis I
set up a dice scale of from 2 to 12, 2 being complete failure and 12
being complete success, and rolled two dice. The result gave Charles
a nearly complete success which prevented the larger Turanian ships
getting out of port for many months, and the whole thing was an
enjoyable little exercise for me.

As your campaign develops, you will find yourself adding fresh

angles to it which, while quite unnecessary from a purely practical
viewpoint, can add much fun and interest to the proceedings. The
provision of a campaign newspaper, as mentioned later, can add both
56
a touch of humour and serve a useful purpose - and enable players to
show off their skill at such diverse things as poetry and propaganda!
Keeping a detailed history of the campaign can also be fun, and many
other side-lines will occur. The danger in fact is of losing sight amid all
these things of your original objective and letting the tail wag the dog!

It is however true of campaigning, as of so many other things,

that the amount of enjoyment to be obtained from it is pro rata to the
amount of effort that is put into it This will vary from person to person
and group to group according to how much time and interest people
have to spare, but the main ingredient necessary is enthusiasm for the
project and a sense of responsibility toward the other players. Nothing
is so frustrating to players as to be held up at a vital moment by one
participant who hasn't decided on his current move or responded to a
sitrep within a reasonable time. For this reason, if you are running a
large or complicated campaign it is necessary to pick your players
wisely.

Not all wargamers will wish to progress to the complications

inherent in running as large an operation as my own Hyboria. I have
always maintained that one of the fascinations of our hobby is that it
enables us all to participate up to the level we ourselves decide; and
as long as we can find a kindred spirit to Join us, the results will be
stimulating and satisfying regardless of which leve! we choose. I hope
that in the pages which follow all readers will find something to
stimulate their interest and get them into the campaigning habit

One last point before we get down to details. By no means all

the ideas which follow stemmed from my brain originally, and even
those which did owe something to the encouragement and criticism of
the people I have campaigned with over the years. In this connection I
would like to mention Don Featherstone, Archie Cass, Neville
Dickinson and Peter Millen in particular, all of whom have helped to
shape my ideas over the years and contributed many of their own.
Without them, and all the members of my Hyborian Group, this book
would not have been possible.

57
 1. HOW TO SET UP YOUR CAMPAIGN

At the very outset of your venture into campaigning you have a

decision to make: i.e., are you going to refight one of the wars of
history; are you going to create your own wars but operate on historical
ground by retaining real countries; or are you going to go completely
overboard and start off by creating your own mythical continent, island
etc. This decision is quite a big one, so let us examine the implications
of each course.

lf you decide to stick to realistic history as your basis of

,operations, you will have the initial advantage that maps of the area
already exist. These will be available - in the hexagonal pattern which
fits all the rules in this book - from the Research Group, and cover
most of the Ancient World. You will also be able to work out fairly
simply the number of troops etc. involved from reading accounts of the
particular war you intend to refight. On the other hand, you have to
accept the !imitations of the historical approach and deny yourself use
of many of the mast interesting and enjoyable of the rules mentioned
later purely because they do not fit into this context.

lf you choose this course, there are numerous interesting wars

you can select. From the strategical viewpoint, the Peloponnesian War
is ideal. At various times all the city-states of Greece, the Aegean
islands, and even parts of Sicily were involved, so that you operate
over a. wide area; diplomacy can play a vital part, since same states
changed sides or remained neutral at times; and the naval side of the
war is extremely important. A factor which tends to be overlooked is
the dependence of Greece on outside grain sources - notably the
Black Sea countries and Sicily - and this greatly affected the strategy
of both sides in the closing stages. The disadvantage of this particular
war is of course that the land battles were almost exclusively fought by
armies of höplites; light troops were used to same effect on special
occasions, such as at Sphacteria and in Boeotia, and cavalry in the
Syracuse operations, but normally it was a heavy infantry affair, which
tends to make a somewhat boring war game. So your choice of troops
is severely restricted.
st nd
Both the 1 and 2 Punic Wars offer wide tactical and strategic
scope; the area covered is even wider than in the Peloponnesian War
since .it includes Spain and Africa, and troop types are extremely
varied. One also has to take into account the differing systems of
command of the Romans and Carthaginians, both of which had
advantages and disadvantages; the presence in the 2nd Punic War of a
military genius in the person of Hannibal; and the fact that the
Carthaginians very largely employed mercenaries who needed paying.

59
 Most of the later Roman wars were too one-sided to make
interesting campaigns, and the same applies to same degree to those
of Alexander the Great; the Persian armies were no real match for the
Macedonians, and had no commander of the calibre of Alexander. For
enthusiasts of later eras, the Grusades or the various wars between
the Eastern Empire and its successive foes, offer many attractions.

The second course, of sticking to historical geography but

fighting non-historic campaigns, is a typical compromise and, like most
compromises, tends to take the worst rather than the best of both
worlds. It is true that it gives you rather more freedom of action than
the first course, but in an essentially limited way in that you are still
committed to historical concepts as regards troops etc., if you are
abandoning history in one direction, why not go the whole hog?
However, if you decide an this course, an excellent campaign can be
constructed on the basis af a Roman civil war during the later Empire,
which will give ample scope for strategy and allow for any amount of
back-stabbing and such like dirty work.

Having at various times tried all three courses, I have no

hesitation in saying that I believe the third, of setting up your own
continent, to be far and away the best. With a world of your own, the
!imitations are only those of your own imagination together with a
certain sense of realities. For instance, within the boundaries of my
own continent of Hyboria exist armies and cultures ranging from the
th
Ancient Egyptian to the 13 Century mediaeval, enabling me to make
use of the whole ancient-mediaeval period. I justify this - if justification
is needed - on the grounds that in a continent as !arge as Hyboria not
all countries would be an the same level af culture and development
(as was the case an our own Earth) and if you group similar cultures
together you get a realistic enough situation. As an example, I started
out with Vikings in the north, Greeks in the north-central areas,
Romans next to them, a group of mediaevals in the west with Celts
between them and the Vikings, Egyptians, Assyrians etc. in the south,
Persians and Saracens in the east. Over the years wars and
commerce between the countries have gradually altered these original
ethnic and material lines, raising the standards of same of the more
backward areas; but while regular armies have tended ta progress in
equipment, militia and levies still retain the old styles, so that I can still
find uses for all the varieties of troops which make the ancient period
so fascinating.

Another advantage af this mythical continent is that, if your

original creation was properly done, it will last you for not just one
campaign but for as many as you like, and in the course of these the
continent will develop a certain life of its own. Precedents will be
created for future actions, traditions of both friendship and enmity
arise, and all these will help you later in running the continent. Finally
you will probably reach the stage when you wonder just how much
60
control you have or whether you have created a Frankenstein's
monster!

lf you are embarking upon a venture such as this, your first

necessity is a map. How large this is will depend upon how large an
operation you intend to set up. lf you are going to limit yourself to
relatively smaU-scale operations, then a large island will probably
suffice; or alternatively a large peninsula. This latter gives you room to
expand later if required, since you can fill in all the details you require
on your peninsula and leave the main continent it is attached to as
Terra lncognita, walled off by thick forests or high mountains. Or af
course you can create an archipelago; the size of the concept will
depend upon how much time and effort you wish to devote to it.

Now not all of us have the necessary skill and imagination to

draw up a complete map by ourselves; if this is your position, do not
despair.

There are several methods of getting round this obstacle. Firstly,

you can pick someone else's brains by utilising one of the many worlds
created by writers of fantasy and science fiction - as I did. The basis of
Hyboria was created for me by Robert Howard, the author of the well-
known Conan bocks; he included a reasonably detailed map on the
end-covers of his books, and I merefy took this, blew it up to some 4'
by4', and proceeded to map in much greater detail.

Plenty of other worlds are waiting for you to take possession of

4
them. Sprague de Camp , one of the finest living writers of fantasy
fiction, offers much material for mythical worlds in many of his bocks,
especially "Tritonian Ring" which develops the Atlantis theme, and the
Krishna books. No maps are provided, unfortunately, but plenty of
geographical detail is given. Edgar Rice-Burroughs similarly gives
enough detail in his books to create his worlds of Mars and Venus.
Fritz Leiber has created - and mapped to some extent - the world of
Nehwon for his heroes to inhabit, Andre Norton the Witch World. The
list goes on and on, and most members of the Society of Ancients at
least seem to be addicted to this type of literature.

Another method is that used by Neville Dickinson when he

chose to set up a continent of his own. With the typical craftiness that
has won him so many battles, Neville proceeded to collect a number of
holiday brochures of such places as the lsle of Man, Northern lreland,
Jersey, Guernsey, Luxembourg and Corsica, and used the outlines of
these to form various countries of his continent. By grouping them
together, and filling in little independent duchies to take up blank
spaces between them, he soon had the outlines of all his countries

4
He also played the Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame in New York. Editor.

61
drawn in an his map. Similarly, rivers were taken from local Ordnance
Survey maps, while the coast-lines af such countries as· Norway and
Sweden were utilised to give his sea-coast. This sort of thing is within
the scope af anyone, and can be fun ta do as well.

Having made your outline map, you now need to add terrain to
it; even if you have taken over a fantasy map, it will not have much
detailed terrain to begin with. You will first need to grid it inta
hexagons; you can simplify this by using the blank hexagoned sheets
supplied by the Research Group to draw your map on in the first place.
You then throw two dice for each hexagon: score of 2 gives Hills and
Woods, 3 Hills, 4 Woods, 5 Open Country, 6 Open Country, 7 Hills, 8
Open Country, 9 Open Country, 10 Hills, 11 Woods, 12 Hills and
Woods. Should a double be thrown (i.e. two 3s, 2 4s etc.) tass again,
and if a second double is thrown then the hexagon is extreme af its
kind - for example HiUs would become mountains and Woods would
become thick forest.

A certain latitude however must be allowed for realistic terrain; in

other words, having plotted your terrain to begin with, do not be afraid
to alter parts of it to make a mountain chain or a range of hills look
more the thing. You should also make sure that your rivers and lakes
fit inta the scheme of things, the rivers rising in higher ground and
tending downhill. Remember that national boundaries very often follow
natura! lines; i.e. they are run along rivers, hills, lakes and such-like.
Since you drew in your boundaries first, allow for this when laying out
your terrain.

You now have to create your civilisation. lf you began with an

outline map, it will already contain a certain number of towns, but
probably not enough for your purpose. You can of course proceed to
site others at your own discretion, placing them at strategic and likely
points, such as the confluence of two rivers, river mouths, etc. lf you
need a method af siting population centres, however, a simple one is
to throw a dice for each hexagon; an open hexagon turning up a 4, 5
or 6 will have same form of habitation, hilly or wooded hexagons a 5 or
6, mountainous or forested a 6. You can then dice again to see what
sort of habitation it is: 6 would be a city, 5 a town , 4 a village, 3 a
hamlet, 2 a castle, 1 a farm. Again, you will have to use a certain
judgement rather than sticking absolutely to these results, in order ta
obtain a balanced population; otherwise you will find yourself stuck
with heavily over-populated areas and others nearly deserted. You
can't for instance have a mountain chain studded with cities!

lf you wish to discover the population figures of your towns,

villages etc. this is also simple enough to do. First of all come to a
decision as to how populous your continent is intended to be: should
cities average several hundred thousand inhabitants or less than a
hundred thousand? The answer will decide how many dice you throw
62
for each location; the more dice, the more people. Six dice will give you
pretty large populations; one dice will give pretty small. Average it out
to suit yourself. Having decided on the number of dice, throw that
number for each habitation, multiply by 5 fora farm or a castle, ten for
a hamlet, one hundred for a village, one thousand for a town, ten
thousand for a city. Thus a score of say 15 would give a population af
75 for farm ar castle, 150 fora hamlet, 1,500 fora village, 15,000 fora
town, 150,000 fora city.

You now have the problem af naming all your creations: your
countries, towns, rivers, mountains etc. Of course, if you have an
unlimited imagination, this will be no difficulty; but if you are like me, by
the time you've named a dozen or so places, you're fast running out af
names. Aga in, no difficulty: let the professionals do the work for you !
The pages of fantasy fiction llterally teem with suitable names - or if
you don't have access to this, use a large dictionary, a Latin ar
German or Greek lexicon, the indices of history books: all of these
contain ready-made names and others which can be used with slight
alteration. And .af course you can always fall back on colours - Green
Hills, Brown Rivers, Black Forests, etc!

Your map is now almost complete. One main item remains, and
that is to fill in the roads, bridges and fords. It is a good idea to have
main roads and lesser roads - call them 1st Glass and 2nd Glass for
want of a better name - and these can be shown by using different
st
colours. I personally use red for 1 and green for 2" 0 Glass, but any
colour code will do. The amount of roads will depend on individual
taste, but of course all inhabited localities will be linked inta the road
system, and the bigger the locality, the more roads will lead to it.
Similarly, places at the centre of road networks become of more
strategic value. However, if you are thinking of setting up players as
rulers of countries and having them run their countries in detail - not
just as war leaders in effect - it is probably a good idea to lay out
initially a very sparse road network and let the individual players decide
how much of their resources should be devoted to building roads -
something you will find covered in later rules.

Your map is now virtually complete: your next task is to decide

on the types of people which inhabit the various countries, and thus lay
down the sort of troops it will provide. This you will have to do on your
own initiative, and the result will depend on just how much variety you
wish to include, and how many different countries you are starting with.
In Hyboria, for instance, I started off with 28; of these two were
declared to be Vikings, 1 Gelts, 6 Mediaeval, 1 Norman, 3 Greek, 1
Roman, 2 Persian, 1 Assyrian, 2 Saracen, 1 Indian, 1 Aztec, 2
Egyptian, I Numidian, 2 Carthaginian and 2 mixed Asiatics; with
several independent city states and a wilderness peopled by natives
akin to Red Indians!

63
 I atso began by laying down standing regutar armies for all these
countries and designing uniforms for them. I worked on the assumption
that each sizeable town could supply from 2 to 4 regiments of infantry,
usually medium or heavy; countryside would supply cavalry and light
infantry, depending on the terrain. Since my countries varied widely in
size, so their armies varied in strength, but the average country
disposed of a regular force of probably 12 to 16 regiments of infantry
and 4 to 6 of cavalry. In addition, I decided in which areas elephants
were available, and there was a desert area which produced camels.
Some countries of course also sported chariot forces - in particular the
Celts. Uniform design was fairly simple; I worked out a colour
combination of two main colours for each country - black and gold for
Aquilonia, blue and silver for Hyrkania, black and red for Nemedia, etc.
- and painted the troops of each country in these main colours, with a
third colour added in lesser degree to signify the province or town, and
possibly facings of a fourth cofour for individual regiments.

It is not, of course, necessary to go as far as this, but since you

are presumably going to use the continent for some while you might as
well paint your armies to suit it, or if you already possess the armies,
design your continent to suit them.

64
 2. MAP MOVEMENT
You now have your hexagoned map, be it historical or mythical, and
you have your countries and armies. Your next need is for rules to
govern the movement of armies across the map. The hexagons have
been designed to provide a basis for this, in that they represent the
average distance moved by infantry in a day's march.

The first question to decide is not so much the daily distances to

be moved under varying circumstances, but the duration of the
campaign move. The obvious move is a day, but the obvious is not
always the best choice. Early on in my campaigning experience, it
became obvious that daily moves were not ideal, in that they made
little allowance for rest periods and led to same unrealistic situations.
Armies would_ fight three battles in the course of a single week,
campaigns lasted a couple of weeks instead of whole seasons; added
to this, if the campaign involves a number of people, the amount of
paper work involved in keeping track of things is greatly increased. For
these reasons I adopted the weekly move, and instead of multiplying
the daily march distance by seven, I multiplied it by a lower figure to
make allowances for rests, late starts, bad management etc. This not
only gives you a reasonable weekly move, but it gives you a longer
time scale, staggers battles, and makes the whole thing move more
smoothly. The move distances quoted below are, therefore, all weekly
moves.

1. Move
st nd
1 Glass 2 Glass Country Desert
Road Road
lnfantry 4 hexagons 3 hexagons 2 hexagons 1 hexagon
Cavalry 6 5 4 1
Chariots 6 4 3 1
Camels 6 5 4 4 Desert
Nil
Mountain
Elephants 4 3 2 Nil
Supply 4 3 1 Nil
Train
Pack 5 4 3 1
horses

·Movement of couriers, spies, scouts or individual horsemen will

depend on circumstances, drawing of cha.nce cards etc but will
st
normally be in the region of 30 hexagons by 1 Class road and the
remainder proportionally.

65
 In close country, such as forest or mountains, all movement
must be by road. Only 12 regiments may occupy one hexagon at any
time, so if the force consists of 36 regiments it will occupy 3 successive
hexagons. lf its path is blockad by an enemy, only that portion of the
force in the first hexagon will be able to take part in the initial battle.
Similarly, an ambush on the flanks of the column may elect to let the
first 12 regiments past and attack the second twelve as they enter the
hexagon. March orders will therefore have to be written in advance,
stating the order in which the regiments are placed in the column.

In open country, a force moving by road may elect to throw out

flank guards to right and left. lf the central force is infantry and the flank
guards are cavalry, all can move at the basic infantry road speed; but if
infantry are employed on the flank guards, the whole force will be
reduced to country rate. A force deployed in this manner will of course
be better able to safeguard its own flanks and envelop those of an
enemy moving in singla column. When the enemy are met, a series of
separata battles may need to be fought between the individual forces
on both sides.

5. Apart from supply and siege trains, any force may forced
march 50% faster if it so desires; but if involved in battle while doing so
or at the conclusion of such a move, will reduce all its moves by one
third Any troops engaged in such a forced march will lose 10% of its
strength each move by straggling. These stragglers will catch up with
the main force during the first full week's halt, unless they are being
pursued by a hostile force. lf so pursued, the stragglers are last for
good.

6. Ships at sea wiU move, under normalweather conditions, at

8 hexagons per move.

7. Ships on rivers will move at 4 hexagons up-river, 6

hexagons down-river. Where there isa tidal flow near the river mouth,
this can be taken into account so that ships moving with the tide use
down river speed.

8. Mountains can only be crossed by formed bodies of troops

where roads lead over er through them. Forested country can only be
traversed by road except by infantry, who are reduced te 1 hexagon
per move.

9. Crossing a minor river without aid of bridge or ford deducts

1 hexagon from the move.

10. Crossing a major river without benefit of bridge or ford will

be subject to various delay. lf boats have been collected in advance,
delay will only be 1 hexagon. lf the force has a bridging train with it,
delay will be 2 hexagons, lf neither, a dice will be thrown: 5 or 6, boats
66
can be collected locally, delay of 2 hexagons; 3 or 4, delay of 3
hexagons while boats are collected; 2 delay of ene full move while rafts
are built; 1 no boats or timber for rafts are available locally, force must
move along the river and try elsewhere.

11. Navigability of rivers must be determined before hand. It is

suggested that major rivers should be navigable by hexeres and
hepteres for reasonable distances from their mouths, that quadriremes
and quinqueremes should be able to go considerably further inland,
and that biremes and triremes should be able to navigate any river
large enough to be shown on the main map.

12. Transport ships will rank in size with quinqueremes. Their

capacity will be:

a) 30 infantry figures b) 15 cavalry figures with horses

c) 6 chariots d) 10 camels
e) 5 elephants f) 6 siege engines

13. Troops can be embarked on transports anywhere along a

river bank. lnfantry alone take half a map move to embark or
disembark, anything else a full map move.

14. Troops embarking or disembarking at a port will require 1

hexagon for infantry, 2 for anything else.

15. lnfantry and cavalry can be disembarked over an open

beach, infantry taking 2 hexagons, cavalry a complete move. When
disembarking horses, a dice will be thrown: 3 or 4, loss of 5% through
injury or drowning, 1 or 2 loss of 10%.

16. Sufficient transports may be hired in any port to lift 150

figures at one time; but having taken the ships from a port, another
such lift cannot be obtained from it for 4 map moves unless the original
ships are returned in the meanwhile.

17. Ships operating on rivers will not be affected by storms in

the same way as those at sea, but only by general weather conditions.

18. Ships at sea wilt similarly be affected by local weather

conditions in that their speed may be increased to 8 squares by a
following wind or reduced to 4 squares by a headwind and heavy seas.
lf a storm blows up, ships must run fora beach if they are within one
hexagon of the coast. lf the map does not show what sort of coast it is,
throw a dice: 1, 2 rocky shore 3, 4 moderate beach 5, 6 good beach. lf
the result is good, all ships will beach safely; if it is moderate, dice for
each ship: 1 it beaches but receives severe damage in doing so, 2
moderate damage, 3 slight damage. lf the shore is rocky, dice again, 1
2 3 last on rocks with all hands, 4 5 lost on rocks but half crew get
67
ashore, 6 stuck on rocks but does not break up, crew survive. Ship
counts as severely damaged.

19. An infantry force without a supply train and thus dependent

on foraging will deduct 1 hexagon from its move. A force supplied with
cavalry will move at normal infantry rates as it is assumed that the
cavalry do the foraging and can still maintain this speed.

Weather

It is of course necessary to consider the effect of weather on

movement. Bad weather can impede movement on most surfaces, and
one cannot assume that all operations are taking place in excellent
weather conditions. The sort of weather which can be expected,
however, will vary from season to season and climate to climate, so
that to make your weather realistic you must relate it to the lime of year
in which you are campaigning, and the type of climate for that
particular region. More often than not, campaigning will cease during
the winter months, so you are most concerned with autumn, summer
and spring; but rules must be available for winter also in case of need.
Circumstances are sure to arise when troop movement becomes
necessary out of the normal season.

Various ways can be found of determinlng the weather. In the

tactical rules produced by the Research Group will be found a system
for discovering local weather over the battlefield; they are excellent for
this purpose, but need to be taken a little further for campaign
purposes. We have to consider cumulative conditions over a week or
even several weeks, and over wide areas.

To begin with, it is necessary to decide on the method of

determining the weather: whether to merely throw dice each move for
whatever forces are involved, or - and this will give better results
though take a little more time - to divide your map into weather areas
and have possibly two weather forecasts for each area, one general
and one local. In order to make your weather logical, it is best to relate
your map in same way to places on Earth, so that you have abasis on
which to work out your weather. This can be done quite simply by
identifying some of the focal points on your continent with simitar focal
points on Earth. You now have a basis on which to work out the
general weather pattern and the seasons of the year.

The actual weather can be determined in a number of ways. For

instance, you can make a set of weather cards for each season: these
would cover things like heavy and moderate rain, high winds, drought
and average weather in the Spring, the addition of intense heat in
Summer, of snow and fog in Autumn, and blizzards in winter -
depending on the regional climate you would have more or less cards
of each type, but in any case at least one-third of your ·cards would
68
indicate average weather. Then each move you would draw a card for
each area and determine the general weather.

Again, if you wanted to go inte even greater detail, you could

work out a chart for each area. Down one side you would list the
months of the year, and against each of these would be a list of eleven
weather conditions. Not all would be different - you would have say 4
average, 3 moderate rain, 2 heavy rain, 1 high winds, 1 drought for a
spring month. You would then throw two dice and see which of these
became your month's weather. Another system is to use the
information provided by certain agencies; the Cessna Aircraft Co. for
instance publishes a monthly pamphlet which gives weather charts and
trends for the month, and these can be used to great advantage. Not
only do these pamphlets give general trends, but they give rainfall and
sunshine in selected cities, which enables you to localise your
forecasts.

For sea areas you will need to be a little more specific since
wind direction and strength are going to be vital to navat operations.
You also need to make same sort of daily weather selection, since a
storm would not necessarily last fora week. You therefore need to set
up a system of prevailing winds and storm trends, and relate your
weather to this. You can still work out your weather on a weekly basis,
to keep in· 1ine with the inland forecasts, but you will need to supply
more detail. A naval forecast might read: Wind from the west on Day 1,
increasing in strength Day 2, rising to gale force Day 3, decreasing
Day 4 and going to west-south-west, moderate wind Day 5, dead calm
Day 6 and 7. Not all weeks would have as much activity as this, of
course.

Having discovered the weather, you now have to decide on its

effect upon movement. The following rules should cover mast
eventualities.

Rain One period of moderate rain will reduce the efficiency of

secondary roads. Wheeled transport will reduce its move on these by 1
hexagon, and across country will not move at all. A second period will
reduce any travel on secondary roads by 2 hexagons, and cross-
country by 2 hexagons. A third period will make both roads and country
completely impassable. It will then take one dry period to restore the
damage of each wet period. Fords will become impassable to infantry
after two periods, or cavalry after three.

One period of heavy rain will reduce trave! across country or by

secondary road by 2 hexagons, two periods by four hexagons.

One period of heavy rain will make fords impassable for all
arms.

69
 Two periods of heavy rain will be dangerous to all temporary
bridges, which must score 3 or more on dice to survive. Rivers will
overflow banks in low ground, covering any roads which run alongside
them.
st
During heavy rain movement on 1 class roads is reduced by
one hexagon, not because of effect on the road surface, but because
movement in these conditions tends to be slower and it takes longer to
pitch camp, etc.

Drought will begin when there has been no rainfall fora period of four
successiva weeks, or three if one of these was a period of intense
heat, or two if both were intense heat. During the first period of
drought, rivers will fall in height, afl except large rivers becoming
fordable in mast places, and will reduce the navigability of !arge rivers.
Further periods of drought will increase this trend. During the 'first
period of drought foraging will become more difficult as grass and
crops wither, so that for each period a force subsisting from the country
will reduce its move by one hexagon. After two periods of drought
general water shortages will start causing lossas among cavalry and
draught animals unless they are moving in the vicinity of a large river.

Fog does not as a general rule have a great deal of strategical effect
on movement by land when thls is by road. It does however make it
. easier to take the wrong road, or to go astray in moving across
country, and this should therefore be considered as a special
circumstance. As a general rule, fog at sea will prevent ships leaving
harbour, and will reduce the speed of those at sea by a half. Similarly
on rivers. It must be remembered, however, that fog, while it might
possibly last a whole day, will not last a whole week, and it should
therefore be determined which parts of the week it affects.

Snow Moderate snowfalls do not affect movement by road during the

first period, but reduce it by one hexagon during the subsequent thaw.
Continued snow halts au movement in mountains, and reduces
movement elsewhere to half speed. lf the weather remalns cold when
snow ceases, movement remains restricted. When it thaws, movement
will still be restricted for one period due to slush etc.

Blizzard will halt all movement anywhere during the period. After
blizzard counts as after two periods of normal snowfall.

lntense Cold One period of intense cold will freeze small rivers, lakes,
marshes etc and enable troops to cross them. It will make navigation of
larger rivers difficult due to partial freezing. Two periods will stop
navigation on larger rivers. Three periods will freeze even large rivers
thick enough to cross on foot or horseback. Two periods of freezing will
thaw in one period of thaw. In northern latitudes snow will freeze,
blocking passes, and harbours will be blocked by ice.
70
High winds prevent transports putting to sea, and make it too
dangerous for ships at sea to use their sails, proceeding only under
oars. ln desert areas, high winds raise sandstorms and bring
movement to a halt.

lntense heat will reduce movement by one hexagon due to heat

exhaustion. It may also cause forest or grass fires.

71
 3: CONTACTS, BATTLES AND AFTER EFFECTS
Let us assume that you have now set up your continent, or selected
your historical war, you have adopted your movement rules, war has
begun, and armies are on the move. Methods of keeping track of
movement, forces etc are discussed in the next chapter; here we are
dealing with the procedure where two opposing forces come into map
contact.

Much will depend at this point on how detailed your main map is.
Is it in such detail that from it you can produce the necessary
information to lay out your battlefield? Unless you are operating in a
small area, or have access to such things as Ordnance Survey maps
of the area, this is unlikely; very probably your main map only gives a
general indication of a hilly area, or a plain. So, your first need is a
system of transferring from the large-scale campaign map to the small-
scale battle map.

Some years ago in Hyboria I got over this by preparing sectional

maps in great detail of particular areas we were likely to campaign in.
When a contact was made, we could refer to these more detailed
maps and see what the actual terrain looked like. This worked very
well, as it gave a general a much better idea of whether a good
battleground existed anywhere in the immediate vicinity. However,
when campaigning grew much more wide-spread with war on a fully
continental. scale, it was impossible to follow this system without
virtually making my original map ten times larger, a labour which was
quite beyond me.

Another system I then tried was to prepare at random 6 terrain

maps for each general type of country I expected fighting over, hilly,
plainland, cultivated areas, hill and forest, etc. These maps were 20" x
16", gridded inta 1" squares, and without any roads or major rivers.
When a contact was made, a glance at the main map indicated which
type of terrain map was required; a dice throw decided which actual
map was. used (the maps of course being numbered 1 to 6) and the
selected map was then covered with a sheet of transparent plastic. On
the plastic the necessary roads and major rivers, if any, were drawn in
with chinograph pencil, and a suitable terrain map was thus produced.
These maps could of course be used again and again.

Similarly, detailed Ordnance Survey maps, large maps of small

areas, and many others can be used with the addition of particular
features marked in on a plastic overlay. Whichever system you use,
however, it is essential that same method is available to give the
commanders a fair idea of what terrain exists, since this may well
govern whether they decide to fight or retreat.

73
 Thus, by now each general will have same idea of the country
around him, and the approximate size and composition of the opposing
army. How much he knows will depend on the efficiency of his scouts
and intelligence service, and this again is discussed in the next
chapter. On this information he will have to decide whether he wishes
to fight a battle, or whether he wi!I attempt to avoid one. lf he chooses
the latter, it will of course be up to his opponent to attempt by
manoeuvre to force him to action against his will; this is the essence of
strategy. Again, he may elect to stand in so strong a position that his
opponent refuses to attack him; then of course it is up to the opponent
to manoeuvre him out of the position, by operating against his lines of
communication, by starving him of supplies or water, by threatening
some other point of vital importance. In any of these operations,
know1edge of the nearby terrain is of great importance, thus the
necessity of the detailed terrain map.

However, let us assume that both sides are eager to fight. It is

still necessary to select the actual battle-ground, and possibly there will
be some pre-battle jostling for position. This will depend on the
methods of movement used ~ an 1tem which again is discussed in the
next chapter. Finally, however, the actual terrain will be decided. The
resulting battle can be of several types, depending on circumstances.
In many cases, it will be an encounter battle. Here, at the outset, only
the leading elements of both armies will be present on the field; the
rest will arrive at measured intervals, dependent on march tables.
Initial dispositions may depend on how your army was moving on the
map, of course. Again, both armies may have already got into position,
with their full forces drawn up along the base-lines. Or finally, one army
may have selected its position and be drawn up in battle order on it,
while the opposing general has the chance to study its dispositions
before launching his attack.

Another point to be borne in mind is the size of the forces

involved. Both sides may be using large armies and thus operating
under the rule which specifies three actual roads for the one road
shown on the map. One of the reasons for this rule is that it is not
always cither practicable or even desirable to use the entire forces on
one battlefield. lf, for the sake of argument, each army consists of 30
or more regiments (or warbands or legions or whatever designation
you are using), even if you possess enough troops to match these
numbers, on the normal sized board their use may so crowd it as to
inhibit manoeuvre and turn the battle into a simple slogging match. You
can of course avoid this by using skeleton forces and a raster system,
but this wHI not obviate another possible disadvantage - the time taken
up by such a large battle. The point I am trying to make is that while
large battles are sometimes feasible it is arguable whether they are
more enjoyable and there are many occasions when they are just not
w

74
possible at all. Therefore, this system of dividing forces into three
groups enables you, if you wish, to fight the battle in three sections.

What you would do in this circumstance is to make your terrain

map the size of three tables and then in effect to fight three battles.
ldeally, the three sections should be fought by different pairs of
generals, but this is not always possible; if it is not, then initial orders
for all three battles should be written out before any of them are fought;
otherwise inevitably the second battle will be fought in full knowledge
of the results of the first, with considerable effect upon its progress.
When all three have been fought, it will be possible by relating the
results of all three to either reach an overall decision, or to fight a
fourth battle by reducing the three maps to ene, placing the remnants
of each corps in the positions it held at the end of the individual battles,
and carrying on from there.

The next item to consider is the question of night-fall. The

number af tactical moves possible in the course of a full day's fighting
will of course depend on the tactical rules you are using, mast of which
give some indication of time-scale. It must, however, be remembered
that days vary in length according to the time of year, and that a battle
will not necessarily start first thing in the morning! Your movement
system should allow for this and give you some indication of when
during the day the action began. Having thus determined how many
moves are available until nightfall, if no decision has been reached by
that time a halt must be called.

The cover of night is of course an ideal time fora withdrawal if

you consider yourself to be on the losing side, or if you have some
other reason for breaking off the action. On the other hand, if both
sides are still in good shape, night-time will be spent in resting on the
battle-field, replenishing supplies of missiles, re-grouping etc, and
action will recommence next morning. But it is essential for the
purposes of the campaign diary to keep track of the days; the forces
involved are very probably not the only ones concerned in the
campaign, and the others are probably moving while these two are
fighting. The length of time consumed by the battle is therefore of vital
importance.

When fighting ordinary individual battles, the game ends either

by one general conceding defeat, or by both counting up points to
decide the victor. In a campaign battle things are not so simple. The
loser has still to make good his escape with what he can salvage of his
army, and the victor has to deal with the twin problems of clearing up
the battlefield - i.e. gathering in his own wounded and the spoils of war
in the shape of undamaged missiles, equipment etc - and of following
up the beaten enemy.

75
 lf the fighting went on till nightfall, the laser will be able to
disengage any of his troops which were not actually cut off from his
line of retreat by hostile forces. Such troops as were cut off must either
fight to the death or surrender, as their morale decides. lf, however, a
general wishes to concede defeat before nightfall, then he is faced with
the necessity of in fact continuing the action while he physically
withdraws his units across his base-line. In certain circumstances, of
course, the opposing players may reach an amicable agreement that
certain units are deemed lost and others · are deemed certain of
escape; but at all events it is not good enough for the losing player to
merely admit defeat and automatically get away with whatever he has
left at that stage.

Close pursuit by the victor will sometimes be possible. This will

depend on a) whether the retreating enemy are falling back in good
order or withdrawing in confusion and b) whether the victor has fresh
cava1ry, or at !east cavalry capable of pressing a pursuit. Normally it
will not be possible to reproduce this pursuit upon the table, and we
must therefore have recourse to an alternative system. The simplest
method is to deal with this in the same style as a reaction test in the
tactical sense. In other words, we set up a table of plus and minus
factors, discover which apply to the immediate circumstances, thröw
an average dice and from the resultant score consult a chart.

Factors
Army withdrawing in good order+ 2
Reasonable cavalry force to cover withdrawal + 1
Organised rearguard +1
Suitable defensive terrain + 1
Army withdrawing in some disorder- 1
Army withdrawing in panic rout -2
Fresh cavalry pursuing -2
Reasonable cavalry force pursuing - 1
Open terrain- 1

Total Score
+7 to 9 Very little damage
+4 to 6 Loss of 5%
+2 to 3 Loss of 10%
+1 Loss of 25% 0 Loss of 30%
-1 Loss of 50%
-2 Loss of 75% -
-3 Whole army destroyed

At first sight these results may appear to be a little harsh, but by

working out a few situations you will sec that an army withdrawing in
good order, even with the worst combination of enemy resources and
bad dice throw, cannot suffer more than 25% loss and is much more
likely to get away with 5% or less. To suffer really heavily an army
76
would have to be in panic rout, when such a loss is easily inflicted by a
vigorous pursuit.

Alternatively, if suitable ground is available, a retreating general

may prefer to drop off a sacrificial rearguard to fight a delaying action -
rules for this are discussed later.

We have, of course, got slightly ahead of ourselves by

discussing pursuit and whether an army is retiring in good order or not
before finishing the subject of ending the battle itself. Let us therefore
return to the point where the battle is still raging, but one side is getting
the worst of it. lf at this stage its commander decides to withdraw, and
succeeds in getting at least 25% af his original strength off the table
and still under control, then he is deemed to have retired in good order,
and no morale test is required.

lf, however, no such decision is made, and the battle continues,

the first side to be reduced to one-third of its original strength must dice
for morale, (if in your particular campaign generals are graded in
efficiency, higher grades will add something to their dice throw - see
the chapter on characterisation) . lf a total of 5 or 6 is made, the battle
may be continued; 3 or 4, the army will commence to retire but in good
order; 1 or 2, all units engaged hand to hand with the enemy or cut off
from a fine of retreat will surrender, remainder will withdraw in disorder.
lf both armies fall below one-third in the same move, the weaker will
throw first, and the stronger will only throw if the weaker decides to
fight on.

An army which thushas to throw for morale and then retreats is

in danger of demoralisation. It will throw again : if it retreated in good
order it will be shaken by a throw of 1 or 2, if in disorder by a throw af
1, 2, 3 or 4.

A shaken army will dice yet again. With a throw of 5 or 6 it will

retire in disorder; 3 or 4 it retires in disorder but at normal pace for two
full map moves; 2 it retires to the nearest friendly fortress, and remains
there until reinforced; 1 it retires by forced marches for two map moves
and must then spend two more moves re-organising. An army retiring
thus by forced marches will abandon its baggage, supply train and
military chest to the enemy.

It would, of course, be possible to work all this out by one dice

throw instead of using several as suggested above; but the advantage
af the several throws is that it allows fora wider range of results, and at
the same time gives more room for dice luck to average out than in a
single throw.

We now come to the question of assessing losses from a

campaign point of view. W e could of course merely accept the full
77
losses suffered in the battle; but this would probably reduce our armies
quite soon to impotence, and would make no allowances for
recoverable wounded, losses and gains in equipment etc. For this
reason it is suggested that both armies should lose 25% of their battle
casualties as dead or seriously wounded. A further 25% will count as
moderate wounds: in the case of an army which abandons the field
these become prisoners. In the case of an army occupying the field
this 25% is out of action for two map moves and may then rejoin the
colours. In the meantime they may be lett where they are to recuperate
and then moved on, or taken with the army in baggage wagons. ln the
latter case, should the baggage train be lost any wounded with it
become prisoners. Prisoners must be sentto a fortress or town under
an escort of one-fifth of their own number. According to the type of
campaign you are fighting, they can then be held as prisoners, sold as
slaves ar disposed of in other fashions.

In assessing campaign casualties they must be applied pro-rata

ta the lossas of the units engaged; thus units will tend to shrink in size
unless reinforced. Units may of course be amalgamated but will retain
their original equipment unless other is available.

lf the outcame of an action is indecisive, i.e. neither side has

been defeated and both are still capable of fighting if attacked, though
not wishing to attack themselves, neither will lose prisoners if bath
decide to encamp on the ground.

An army retiring by forced marches wil1, even if not pursued,

lose an additional 25% of its casualties by straggling and desertion.
However, if not pursued half of these will rejoin the colours after a
delay of one move.

Lasses in equipment and weapons must also be considered.

Obviously a good deal of armour and weapons will be braken in action,
and there will be considerable expenditure of missiles. In the case of
the retiring laser, not only will he lose the equipment belonging to his
casualties, but the equipment and weapons of 10% of his surviving
troops will need replacing. Missiles which have been used will also
need to be replaced, and there will have been losses among cavalry
horses. The victor is better placed, since he can scavenge the
battlefield. Only 5% of his surviving troops will therefore need new
equipment, and he can replace 60% of his losses in missiles. In
addition, he can scavenge the enemy dead and prisoners for suitable
equipment, weapons and missiles and round up loose horses. 50% of
the enemy equipment is considered to be in shape for use, but whether
it is of use to the victor will of course depend on the type of troops
involved. A Roman army defeating Gauls, for instance, will not find
much in the way of useable equipment, whereas if the defeated were
also Romans almost all the spoils should be of use.

78
 4: UMPIRES - AND THE LACK OF SAME
So far we have talked in general fashion of basic rules for selecting
your campaign or your continent, setting up the operations, rules for
map movement, and what happens when you contact the enemy. We
now have to consider the actual mechanics of running the campaign,
and this will depend very largely upon the size of the group concerned
and upon how· many of them wish to interest themselves only in the
actual campaigning and how many in running the campaign itself.

In my early days of campaigning I had no group to call upon,

there being only myself and Don Featherstone active in the area. We
had at that time a pretty good working arrangement: I collected
ancients and mediaevals, and we used these when fighting at my
home; Don collected horse and musket, and we used them at his
home. Similarly we each set up various campaigns in which the other
took part, but mainly the home representative devised the rules and did
most of the mechanics. I can look back nostalgically upon some most
enjoyable campaigns, even though the rules, by later standards, were
fairly crude. I think our first ever was Don's Indian Mutiny; he naturally
took the part of the British, while l was cast as the Mad Mullah of
Muckypore and ended by driving the filthy British from Jndia! I also
remember numerous American Civil War campaigns, while at my
home we indulged in several Hyborian affairs and also refought the
2nd Punic War - with, of course, myself as Hannibal. Quite naturally
the devisor of the campaign allocated the parts and might be a little
biased, but we had surprisingly few arguments on this head.

Later, with Neville Dickinson, I devised a new scheme for

Hyboria ·in which we ran the continent together, worked out events and
movement on a joint basis and, when a battle was imminent, tossed up
to see which side we espoused. Thus I might command a Vendhyan
army in one battle, only to find in the next that I was leading
Hyrkanians against my former command. The purpose of this was to
make us both take an unbiased attitude, and it worked to a great
degree.

However, it did of course have the drawback that we knew

everything that was going on and we worked toa logical system both
of starting wars and of manoeuvring armies. For this reason I later
expanded this idea into my present system, under which I asked
various other wargamers to take on the parts of various rulers of
Hyboria and to make all the necessary decisions and movements,
while I as Controller, Umpire or Tin God ran the whole affair, made the
necessary movements on the master map, fought the battles, etc. etc.
Each campaign week every player is provided with a situation report
giving him all the information to which he is entitled; he then issues his
instructions, based on this information, and I put them into practice.
79
They are not concerned with the mechanics of the affair; I formulated
the rules without consulting them and ultimate decisions are mine to
make. Suggestions as to the way affairs are conducted are of course
welcome, but are only implemented if they happen to suit me - in other
words l am totally selfish about the whole thing. But nevertheless it
works out pretty well.

Now if you are going to adopt some such style as this, with one
or possibly two people doing all the actual work of keeping track of
everything, your problems of running the essential aspects of tracking
movement on the map, etc are greatly reduced. 1 have a large map of
Hyboria mounted on my study wall, and all movement - and indeed
much else - is recorded on this by means of coloured pins. Map pins
and indicator pins are available in a great variety of sizes, shapes and
colours; you can obtain drawing pins in about 6 colours, indicator pins
in a very large range of colours, coloured map tacks complete with
numbers, and others with various symbols. With these, you can
represent virtually anything on the map - and it has the advantage
that as long as you keep your coding secret, anyone can be allowed to
look at the map since it will not mean all that much to them - a pin
might equally well represent an army, a single unit, a spy, or even such
things as mines, supply dumps, armouries etc. A great advance over
my earlier system of little flags which were always hard to read but
gave away too much information, so that when friends were due I had
to hastily hang a sheet over the wall!

SET OF MATCHBOXES FOR CONCEALED MOVEMENTS

One thing that is essential, however, is to have a grid reference

system for easy identification and movement. In a continent as large as
mine I can't always remember exactly where every fort or village is; its
handy to have a grid reference against its name for easy identification,
80
and at the same time its very easy to say in a sitrep that your scouts
have located enemy forces in Map Ref A2-36. Making your grid
reference is very simple. Along the top of your map you number the
hexagons from 1 to whatever number you have; down the side you use
letters. lf your depth is more than 26 you simply begin again with Al,
B1 etc. lf you wish you can carry this a stage further by numbering not
just the rows of hexagons, but the faces of the hexagons; this will give
you a much more minute and accurate reference point but it does
make fora little more work initially.

lf you are lucky enough, like myself, to have a room where you
can put your map up on the wall, then you have few problems of
recording movement, since you can use all the pins you need as
markers.

One word of advice, however: cover your map with thin plastic
sheeting, and when boundaries change, as they will if your continent or
what have you is to last for several campaigns, you can redraw these
with chinagraph pencil on the plastic instead of having to spoil the map
itself. lf, however, you haven't a wall available (and same wives and
mothers do object to their walls being used for such purposes, believe
it or not!) then you must mount your map on folding sheets of
cardboard, hardboard or same such substance. Again the ubiquitous
plastic sheeting and chinagraph pencils are pressed inta use, and now
you must use the latter to record movement as well.

When a contact is made between opposing forces, the umpire or

controller will then tell them both what he considers they are entitled to
know. This is not likely to be the whole truth. Much may depend on the
methods of scouting and spying used by both sides, and this is where
an umpire must be totally unbiased and objective. He must never
deliberately mislead either side, but he is quite entitled to pass on
doctored information according to circumstances. lf, however, no rules
have been devised for special scouting or spying, then a good rule is
for the umpire to give estimates of strength within 10% either way of
the truth. The player receiving the report has no way of knowing of
course, whether the figure he is given has been over or under-
estimated, which leaves him a little uncertain as to what he is facing!
Of course, if you arc going deeply inta the campaign, both sides should
be taking precautions about intelligence, by means of cavalry screens
and scouts, and the umpire will have to decide how effective these
have been.

Where only two people are engaged in a campaign they will

have to make do without the services of an umpire, and problems
therefore increase. Obviously they cannot both just move pins or
counters around a single map; even though the opposing player may
not be sure exactly what the pins or counters represent, it will still give
him far more information than he is entitled to. Some method of
81
concealment must therefore be devised, and one of the best is the
matchbox method. For this, you need a matchbox for every reference
point - either hexagon or hexagon face - on your map. It may take you
a while to collect this number of matchboxes, but if you appeal to
friends, neighbours etc. to collect for you things will go quicker. You
then glue these matchboxes together in a square or oblong as shown
on the diagram, and number both sides of each box with the map
reference it represents.

Your two players then sit at a table with the matchbox collection
placed between them. Each has his own in front of him, but far enough
away to be illegible to his opponent. Each has made his opening dis-
positions on his own map and provided himself wlth a numbered
counter to represent every separate force he is using. Moving
alternately, the players now place their counters in the matchboxes
and, as the troops move, move them from box to box. In the course of
this, if they traverse several hexagons, the player is of course entitled
to look in the requisite matchboxes representing the spaces he has
moved through. It will probably be best for the player not moving to
tum his back while the other does so, otherwise by looking at the
reverse of the matchboxes he could possibly gain some unfair
indication of where his opponent is moving. An objection to this is that
an unprincipled player might take advantage and look in boxes he
wasn't entitled to; there is only one answer to this - if you can't trust
your opponent to play fair, don't play with him. There is no other
course. In my experience however, while most wargamers are wily
individuals who will take advantage of any weak point in rules, etc, they
would regard actual cheating with horror. ·

Up till the time that a player finds one of his opponent's counters
in a matchbox that he is entering or passing through, no disclosure is
of course made of strengths, dispositions etc. When two counters
reach the same box, however, same information has to be given. This
is where problems arise as to how much the truth may be strained.
One system I used in my earty days was that the player involved must
state whether his force constituted a detachment, a corps or an army.
Relative sizes were laid down for these three definitions: a detachment ·
could be up to 80 paints, a corps from 80 to 200, an army over 200.
This simplified things considerably, but it still tended to give away toa
much information and prevented the possibility of a small force boldly
handled imposing on a larger force. lf, of course, either force was
stationed within a town ar fortress it was not required ta give any
indication of its strength .

Nevertheless, this system worked out quite well. A commander

who discovered that he was faced by greatly superior numbers was
able ta refuse battle and withdraw; unless, of course, his opponent had
managed to cut off his retreat by some method, either by placing a
second force across it or by interposing some obstacle. This led to
82
quite a bit of jockeying for position, and encouraged both sides to push
out small forces in advance ·to feel out the enemy and try to gain a
picture of his overall dispositions. It also led to several small scale
actions between forces of say brigade strength; in fighting these we
either fought them as small affairs, or substituted regiments for
companies to make a bigger battle of it; casualties etc. afterwards were
scaled down again to the original size. I can remember several
enjoyable cavalry actions of this type, where two cavalry regiments
meeting were represented on the table by eight regiments on each
side.

Later I devised a little game to add same spice to the original

contact. It was laid down that each force would have in advance of it
five mounted scouts. When a contact was made, no information was at
first exchanged. lnstead a gridded board was produced, and each
commander set out his five horsemen on his base-line. The objective
was to move to the opposing base-line, from which it was assumed
they would have a view of the opposing main body, and of course to
prevent the enemy scouts from reaching their base-line. All the figures
moved at 6 spaces a move.

A scout or scouts could attack an enemy by entering a space

adjacent to his. Each then threw 1 dice per man. Equal scores meant
no hurt; advantage of 1 was a wound to the lower scorer, reducing the
scout to half speed and half throw in subsequent encounters;
advantage of 2 killed the lower scorer; advantage af more than 2
captured him. lf a single scout reached the enemy base-line and
returned safely, the opposing commander had to give an estimate of
strength within 10% of the true figure. lf 2 scouts achieved this, the
figure must be correct. lf 3 or more succeeded, then details of the
composition of the force had ta be given as well. lf an enemy scout
was captured and brought back to the base-line, a dice was then
thrown: I or 2 he refused to give any information; 3 he gave false
information, i.e. the figure could be inaccurate by as rnuch as 50%; 4
or 5 he gave a figure within 10% of the truth; 6 he gave the true figure
and furnished details of composition. This little game both offered. a
short entertainment -and considerable skill was reached in
manoeuvring scouts - and added another element to how much
information was divulged.

The matchboxes can of course be used for purposes beyond

this. When both sides wish to fight, the situation can be transferred toa
gridded terrain map, anda second set of matchboxes used for this. A
second set is of course needed since you almost certainly have other
forces still occupying parts of your original strategical set. You now
need a counter for each unit; you deploy your army on your map,
utilising say the first five lines of spaces to do so. Movement then takes
place in the same way as on the strategic map until opposing counters
enter the same box. Each then disc1oses the strength of the unit or
83
units within the box, with the usual margin for inaccuracy. Each
commander then decides whether to stand or retire, and gives his
decision.

lf one or both have decided to retire, then their counters are

moved out, and manoeuvring for position continues. The moves will be
related to campaign time; if they chance to go on beyond the end of
the move week, then at that stage another campaign move must .be
made before the battle is fought. This may of course have the result of
moving other forces toward or inta the battle area, but if so they cannot
enter the tactical map before they have expended the time needed to
reach it. For example, if at the end of the map move during which the
original contact was made, a supporting force is two hexagons away
and moving at 4 hexagons per move, it will be three days into the
second week before it enters the tactical map and it will of course enter
from a base-line or side-line.

Once the contact space has been decided on the tactical map
by both sides deciding to stand and fight, a piece of perspex scaled in
size to your table is placed over the map with its centre on the contact
space, (i.e. if your table is 8' x 4', your perspex would be say 8" x 4"). lf
two contacts have been made, the perspex will be placed so that if
possible it covers both; otherwise, it will be placed length-wise across
the map. This will give you your battle terrain, and any units of either
army which occupy spaces within this area will be placed out on the
table in these positions. Any forces outside the area will continue to
move toward it while the battle goes on, only reaching the table at the
point intime and space when they would arrive within a space covered
by the perspex.

In this way, a certain amount of uncertainty and concealment

can be obtained. lf wished, further complications can be introduced by
the use of couriers and chance cards for the movement of supporting
forces, as mentioned later. All these rules can lead to same interesting
and unusual battles and will make a change from the stereotyped
affairs of both forces deploying on the base-line.

However, campaigning does not necessarily consist of a series

of battles between relatively equal forces: we have to consider
methods of dealing with various other situations. Firstly, there is the
point that mast countries wilf contain a number of defended localities;
the number and strength of these will of course vary greatly according
to country and period, but in the ancient and mediaeval period of which
we are mainly speaking at present, mast towns had walls of some sort,
and there were many castles and fortresses within most countries. For
my Hyborian continent, which of course is set entirely in this period, l
therefore worked out a set of rufes which would enable sieges to be
decided by calculations rather than having to fight them on the table.
This was partly to save time, partly because in my experience sieges
84
tend to follow much the same course; too many of them during a
campaign, if all are actually fought on the table, can become boring
and use up too much time better spent in other ways.

1. All towns, forts, castles etc within the area of operations

will be classified into 1si, 2 nd and 3 rd Glass Fortresses. Walled Towns,
Strong Forts and Weak Forts.

2. In addition to these permanent places, field fortifications

may be thrown up at any time to protect a river crossing, supply dump,
crossroads etc. At least four units must work on them for three days
before they are ready.

3. Values and garrisons necessary areas follows:

Strength Maxim~r:n Garrison

1st Glass Fortress 150 points No Limit
nd
2 Glass Fortress 100 200 figures plus
engines
rd
3 Glass Fortress 60 100 figures plus
engines
Walled Town 40 200 figures plus
engines
Weak Walled Town 100 60 figures 6 engines
Fort 20 40 figures
Field Fortifications 60 No Limit

4. A defended locality can be captured bythe following means:

a) Treachery b) Poor morale of garrison commander

c) Starvation d) Surprise
e) Assault f) Regular Siege Operations
st nd
5. 1 and 2 Glass Fortresses and Strong Forts cannot be
carried by assault as long as they have a minimum garrison of 20
figures for a fort, 50 fora fortress, and their morale is good.

Treachery. Anyone of regimental commander or over is able to

betray a fortress. In the case of regular officers, this will depend on
character; mercenary officers are always suspect. lf it is only a
suspicion of treachery, a dice throw of 1 will confirm it. Having
established a traitor, a throw of 1, 2 or 3 means that his treachery is
successful, in which case the whole of the garrison become prisoners.

7. Poor Morale. Glass B or C commanders are liable to loss

of nerve, and this will increase if their country's field armies have
suffered defeat, or if the garrison itself has been involved in defeat. For
such a defeat, subtract 1; if the garrison was involved, subtract 2.
Remember a B Glass commander always adds 1 to his throw. 4, 5, 6
85
the garrisan fights; 2 ar 3 surrenders an terms, garrison gets safe
conduct; 1 surrender unconditionally, garrison prisoners. Class D
commander of course subtracts 1 and is automatically a bad risk.

8. Any defended locality can only hold out as long as its

supplies last. lf it is a town, with civilian population, you can assume
that the civilians have supplies fora month, and after that must be fed
from the military stores.

9. Both troops and civilians can be reduced to half rations,

but this will affect morale. Troops must throw for normal morale, and a
treachery throw must be made for civilians.

10. Once supplies run out, dice following move: 1, 2 or 3,

surrender unconditionally; 4 or 5, garrison cut their way out, dice to see
how many escape; 6 garrison get safe conduct. A garrison which
becomes prisoner is of course last in total, not proportionately.

11. Surprise. Any defended locality may be captured by a

surprise attack providing attackers are at least equal to defenders in
men. Throw of 5 or 6 followed by a 4, 5 or 6 means success; if assault
fails, attackers lose 50% of garrison strength in men.

12. Assault. This means storming the place out of hand. Add
points value of garrison to that of defences, double it if a Class A
commander, if Glass D halve it. Do the same with points value of
attackers. Having obtained relative strengths, throw 1 dice and consu!t
chart:

86
Score Odd of 3:2 2:1 3:1
1 Bloody Repulse Bloody Repulse Repulse - both sides
Attackers lose Attackers lose 50% !ose 25% garrison
50% garrison garrison strength strength
strength
2 Bloody Repulse Repulse - both sides Repulse - both sides
Attackers lose lose 50% garrison lose 25% garrison
50% garrison strength strength
strength
3 Repulse - both Repulse - both sides Replilse - both sides
sides lose 50% lose 25% garrison lose 25% garrison
garrison strength strength strength
4 Repulse - both Repulse - both sides Position stormed;
sides lose 25% lose 25% garrison garrison last, attackers
garrison strength strength lose same strength
5 Repulse - both Position stormed Position stormed;
sides lose 25% garrison lost garrison lost, attackers
garrison strength Attackers lose same lose 20% garrison
strength strength
6 Position stormed Position stormed Position stormed,
Garrison lost ·. garrison lost garrison lost, attackers
Attackers lose Attackers lose same lose 20% garrison
same strength strength strength
Odds of 4:1 Odds 5 to 1

1 Repulse - both Repulse - both sides

sides lose 25% lose 25% garrison
garrison strength strength

2 Repulse both Position stormed

sides lose 25% Garrison lost
garrison strength Attackers lose same
strength
3 Position stormed Position stormed
Garrison lost Garrison lost
Attackers lose Attackers lose same
same strength strength
4 Position stormed Position stormed
Garrison last Garrison lost
Attackers lose Attackers lose 20%
same strength garrison strength

87
5 Position stormed Position stormed
Garrison tost Garrison lost
Attackers lose Attackers lose 20%
20% garrison garrison strength
strength
6 Position stormed Position stormed
Garrison lost Garrison lost
Attackers lose Attackers lose 20%
same strength garrison strength

13. In the case of a bloody repulse, attackers dice again.

Throw of 1 or 2, they raise the siege and retire. Cannot resume siege
again until reinforced.

14. Regular Siege Operations . .It takes 2 map moves to get

siege engines inta position (presuming attackers have them).
According to the difference in ratio of siege engines between attack
and defence, consult chart to see how long it takes to breach walls.

3'" Class 2°" Class 1~1 Class

Attacker has
advantage
3:2 4 weeks 6 weeks 8 weeks
2:1 3 4 7
5:2 2 3 6
3:1 1 2 5
More 1 1 4

15. Breach once made, attacker summans fortress, which

dices:
rd
3 Class:
1, 2 surrender unconditionally
3, 4 surrender, garrison given safe conduct
5, 6 refuses surrender
nd
2 Class:
1 surrenders unconditionally
2, 3 surrenders, garrison given safe conduct
4, 5, 6 refuses terms
51
1 Class:
1, 2 retires to inner defences
3, 4, 5, 6 Fights on in outer defences

88
 16. lf the garrison retires into the inner defences, the same
procedure is repeated. It is assumed that they have withdrawn all their
defensive engines with them. After which on throw of 3 or up they retire
again to the citadel and the procedure is again repeated. Once in the
citadel the garrison of course has no civilian mouths to feed so
starvation risk is reduced.

17. lf the garrison refuses to surrender, the breach can then be

assaulted. Re-assess the garrison strength, this time counting points
value of troops plus 25% but no fortress strength. (Note: this second
assessment cannot exceed original assessment). Dice and consult
assault chart.

st
18. In the case of a 1 Class Fortress, if the assault is
successful but the garrison throw a 4 5 or 6 they can retire inta the
inner defences, losing 25% of their strength, including engines. They
can of course retire voluntarily before the assault if they wish

19. lf the besieging force continues the siege for more than a
month, each move it must dice: throw of I followed by second throw of
1 2 or 3 means sickness in the camp, loss of 5% of strength every
following move. After 2 months, throw also for garrison. lf the latter are
on half rations, deduct 1 from dice throw.

20. A fortress whose walls have been breached must have

these properly repaired before it can stand a second siege; otherwise it
can be assaulted at once under the breach rules.

It will be seen that under these rules sieges can be dealt with
quite simp1y, but at the same time major decisions still remairi to be
made by the commanders. Whether or not to risk an assault; at which
stage to withdraw voluntarily from ruined fortifications, etc. etc. On
occasion, of course, it may be wished to actually fight out the siege of
an important city; or at least to carry it further than some simple dice
throws. lf you do not possess the necessary equipment to reproduce
fortress defences, siege equipment etc then you have an alternative in
that you can work it out as a type of board game. You would need a
large map of the city and its defences and the surrounding area; on
this you place counters to represent troops, engines, mineheads etc,
and proceed to the various moves and counter-moves. In many ways
this is preferable to getting out your troops and trying to do the whole
affair on the table-top; by its very nature a siege was a fairly long-
drawn-out effort, and it is difficult to relate this to table operations. In
your board game, however, this is no difficulty.

Sieges are not the only points which we must consider, of

course. One item which has always interested me is the question of

89
delaying actions, where a small force sets out to ho1d up the advance
of a greatly superior one for a set period, ta enable reserves to be
brought up or operations elsewhere to proceed unhindered. Or a
rearguard is deliberately sacrificed to enable the main body of an army
to escape pursuit. These sort of operations are very often vital to
campaigns, yet they are among the mast difficult to portray on the
table. Often, toa, in the attempt to produce a situation in which the
small force has any chance of success, the position is made so strong
or so restricted that the action becomes a mere frontal slog with very
little opportunity to display any generalship. These sort of affairs have
little attraction for me personally, so I set out to draw up suitable rules
which would enable me to work them out without recourse to the table.
Whether you choose to adept these will depend upon your own
personal attitude to the subject; but if you want a system which saves
you from having to fight out every little encounter, here it is.

1. To fight a delaying action, or in effect simply to be able to

delay an enemy force of superior strength, the delaying force must
take up its position in a hexagon the previous map move to the enemy
reaching that hexagon, and must state the intention of fighting a
delaying action rather than a pitched battle. The only exception is a
rearguard left behind after a battle.

2. The maximum superiority in numbers which can be

delayed in this way is 3 to 1 .

3. Before deciding to fight a delaying action, if the map gives

no indication of obvious position the commander has the right to
discover whether a suitable position exists. He first discovers whether
the terrain is Open, Hilly or Wooded and then throws for strength. 6
indicates a very strong position, 5 a strong position, 4 or 3 a good
position, 2 or 1 only a weak position.

4. Both sides now work out their Power Ratio according to the
following formula:

(PV + RTG + SP) MT x MC

PV is points value RTG is Relative Troops to Ground, i.e.

90
 Open Wooded Hilly
Ground
Unit of Liaht lnfantrv 10 20 25
Heavv lnfantrv 20 10 15
Light Cavalry 20 NIL 15
Heavv Cavalrv 30 NIL 10
Horse Archers 40 NIL 20
Camels 15 NIL 10
Each Elephant 10 NIL 5
Chariot 5 NIL 5
Siege Engine 5 NIL 10

SP is Strength of Position:
Weak 20
Good 50
Strong 100
Very Strong 150

MT is Morale of Troops, which is dependent upon recent

experiences:

Lost last 2 battles engaged in 1

Lost last battle engaged in 2
No fighting this campaign 3
Won last battle engaged. in 4
Won last two battles engaged in 5

MC is Morale of Commander. Glass A 3 Class B 2 Glass C 1

5. Having thus discovered relative strengths, consult the fo11owing

chart

Ratio of Dice Throw

attacker
to
defender
6 5 4 3 2 1
4:3 10 8 6 5 4 3
3:2 8 7 6 4 3 2
Delay
5:3 7 5 3 2 1 ND
in
2:1 5 3 1 ND ND ND
Days
5:2 4 2 1 ND D D
3:1 3 2 1 ND D D

91
ND No Delay at all, delaying force loses its nerve and retires
D Attackers rush position and destroy delaying force, attackers losing
50% of value of delaying force.

5. After delay period is up, delayer has now to withdraw. This

will be done by night, · obviously, as he is attempting to evade the
enemy. He will therefore throw a dice, adding to or subtracting from his
throw the difference between the morale class of the two generals, (i.e.
if attacker is B (2) and delayer is A (3) then delayer adds 1)

456 Delayer slips off unobserved, moving one hexagon as his night
march.
2 3 Delayer gets away, but loses 25% of his force in doing so.

1 Delayer only extricates 50% of his force.

6. No further casualties are levied on either side as it is

surmised that the delay was due more to the attacker being imposed
upon by the delayer and not puttlng in a real attack, rather than actual
hard fighting on the position.

The final paint we have to cansider is the effect that chance can
play on such things as the speed af couriers and the reaction of
officers an detached duty. One can of course assume that couriers will
always ride at top speed, never lose their way or meet with mishaps,
and that generals either detached to make flank marches etc or
ardered to march to the support of their comrades will obey instantly
and efficiently. While this makes fora very tidy state of affairs, it hardly
makes for a realistic one; and we therefore need a system to bring a
certain amount of chance into play in these affairs. As usual, the
following rules are drawn from the experiences of Hyboria.

1. When sending off a courier on a special mission, a Chance

Card will be drawn from a specially prepared pack to see
how he performs his mission. The pack will contain the
following selection:

a) Courier moves at normal speed - 5 of these cards

b) Courier has good horse, adds 2 hexagons per move to his speed
- 2 of these cards.

c) Courier has fast horse, goes at double speed if journey is 6

hexagons or less, if over that distance adds 50% to speed. 2 of
these cards.

d) Courier loses his way - deducts 3 hexagons from each move

92
e) Courier's horse goes lame, reduced to half speed - 2 of these
cards

f) Courier's horse dies: dice, 1 2 3 he never reaches destination,4 5

6 spends 3 days obtaining fresh mount and then draws another
card.

2. lf a general detaches a force to make a flank march or to carry

out an independent operation, there is always the chance that his
subordinate will either be stupid, cautious, or downright disobedient.
lf you give your individual generals proper characters you will already
have same indication of this; likewise if you classify them for efficiency.
A Class A subordinate will only draw a chance card if he throws a 1, a
Glass B if he throws a 1 2 or 3. A subordinate whose character
indicates loyalty will not disobey orders though he may be slow to
execute them through caution or mishap. Chance cards will read as
follows:

a) Execute orders (there will be three of these cards)

b) Behave cautiously, move at half speed only
c) Behave cautiously, halt half a day's march from the objective and
send out scouts ta discover the position.
d) Force takes wrong road, dice: 1 2 3 loses 1 day, 4 5 6 ½ a day

3. lf a general who has run into trouble knows there is help within
reach and sends a courier ta ask for it, that commander wiU draw a
card:

a) Will move to his comrade's help with all available force - 2 cards
b) Wilt ignore the request
c) Will take an extra half day to assemble his troops and then move
d) Will march at double speed to help
e) Will send on his cavalry ahead and follow with his infantry
f) Will send only one-third of his troops at normal speed.

Obviously most of these situations will only arise if either a) only

two people are taking part in the campaign or b) if it is a big enough
campaign for each player ta have numerous separata forces in the
field. Nevertheless, these things have to be catered for; we are not all
lucky enough to have suitable groups available for campaigns, and
there will always be cases where two people want to conduct a
campaign of their own. Furthermore, with these type of rules it is even
possible for one person to run a solo campaign. In wargaming, all
tastes must be catered for.

93
 5: SUPPLY AND REPLACEMENT

We have already dealt with most of the essential features of

campaigning, and by adopting these one can run a successful,
enjoyable and quite authentic campaign. However, war-gamers being
what they are, most of us are never satisfied and wish to dig a little
deeper, bring in more complications in order to make our productions
yet more realistic. This inevitably brings us to the very tricky subject of
supply. Napoleon is supposed to have said that an army marched on
its stomach (rather a strange maxim from him, considering that his
armies were some of the worst supplied in history, relying upon local
foraging rather than supply trains: a factor that contributed greatly to
the disastrous Russian campaign and consistently strangled
operations in Spain and Portugal, where Marshal Massena remarked
bitterly that a large army starved anda small army was beaten) and it
is of course true that troops can only operate with maximum efficiency
if they receive regular supplies of food and drink - not to mention
clothing and weapons. Another historical example is the Libya
campaigns of World War Il, which were said to be a tactician's
paradise but a quartermaster's nightmare.

Undoubtedly bringing the supply factor into a campaign can also

bring in many interesting and exciting operations. Enemy sources of
supply become important objectives and influence strategy, protection
of one's own lines of communications has to be considered, as have
the natural resources of the territory to be operated in; cavalry raids on
enemy supply lines and dumps can be planned, and armies can be
brought to battle by the threat of starvation. But it cannot be denied
that in order to do this you have to be prepared to devise thorough and
complicatedrules and to engage in a fair amount of paperwork to keep
track of the supply situation. To my mind, if you have the time to
indulge in this sort of thing it is well worth it, bringing yet another
dimension into the campaign; but I advise against falling into the trap of
half-measures, which will only become irritants instead of advantages.
lf you are not prepared to go the whole way, it is better to leave it
entirely alone.

In early campaigns which I participated in, some simple ideas for

supply were introduced. For instance, I remember that in one
campaign each side had three supply bases, and an army had to have
a line of communications open at all time with one of these. lf the
enemy could cut that line by. placing a force astride it, then the army
had to halt and send a force of its own back to clear the supply line.
This was an attempt to make us supply~conscious; in fact it gradually
led to us detaching all sorts of forces for the purpose of protecting our
own supply lines and interrupting the enemy's - forces which would
have been of far more use in the main operations. Moreover, it was a
95
very artificiat situation, since these detached forces were allowed to
operate without supply lines of their own; and no allowance was made
for building up stocks of supplies either with the armies or in supply
dumps to guard against temporary interruption of communications.
Nevertheless this was a first step in tackling the problem of supply; the
idea was abandoned in later campaigns but it gave birth to other
thoughts on the question.

Various other experiments were tried later, but none of them

really worked any better than the first, simply because we were not
going deeply enough into the problem. lt hadn't at that stage dawned
on us that there is really only one way to tackle the supply problem,
and that is to put it on a proper footing by going back to essentials -
starting from the bottom and working up. In fact, it wasn't really until I
gave up taking an active part in the campaigning itself and took on
instead the job of organising and controlling the whole operation that I
found I had both the opportunity and the enthusiasm to really study the
subject in the detail it required.

When you look at it logically, the first step is obvious; you must
in same way assess the resources, both natural and human, of the
countries involved and the area of operations. By this I mean that you
must find out how many recruits a province can produce, what sort of
food it grows: does it run cattle, horses or sheep; what minerals are
available for such things as weapon production etc. lf you are fighting a
historical campaign, or at least using historical geography, you can
discover these facts by a little research; any library will have books on
food production, mineral resources etc, and even if these only give
modern figures you can work back from these to give. a fair idea of
what was available in earlier periods. You can also pick up much
information from books on the campaigns of the period you are dealing
with - though of course you have to treat their figures with a certain
scepticism!

lf, however, you have created your own continent, wortd or what
have you, you are faced with also creating its supply resources. This
was my problem in Hyboria. However, I had of course marked in a
great deal of the physical features of the countryside for the purposes
of map movement etc; and I now added to this by giving the map basic
colour codes for plains, steppes, woods (as opposed to forests) and
cultivated ground. I then set up a basic system of seven area types,
with certain resources for each. These were:

a) Cultivated Ground. Produces crops of various kinds, mainly

basics for food and clothing.
b) River Banks. Good water suppty, so produces crops; also
would have resources in fishing and hunting.
c) Coast Lines. Main resource would be fishing.
d) Plains. Could produce rich resources in wheat, cattle and
96
 horses.
e) Forests and Woods. According to thickness of trees (i.e.
woods or forests) would have resources in hunting, small animals in
the forest but larger game such as deer, boar etc. in the more open
wooäs.
f) Hill Country. Some hunting. Often good sheep country. Poor
crops.
g) Mountains. Same hunting; generally low on food resources.
Possible mineral sources.

Having done this, I then set about calculating resources on the

level of the smallest territorial units -counties, khanates, etc. I counted
up the spaces of each type of country within the boundaries of the
area, and, on the basis of this and an arbitrary decision as to soil
conditions plus other factors such as population, I worked out the
annual resources of each area in crops, animals, general food
production, manufacturing potentialities etc. My next step was to
consider mineral resources: after all, weapon and armour production
had to be considered, also timber for boats, carts, bridges and many
other items. I already had the figures for woods and forests, so it was
fairly simple to lay down resources of timber; for the minerals I had to
do some sort of test in likely areas.

Not being an expert on geology etc. I had to work by some

arbitrary method; undoubtedly better and more realistic methods could
be used if one wishes to go deeper inta the subject. For my purposes I
ignored the possibility of mineral deposits in low-lying areas, and
concentrated on the hills, and mountains. For each space which
contained any hills or mountains, a dice was thrown, a 5 or 6 followed
by a second throw of 4 5 or 6 being needed to establish a worthwhile
vein of ore. This of course could be varied according to the prevalence
of hills and mountains on your map; I had a lot and 1 didn't want to be
swamped with mines. Moreover, this was only to establish known
deposits; later I allow~d players to fit out special expeditions to try and
discover fresh lades to supplement their resources.

Having discovered a source area, two things had now to be

established: the type of ore, and the richness of the lade. I decided on
nine types of mine: silver, gold, copper, lead, tin, iron, emerald,
diamond and ruby. Obviously others could have been added, but these
were enough for my purpose: which was not only to set up resources
for weapon production etc. but also a basis for local taxation - hence
the precious metals and jewels. Having established the type of mineral,
(which I did by throwing two dice) I then threw another dice which
decided on the richness of the mine, 6 of course being very good, 1
being only a poor area.

I had thus established a basic idea of the resources of the whole

country. This of course could be varied by weather conditions: drought
97
at the wrong time could greatly reduce food production, kindly weather
bring bumper crops, floods and other natura! disasters could be
ruinous. Any of these things can be worked into the system as
required, or if you prefer you can decide that the basic average has
taken inte account these possibilities. At all events, a player knows the
basic resources of his own country; he may know something of those
near his barders, either from experience, or traders, or spies, and can
thereby plan his operations, knowing that here he can collect supplies,
but there he must bring them in from outside.

The other items to be reckoned with from the supply point of

view are of course men and money. Men are needed to fill the ranks of
your army and replace casualties; money is needed to supply them
with arms, equipment and food. We have discussed earlier the
question of assessing the population of your country; of this population
it is possible that same 20% are of military age. In times of crisis, of
course. cider men and young boys could be pressed into service, but
in normal periods we are talking only of those males in their prime. Of
this 20%, however, far from all would be available for military service;
many would be required for agriculture and commerce; for we are in
the main considering regular forces on a full-time basis, not levies
made after the harvest is in. So your figure must be greatly reduced;
10% is probably a reasonable figure for the permanent force, with say
another 10% available to replace wastage and battle casualties.

We now tum to the question of money. In the period we speak

of, many countries did not produce a regular coinage; of those that did,
values and coins varied greatly. Others deatt in trade metal, going by
weight of copper, bronze, gold etc. However, for ease of keeping
records, having standards easily comprehended by all players, it is
probably best to set up a single monetary system even if it is not
strictly historicat and accurate - just as I tend to speak of regiments,
brigades and divisions rather than using historicat terminology because
everyone understands what these modern terms represent. For this
reason I decided that in Hyboria everyone used a single monetary
system based on the crown - 1 could have called it the tatent, ducat,
florin or a dozen other names but this happened to be the one I chose.
The system therefore has the gold crown, made up of one hundred
silver crowns, which is in tummade up of one hundred bronze crowns.

Having established a money system, it is then of course

necessary to provide money to the country's treasury ~ in other words
you have to institute a tax system. Working on what you have already
tearned of local resources, this can be done fairly simpty. You first of aJl.
put a monetary value on the resources you have allocated to your
types of ground, thus:

Cuttivated Ground 1000 gold crowns per annum

River Banks 1200 gold crowns per annum
98
 Coast Lines 600 gold crowns per annum
Plain 800 gold crowns per annum
Forest 500 gold crowns per annum
Hills 600 gold crowns per annum
Mountains 400 gold crowns per annum

These are the total resources of the hexagons; you add up your
various hexagons and their resources to reach the total annual
resources in money of the County, Khanate etc. Of this amount I then
levy one quarter in taxes; but not all of this goes to the State Treasury,
because this would not al!ow for the local nobi!ity, who must have their
share. What I have done is to, in effect, set up a feudal system or tier
system. The peasantry and petty lordlings are the lowest tier, and they
pay over a quarter of their income to the Count or Khan or whatever
his title is who occupies the next tier. Above the Count is probably a
Duke who controls several Counties, and above him is the King who
controls several Duchies. In some states there may be more or less
tiers. At all events, the Count collects the money from the lowest tier;
he retains one-third of this for his own use, pays one-third to his next
superior, and one-third to the final tier (the State Treasury). On the
next tier, the Duke collects from his subordinate Counts, and in turn
pays one-third of this to his immediate superior, which is probably the
State. The State thus gets a cut at each level, and each rank of nobility
similarly receives its own revenue. This has several advantages, in that
if a revolution or a civil war breaks out it is easy to assess the
monetary resources of all parties.

But the system does not stop here. So far we have dealt with
only the direct resources of the land; taxes can also be levied on other
items. There are the various mines: these are all the property of the
State, not of the noble whose land they are on. The annual income of
these therefore goes direct to the State Treasury -or alternatively the
State might prefer to lease the mine to a noble or a contractor for an
annual fee. By the original dice throw which decided on the
productiveness of the mine you can assess its monetary value, based
on the comparative worth of diamonds, gold, iron etc. Then we have
the various cities and towns in the country; these must also pay taxes,
based usually on population, and this tax also goes direct to the Stale.
Finally we have customs dues, which are levied on all trade routes and
entry and exit points such as seaports.

From all of these you can calculate the lax revenue of a country
to the last crown. How you collect these taxes and credit them to the
treasury depends yet again on how much time and paperwork you
intend to devote to it. For ease of work, I credit the whole annual
revenue of a country to its treasury on the 1st of the year, and unless
directed otherwise by the player concerned, store this amount in the
Treasury at the capital city; you could of course collect quarterly, or
monthly, and you could collect it at provincial centres and then
99
transport it to the central treasury, allowing time for this to be done. lf
one had the time to devote to it, this alone could be an interesting
exercise, in which one could bri(lQ peculation among the collectors,
robbery of the bullion trains, etc. etc.

You now have to cost out all the things you need to use in a
campaign. Not all countries in this period paid their troops, many of
whom were citizen-soldiers; not all supplied their weapons, even. But
once again, in order to have a recognisable system, in Hyboria all
troops are paid at a standard level, all weapons and equipment are
supplied by the state. Thus the cost of all these things have to be
calculated. I soon found, from experience, that other items had to be
costed as well; largely because crafty players thought up all sorts of
schemes for both raising and spending money, and expected me to be
able to tel1 them the cost of same!

The values I worked out are as follows:

Salaries per annum:

lnfantryman 50 silver crowns

Cavalryman 150 silver crowns
lnfantry Colonel 100 gold crowns
Cavalry Colonel 200 gold crowns
lnfantry Brigadier 50 gold crowns for each regiment
under his command
Cavalry Brigadier 150 gold crowns for each regiment
under his command
Divisional General Equivalent to the total pay of all the
Brigadiers under his command, with a
minimum of 600 gold crowns.
Naval Marine Galley 100 silver crowns.
Captain 50 gold crowns for command of a
trireme, with an additional 50 for each
rate upward

In addition to this, of course, there would be other people

receiving salaries, such as court officials, intelligence agents etc; but
these were left to the individual players to fix. In addition, I laid down
that 10% of all revenues, whether of state or individual noble, should
be deducted for general living expenses.

Purchase costs: (worked out on a regimental basis, which under my

system is same 600 men)

Leather Armour 25 gold

Armour 50
Full Mail 100
100
 Plate 200
Shield 25
Horse Armour 100
Sword 20
Spear 10
Lance 15
Axe/Halberd 15
Short Bow 10
Composite Bow 15
Longbow 15
Javelin 5
Pilum 10
Pike 15
Crossbow 25
Sling Ni!
Ponies 50
Horses 75
Heavy Horses 100
Elephant 100 each
Elephant Armour 125 each
Light Siege Engine 50 each
Heavy Siege Engine 75 each
Gamets 75 each

It was also necessary to work out the going price for slaves,
since players soon developed the nasty habit of selling off prisoners or
eking out revenues by same slave raiding in hostile territory! I
established that values fluctuated from time to time, and that if large
numbers were thrown on a local market at once, prices would drop!

Averages were:
Fieldworker 5-10 gold crowns
Workwoman 10-20
House Salve 10-20
Concubine 20-100

Since I operate in Hyboria on regimental levels and not in

individuals, pay was generally quoted on a regimental scale; and to
save the trouble of working this out, for anyone who requires it I quote
the regimental pay scales here:

101
 lnfantrv 100 aold crowns oer auarter
Cavalrv 200
Camel Squadron 50
Chariot Crew 25
Eleohant Crew 30

These were peace-time rates of pay, and troops have to be paid

regutarly every quarter. In war-time, pay rates are increased by 50%.
Guard troops receive double rate at all times.

In addition to their pay, troops have to be fed, and forage

provided for their horses. Even if living off the land in enemy territory,
their requirements need to be known, otherwise you cannot calculate
how much supplies need to be drawn from the country. Rates were
decided on as follows:

Food fora regiment 30 gold crowns per month

Fadder fora cavalry regiment 30

Fadder for an elephant 10

Fodder fora camel squadron 20

Food and fadder fora baggage train 150

It was also necessary to consider the costs of various other items.

Ships, for instance, had to be built and maintained and their crews paid
- and time taken for building and repairs calculated, as follows:

102
Shipbuilding

Type Gost Building Time Pay ofCrew

gold crowns days Gold crowns
oer auarter
3er 300 7 40
4er 400 10 60
Ser 500 14 100
6er 600 21 125
7er 700 28 175
Ser 800 35 200
9er 900 42 300

Ship Repairs

Minor Damaae Medium Damaae Severe Damaae

Cost Period Gost Period Cost Period
crowns davs days davs
3er 50 1 75 2 150 3
4er 60 1 100 2 200 5
Ser 80 1 120 3 250 7
6er 100 1 150 3 300 10
7er 120 2 175 4 350 14
Ber 130 2 200 4 400 17
9er 150 2 250 7 450 21

Some of the other costs involved were also worked out:

Hire of a transport 100 gold crowns per month

st
Building new roads: 1 Glass 40 gold crowns per hexagon
nd
2 Glass 25

New Bridges: Over small river 25 gold crowns

Medium 50
Large 200

103
Fortifications:

Type Cost Building Strengthened

Gold Period
crowns
Small Fort 200 1 week 200 Gold 2 weeks
StronQ Fort 400 3
Walled 1500 12 300 4
Town
3ro Class 3000 18 1000 6
Fortress
2n" Glass 3500 22 1500 10
Fortress
st
1 Class 4500 28
Fortress

Repairs after a siege:

Small Breach 200 gold crowns 1 week
Medium Damage 300 2
Severe Damage 600 4
Frontier Type Wall: 200 gold crowns per hexagon

With all these figures to consult, a ruler can now work out his
resources and decide just what sort of a war he can afford to fight! lf
his resources are too small for the task in hand, then he is in a certain
amount of trouble. He can of course levy extra taxes, either directly on
the lower tiers of the tax edifice, oron his nobility or towns; but such an
act may possibly cause unrest, ar even revolution, within his domains,
and in any case will take time. Alternatively, he can attempt to borrow
money from his nobles or from rich merchants; rules for this can be
worked out if required.

On this firm base can now be erected your actual rules for
supply and replacement, anda selection of these is given below:

1. Each year, recruits may be levied from each province up to the

agreed percentage of population. These recruits can serve as infantry
or cavalry.

2. Such recruits will be mustered at a depot within the province and

must spend 6 months in training before becoming qualified troops.
During this period, if engaged in action they will count as levies only.

3. Exceptions may be made in the case of specially qualified recruits.

For instance, recruits drawn from areas noted for horsemanship

could qualify as cavalrymen in say 4 months; huntsmen would make
excellent light infantry, as would hillmen.

104
4. Once trained, these recruits can be posted to existing regiments,
used to form new units, or as garrisons. During the training period the
recruits will be on half scale of peace-time pay. At this stage they need
not be issued with full equipment unless desired.

5. Replacements for elephants and camels can only be obtained from

areas which have previously been classified as producing these
animals. Production rates will have been already specified -
remembering that it is necessary to leave enough animals. for breeding
purposes.

6. New troops may be equipped in whatever way is desired and

compatible with facilities available.

7. Multiplicity of weapons is recommended - i.e. sword and spear etc. -

on the grounds that if excessive losses of equipment are suffered,
troops who have last their weapons could at least be issued with the
secondary weapons of other units; similarly men who have broken their
spears or pikes in action would still have a sword left instead of being
weapon less.

8. Captured enemy equipment can of course be used to replace

damaged or inferior weapons or equipment; however, a unit originally
equipped with say spear and sword and now issued with captured
bows must spend a month training with the new weapons before
becoming fully proficient with them.

9. Troops must at all times be supplied with food and animals with
forage. Any force lacking these will lose 10% of its effectives during the
first week without supplies, a further 20% the second week, 30% the
third week, and after that will cease to exist. lf only forage is lacking,
these figures will apply to animals only.

10. In friendly country, supplies may be drawn from towns upon

payment, dependent of course upon the resources of the countryside
and whether they have been drawn upon already.

11. In enemy territory, supplies may be requisitioned without payment,

and without consideration of the needs of the inhabitants. lf this is not
sufficient, supplies must be brought up from other areas by supply
train.

12. Wagons with supplies for three weeks can accompany an army
without effectively reducing its normal mobility.

13. Supply trains may of course operate-between depots, and dumps

of supplies can be established as desired.

105
14. Ships are considered to carry supplies for their normal
requirements for two weeks. Special supply ships may of course be
used to support either a f1eet or an army.

15. Cities, fortresses etc. will draw their daily needs from the
surrounding countryside. Supplies may of course be stock-piled there
either as suppty depots ar against the possibility af siege.

16. Supply trains may also carry spare weapons and equipment. It
takes 1 supply unit to carry weapons for 1 regiment, 2 units to carry
equipment for one regiment. Each supply unit will consume the fodder
of one-third of a cavalry regiment.

17. Manufacture of weapans and equipment will take place at special

armauries. Usually these will be located near to iron mines in order to
have ready access to raw materials. tf not, arrangements must be
made for the necessarf materials to be brought to them. Armauries will
be rated 1st, 2 nd and 3r Class according to their production capabilities
and the skill of their workers.
rd
18. 3 Glass armouries will be capable of turning out leather
equipment, shields, and all common weapons.

19. 2nd Class armouries, in addition to the above, can produce armaur
and also longbows and composite bows providing such constructian is
known locally.

20. 1st Class armouries can produce any type of weapon or equipment,
again providing that the necessary knowledge is held locally.

21. Production of armouries will be limited by the amount of raw

materials available and the skilled labour assigned to them.

22. Production of certain weapons will be limited initially to certain

areas. This will depend on historical fact in histarical campaigns, or in
mythical continents how you originally set things up. Fori instance,
Western nations would not have knowledge of the composite bow,
crossbows would be more prevalent in the West, as would plate
armour.

22. Such items as cannot be produced in an area can of course be

purchased elsewhere and shipped to it. Similarly, it is possible to
attract the services of skilled craftsmen from one area to another and
thus bring knowledge of special weapons and equipment to new areas.
In this case, time must be allowed for any real production to get under
way.

23. The same is true of types of horse, which will be indigenous to

certain areas. Large, strong horses are not normally found in hill
106
country, for instance. Horses likewise can be imported, and such
imports can be used to raise breeding standardsover a period. In such
cases, however, imports of breeding stock must be maintained, or
otherwise over any fong period the native strain is liable to re-assert
itself.

These rules will enable you to operate a very realistic supply

system, but it should be noted that they do require the keeping of not
inconsiderable records. For instance, it is not enough to have a
plentiful supply of money in your Treasury, and to decide to raise and
equip more troops, or to assume that your troops operating in distant
areas will be paid. In the latter case, supplies of money must
accompany the armies, so that when pay-day comes around the
money is there, not two hundred miles away in the Royal Treasury.
Similarly stocks of weapons and equipment, and supplies of food must
be built up ready for use. lf an army engages in battle and loses a lot of
its equipment, the fact that you have enough money to purchase
repfacement equipment - even if the money is with the army - will avaif
you nothing if the replacement equipment itseff is not also in the army
supply trains, since you wifl then have to produce it from an armoury
and ship it to the army - a process that could take weeks during which
the efficiency of the army is greatfy reduced.

It wifl therefore be seen that these supply rules make players

look very much ahead of present needs and attempt to provide for later
eventualities. Money, suppfies and equipment must be spread around
the country instead of being concentrated in one spot; armies must be
properly equipped with reserves of men, food and weapons.
Operations must be conducted, if possibfe, in such a way that you
obtain for yourself the resources of a rich area and deny them to the
enemy. Supply routes must be protected by both fortifications and
garrisons, and many other points considered. It is impossible to think of
every eventuality; but under these rules the general who covers more
of them than his opponent will put himseff in a winning position.

Windfalls can of course also be picked up under these rules.

You may capture the baggage train of an enemy and find it contains
his war chest or quantities of equipment or supplies; when you occupy
an enemy city you can pfunder its treasury and also revy a fine on the
citizens if you wish. lf you have good intelligence of the area you may
be abfe to seize one of his principal mines or armouries and force him
to either give up vafuable resources or fight at a disadvantage. The
possibilities are indeed endless and, if you have the time necessary to
devote to them, suppfy rules will greatfy increase your campaign
enjoyment.

107
 6: CHARACTERISATION
The subject-matter of this chapter is really only for those who have set
up a mythical continent of their own, so historically minded readers can
skip it if they wish! Even those who have only made up a map for one
brief campaign will probably not wish to adopt the whole system set out
here, though there may be a few points which would be of use even in
this situation. But for those who intend to use their continent, island or
whatever it is for a good period, with continuing campaigns, some
degree of characterisation is essentiaf.

Obviously, if you are setting up a new continent, you must

provide its various countries with rulers, with rufing systems, and with
generals. Here again, personal preferences will decide just how
detailed a system you require; but, from my experience, the more
detailed a system, though it takes a good deal of initial work, makes
less work in the end besides soon givlng your creation a real life of its
own. You will be surprised to find how simple it is to make decisions
and to inffuence events merely by consulting the characters of the
people you have created. An examp!e of this happened not too long
ago in Hyboria and may be worth quoting.

The situation had arisen in Hyperborea that a certain noble,

Lodivarman by name, had raised a revolt with the aid of a !arge force
of mercenary soldiers left unemployed at the close of a campaign.
Lodivarman himse!f was a patriotic type and was acting in what he
thought was the country's best interests - though, of course, these also
coincided with Lodivarman's best interests - but the mercenaries were
only interested in hard cash. When Lodivarman's money ran out, they
began to loot and ravage the countryside. Lodivarman therefore
attempted to disband them.

we - the Controllers, that is - assumed that the leaders of the

mercenaries would not be too keen on this and would hold a council to
decide what to do. There were eight of these leaders; and since I had
gone to the length of setting up characters for everyone down to
regimental commander, it was perfectly easy to look up each leader's
character and see what his feelings would be. Some of them were
related to each other, which was also taken into account. As it
happened, two, being cruel, greedy types voted to simply cut
Lodivarman's throat; three others, being just as greedy but with
considerable cunning, voted to imprison him but ta keep him as a
figurehead to take the blame for their crimes; the other three were
undecided, so they sided with their relatives. As a result, the vote went
5-3 in favour of Lodivarman's imprisonment, so this is what happened.

Without these characters all we could have done, in fact, would

have been to have a simple dice throw to see whether they accepted
109
disbandment or not; and if they hadn't, would have had to decide what
they would do. Similarly, without Lodivarman's given character, even
though his part was being taken by a player in the group, we would
have had no indication of what his reaction to the situation should be.
Thus it can be seen the work of setting up these fairly · elaborate
characters is worth the trouble ~and, moreover, if you have a bent in
that direction you will get a tot of interest and amusement out of the
actual initial setting up.

Your first step is to decide on the form which your nobility is

going to take. This will depend toa great deal on what you have based
your various countries. lf, for instance, they are all to be mediaeval
countries, you will simply need a mediaeval nobility; but if, as in
Hyboria, each country is based on a different nationality - Greek,
Roman, Celt, Persian, Egyptian and so on - then you will need a
good few different systems. You must, therefore, first plan out the
skeleton design of your countries.

When setting up Hyboria I used a good few different systems

and was not afraid to mix mythical with historical or even to slightly mix
my historical nomenclature where necessary! You may prefer to stick
to the strictly historical, of course, but even there you have plenty to
choose from. To take first of all the mediaeval state: in the main,
assuming that it was large enough, it would be headed by a King, with
beneath him Dukes, Counts and Barons. Starting at the bottom, each
castle or town would form the centre of a Barony; three or four
Baronies grouped together would forma County; two or three Counties
would forma Duchy or an Earldom. In addition to this, there would be
several Court officials: the Chancellor, High Constable, Earl Marshal
etc.

You could of course also have an organisation such as the Holy

Roman Empire (which someone quite truly said was neither Holy,
Roman, nor an Empire) headed by an elected Emperor and an
Electoral College formad by the heads of the various states within the
Empire. I have something like this in Hyboria in the shape of the
Aquilonian Federation. The federation is formed of a number of self-
governing states, the rulers of which are the members of the
Federation Council. From the Council is elected the one who is the
Chief Executive; I didn't want to use the term Emperor as not being
suitable for self-governing countries, so I substituted the old Saxon
term of Bretwalda or war-leader.

Turning to the Persian idea, you would have at its head a Caliph
or Sultan - or, if you are early Persian, a King of Kings - with under him
a certain number of Satraps; each Satrapy is divided again, and your
lower nobility could be Khans, Pashas of Beys. Royal officials would be
the Grand Vizier, various Atabegs and Beglerbegs. In somewhat the
same style, you could have an Indian state, probably ruled by an
110
Emperor - mine started out as a Matriarchy and was headed by a Devi
- with Princes, Maharajahs, Rajahs and Khans making up the lower
orders.

Greek culture is a little more difficult, since in order to adopt a

pure Greek regime you must have merely city states ruled by
democratic assemblies; leaders tended to change easily. You could, of
course, adopt the Macedonian style of Kings. I compromised here by
mixing Greek and Carthaginian terms. I had a King at the top, with his
country divided into two portions each ruled by a Suffete - a
Carthaginian term fora powerful magistrate - and each again divided
into portions to which I assigned Polemarchs, Xenagos', and Strategoi,
Greek terms for soldiers and war leaders. This gave a firm basis rather
than trying to run several democracies. Anyway, l'm a convinced
Royalist, not a democrat!

For your Roman state you must choose between Republican

and lmperial Rome. You may of course start off with a Republican
culture and let it graduate into an lmperial one. lf you are going to be
Republican, you merely need to set up a dozen or so powerful families,
which would contribute the bulk of the members of the Senate. From
these you would elect the yearly Consuls and in case of need a
Dictator and a Master of Horse. You might also have provincial
governors and other officials. Under the Empire much of these titles
would remain, though they would now be appointed officials rather
than elected ones. You would also have Legates commanding the
legions, who would usually again be drawn from the maln famllies.

You can also have various less civilised states, usually of the
smaller kind. For instance, I had two Viking countrles; each of these
was rulad by a Jarl (the term from which we get our Earl) and the areas
within the country by Thanes. My Celtic area was intially ruled only by
tribal chiefs, though under various stresses it coalesced into a
kingdom. I also had various native countries headed by Princes,
Dwars, Beys and Khans and I later formed a number of these into a
Confederacy which was an earlier prototype of the Aquilonian
Federation; in this case I used an almost modern Egyptian title and
called the ruler a Khedive.

For some reason I never adopted an ancient Egyptian system;

but this of course would be headed by the Pharaoh and would have
local Governors as well as various officials such as the Master of
Chariots, Master of the Offices, etc. etc. You can also have such things
as a country rulad by a Council of Priests - a system I adopted
originally in Stygia, a country noted for its worship of the snake-god
Set. Later on the people rose against the oppression of the priests and
reverted to a monarchical government.

111
 Other ideas will undoubtedly occur to you if you think about it; all
you need is a little historical research inta the various countries of
antiquity, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Egypt etc. and you will soon find all
the information you need. I personally used a type of feudalism in all
countries - i.e. there are various orders of nobility, and each order
owes fealty to the one above it. This was because it made the tax
system easy and logical, and it also helped to work out spheres of
influence in civil wars or revolts.

In addition to all these dignitaries, you may decide, as I did, to

set up a sort of lower gentry who supplied the bulk of the regimental
officers and brigadiers, intelligence agents, foreign Ambassaders and
various other posts. Here, of course, it is not strictly necessary to
formulate all the intricate relationships you need in the higher nobility;
but in my own case it seemed only sense to carry through the same
system to its logical conclusion, rather than to have these people
named but created, so to speak, from a vacuum without families or
relationsh ips.

At all events, I found that once having decided on the various

systems of Government, it was worthwhile drawing up a chart for each
showing the various ranks and orders. Similarly when I created my
families I drew up for each a "family tree"; and specimens of both of
these are shown overleaf as typical examples of how this can be done.

112
 Principality of Hyrkania
Prince

Beflerberg of Babihi Beglerbeg of Tabal Beglerberg of Barsip

Voivode of Auriga Voivode of Kutu Voivode of Haurani

Voivode Voivode Voivode

of of of
Bisri Halman Zarka

Voivode Voivode Voivode

of of of
Yuetshi Shushan Quarar

House of Hyperborea

Namelides I m. Nemone

Sofodai-m. Ylana-na Duran-m. Nemone-na

Belesa of Conaire of Ana-Bet Vakar of
Corinth Hyrkania of Zem Hyrkania

Ramizail-m Kandive the Yana

Fritharik of Golden-m Sais of
Cimmeria Zem

Namedides I1-m.
Parsayates of
Hyrkania

Having created your ranks, you now need people to fill them; in
other words you have to create noble families. My system for this is
quite simple: for each particular position you create an original family -
in other words, to take the example shown, of Hyrkania, you would
need to start with thirteen families, one for the Prince, three for the
Beglerbegs, and nine for the Voivodes. First you have to discover how
many people make up your original family; this is done by a simple
dice throw. Same years ago I came across a cheap little game called
113
"Shake a Number"; the game itself was pretty useless, but it contained
a number of unusual dice: each had one side left blank, and they were
divided into evens and odds, the odds having the other sides
numbered 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and the evens 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. I therefore use one
of these dice which gives me a chance of anything from 2 to 10 in a
family. The same result could of course be obtained by using two
normal dice.

Suppose you throw a 7; you now take seven ordinary dice and
throw them: odd numbers are female, even numbers male. You next
need the ages of these individuals; this is simply done by using one
normal and one special dice, the normal indicating the tens and the
special dice the unit. Thus a dice throw of a 2 on the normal anda 7 on
the special dice would give you an age of 27. lf the special dice turns
up a blank, then you throw again with the ordinary dice, odds the blank
counted as a 0, evens you use the ordinary dice as a unit instead of a
ten, so that you have a person aged under 10.

You now have a number of persons, male and female, of varying

ages. You now arrange them inta generations. Let us suppose your
seven people turned out to be males of 52, 44, 33 and 16, females of
65, 25 and 23. You would take the male of 52 as the head of the family
and incumbent of the noble position, and in this case I would take the
female of 65 as being his wife, and the male of 44 as his brother, and
the next male, of 33, as his son. The remaining 3 could also be
children of the first pair, or one of the females could be the wife of the
son. Again, the other female could be the wife of the brother if you
wished. The permutations of this can be rung as you wish, or again of
course this can be decided by dice throws. In the main, however, this
will be influenced by one consideration on your part - relationship
between families. lf you take your female creations to be wives, then
you are in effect denying them an initial family; if you leave them as
unmarried females you can later marry them off and thus create
relationships with other families.

lt is, of course, desirable to have the head of the family married

so that you can logicalty have the next generation already created; if
no suitable female was turned up by the dice throws, then my solution
is to presume that the wife is deceased, and throw in a dead wife on
the family tree. You will find all sorts of families turn up, with
sometimes results that just won't flt; in these cases you must use your
own judgement to suitably amend the results. Mostly, however, you will
be able to fit your families together without much trouble; same families
will have two or even three generations, others may have a !arge group
of brothers and sisters; others again perhaps just the head of the
house and his wife. This is all to the good, as you don't want too much
simitarity between families.

114
 Your next task is to name all these people. Be advised, and first
fix on a family name for each household. When I first started off in
Hyboria I gaily gave each person just the one name, and related them
to the area they held, i.e. Trocero of Poitain, Valannus of Brythunia. It
later became obvious that it wou!d be much easier for reference and
indexing if each group had a distinct family name and I had to go back
over and Fit this in. Your family name can still be that of a town, castle
or province if you wish, or it can be a corruption of the name of the
head of the famHy - for instance, you could have, as I have,
Constantius Hebor, Count of Hebor, or alternatively Ossian Oss or
Raka Rak.

Be as careful as you can to suit the names to the nationalities

involved. For instance, if the family comes from a country that has a
Roman culture, don't go giving them Persian names, and vice versa.
For·-the actual given names, you can have recourse to numerous
sources. You can use historical ones, taken from military and history
bocks - most of these obligingly have an index of names at the back
which will prove a happy hunting ground. You can also take names
from the pages of fiction, particularly historical and fantasy fiction. I
make it a habit that when reading this type of book I make a note on a
pad of any suitable names I come across, and endeavour to keep a
reserve supply of these names. Funnily enough, I have more trouble
with female than male names, I suppose because in these sort of
bocks the males inevitably outnumber the females! Thus I tend to have
a good few females with the same given name, which would be terribly
confusing without the family name!

You can of course cheat a little in this respect by using the same
name in different generations. Parents tend very often, particularly in
royal and noble famities, to name their offspring after either themselves
or their own parents, and this helps to cut down the number of names
you need. Of course, if you only have a relatively small group of
families, or if your imagination is unlimited, you won't need to adept
these methods.

The same methods may be used if you wish to set up mititary

families for your unit commanders. In this particular case I did this as
an after-thought. Quite early on I named all the regimental
commanders and gave them military ratings, but later I recognised the
advantages of giving them proper families and relationships to each
other, and of course the possibility of marriage into noble houses (or
seduction from either side!) since this was not unknown though not by
any means common. I already had, therefore, the names and ages and
I was assuming a certain relationship within the army. For each
country, therefore, I went through the army list and linked the names
up into family groups. I took about three men of forty or fiftyish as the
first generation, with a corruption of the oldest's name as the family
name, and then fitted in what I could in a second and possible third
115
generation. A man of 52, for lnstance, could easily have a son of 36,
and he in tum could have one of 20.1 fitted in women as and where
necessary to help this out, and additionally created a few extra so that
they could be married off to suitable bachelors and thus link families in
the same way as with the nobility.

You now have your families set up and all their members
named. You now need to create personalities or characters for all
these people, and this to my mind is the most fascinating part of the
whole thing. Various methods can of course be used for this; you can if
you wish assign arbitrary characters to suitabfe people, or create
personalities and then dice to see who they belong to. The system I
use is based on assigned values and playing cards. Originally I also
used the number of letters in a person's name, dealing one card for
each letter; but later 1found it was better to use an arbitrary number of
cards, and I decided on seven, which gives you a good variety without
over-doing things.

So, for each person's character you deal out seven cards. The
first card dealt will decide upon his or her's mast outstanding
characteristic: a Heart will indicate Good Nature, a Diamond Love of
Wealth, a Spade Ambition, and a Club Lave of War in a man,
Patriotism in a woman. The value of the card will determine the depth
of this passion, a high card being very strong, a low card relatively
weak. The rest of the cards are used individually, and each hasa value
of its own, as given below:

Ace: Spade ar Club, a disloyal intriguer. Diamond, loyal intriguer.

Heart .exceptional good nature.
King: Spade or Club, Energy: Heart or Diamond, Courage ·
Queen: Great lever
Knave: Spade/Club, Unreliability, oath-breaker, liar. Heart/Diamond,
Merciless, revenge-prone.
Ten: Loyalty, absolute in Diamonds, grading down through Hearts,
Clubs, Spades.
Nine: Physical beauty, except for Spade, which is Ugliness.
Eight Spade/Club, Cruelty Heart/Diamond, Generosity.
Seven: Spade/Club, Personality
Heart/Diamond, Jealous of Family Honour.
Six: Spade/Club, Lazyness Heart/Diamond, Charm
Five: Spade/Club, Wisdom Heart/Diamond, Cunning
Four: Spade/Club, Stupidity Heart/Diamond, Cowardice
Three: Spade Club, Bad Temper Heart/Diamond, Good Temper
Two: Spade/Club, Arrogance, Pride. Heart/Diamond, Merciful.

A reversed Ace (i.e. one dealt upside down) signifies a hunchback or

cripple.

116
 So,. you deal out your seven cards and proceed to evaluate the
character. In most cases. this will be straightforward enough, but on
some occasions conflicting cards will show up. lf, for instance, you tum
up a Nine of Hearts and a Nine of Spades, then physical beauty
obvlously cancels out physical ugliness and you discard both cards. An
example of a character reading might be a deal of Knave, King, Ten
and Nine of Hearts, Nine of Spades, Nine and Two of clubs. This
would give you, assuming a male, a very good natured fellow, brave,
handsome, very loyal, but a thought arrogant. Of your three nines, two
are beauty and one ugliness, so the three finish up as one beauty
card.

Another deal might give you, again for a man, the Ten and
Seven of Spades, Eight of Clubs, Nine and Four of Diamonds, Four of
Hearts, Two of Spades. This gives you a pretty clear cut though not
very pleasant character - very ambitious, handsome, cruel, arrogant,
a strong personality but an extreme physical cowarcl. All of your
characters will not be as finely drawn as these - sometimes you will
get a real nonentity, with no outstanding characteristics. This is quite
realistic - all of your people can't be heroes or villains!

These characters will have a great bearing on any decisions

which you have to make involving them, and this is particularly
important for the controller of a mythical continent, whether he is
running it by himself or whether he has a group of players involved.
There will always be occasions when the attitudes of nobles and
officers who are not being played by actual people - what we in
Hyboria call cardboard characters - can be vital to an event, and by
using these characters you can often solve the question. lf you are still
undecided, further use of the cards is often better than a mere dice
throw. For a straightforward decision, deal out 6 cards; four or more
reds mean yes, four or more blacks no. Similarly in a case of whether
someone should support a revolt or remain loya!, if you have no clue in
his character, deal out four cards for him. Four reds means complete
loyalty, three reds loyal but not going to extremes, two of each
undecided so remains neutral, three blacks rebel but cautious, four
blacks thoroughly rebel.

A similar use of cards can be made to determine the success or

failure of a plot, an assassination or other affairs. Deal out six cards
again and add up the points value of the reds and blacks. Presuming
that the chances of success were fairly even, if the red total is double
the black, news of the plot or assassination has leaked out, the victim
strikes first and arrests or eliminates the plotters; if the count goes the
other way, it is complete success for the plotters, who arrest the
Government ar kill their victim. Anything in between can be worked out
as shades of success or failure.

117
 A decision to go to war, or to accept a treaty etc. can be decided
in the same way if you want an unbiased decision. Use the six cards
again for the ruler, four or more reds for yes, four or more blacks for
no. lf an even score tums up, then the decision must be passed to his
Council, however that is constituted, and each of these members will
be dealt six cards to determine his vote. Count of the votes will then
give you your decision.

For your soldiers you wilt obviously need a better idea of their
military capabilities and possibty their loyalty. When I first worked this
out for Hyboria, I in effect set up four classes of officer, A, B, G. and D
and gave each class four rankings. Glass A stood for Loyalty, Glass B
for Disloyalty, Glass G for Military Ability, and Class D for Military
Stupidity. An Al was comptetely loyal under all circumstances, but this
shaded down to an A4 whose loyalty could be compounded under
extreme circumstances. Similarly a Cl was an officer of great ability,
C4 of no more than average, a little better of course th.an a 04; anyone
employing a D1 in a position of responsibility obviously needed his
head examined! As I set this up more or less as an after-thought, and
assessed characters by a random system , players had to very
hurriedly promote and relegate officers and switch them around as
necessary! The system I used was simple - Hearts were A, Diamonds
B, Glubs C and Spades D, with the four rankings according to the
highness of the card.

Somewhat later Richard Nelson came up with a system of

character-definition based on a simple chart and some dice throws.
The chart is shown overleaf, and the system is as follows:

Throw 1 dice for each of the A characteristics excepf the

Popularity factor. lf both Is and 6s are present, convert them to 2s and
5s respectively. The popularity factor is the average of the first five A
characteristics, except that a 1 for Loyalty counts as a 6 in assessing
popularity as the character is assumed to be a skilled dissembler.

Next throw 1 dice for each of the B characteristics except 4 and

6. Average out Is and 6s as for A characteristics. This gives the basic
details of the character, which can be developed by either political or
military experience. All characters start with Grade 1 military and
political experience. They advance one grade after the following
experience:

a) Political - As independent Ruler 1 year

As subordinate Provincial Ruler 2 years
Subordinate Position (Senator, Mayor) 3 years
A course of study at a University gives 1 upgrade in Political
experience.
b) Military - As Corps or Army Commander 1 year
As Divisional Commander 2 years
118
 As Regimental or Fort Commander 3 years
As Regimental Officer 4 years

The above military figures relate to war experience, and must be

doubled in peacetime. Study at a Military Academy gives 1 upgrade.
This can only be claimed twice in an officer's career, and not within the
same period of five years.

1 2 3 4 5 6
I. General Savage Gloomy Average Cheerful Happy Open&
Disposition & Sunny
Morose

2. Morals Totally Vicious Drink & Drink or Highly Saintly

Deprave Women Women Moral
d
3. Generosity Miserly Thrify Thrifty Generous Open Spendt
Tendencv Tendencv Handed hrift
4. Loyalty Complet Bribable Dutiful but Dutiful Loyal Totally
ely can be Loyal
untrustw blackmailed
orthv
5. Repulsiv Ugly Undistinguis Striking Handso Adonis
Appearance e hed me

6. Popularity Universa Disliked Average Popular Much Beloved

Factor lly Liked by All
Detested
1. lntelligence Idiot Stupid Average Intelligent Very Outstan
· lntellige ding
nt lntellige
nce
2. Activity ldle and Lazy Average Active Active Erratic
Sluggish with
lnitiative
3. Martial None Outstan
Aptitude ding

4. Martial None Outstan

Experience ding

5. Political None Outstan

Aptitude ding

119
 The combination of aptitude and experience factors gives the
skill rating for Political and Military Attainment. Added together these
factors run from 2 to 12. A character may hold a position in which he
gains both political and military skill simultaneously. The initial military
and political aptitudes must not be less than the average of lntelligence
and Activity.

The comptete character analysis can be expressed as 12

numbers The following example will show how it works:

Prince Valiant, Aged 20: throws for A characteristics 4, 3, 6, 4, 1,

converting to 4, 3, 5, 4, 2 with a popularity factor of 4. The Prince, is
cheerful, with a weakness for drink and women, open-handed dutiful,
but ugly. New for the B characteristics: the throws are 3, 4, 2, 4 which
converts to 3, 4, 4, 4,as the aptitude factors cannot be less than the
intelligence and activity average. The prince is of average intelligence
but active disposition. Say the Prince has ruled his state for 2 years
advanced two grades in political experience, but only one grade in
military experience as his army has not been engaged in fighting. His
Military Skill, is thus 6 and his Political grade 7. As for his popularity,
this is measured as the average of the popularity factor and half the
military or politicat skilt grade, which at present is 4 in both cases, but
if there is no war in the next year or so, the Prince will be less popular
with the army than with the people.

The complete character analysis of Prince Valiant can be

expressed as 20 (i.e. age) 435424/344243. The effect of individual
characteristics in a given case will obviously depend an individual
campaign rules, but a character with Morals 3, Loyalty 1 and
Appearance 5 should not be left to look after the castle and Queen
while Hubby is away at the wars!

Having created all your families and characters your task is by

no means over! Obviously some of your characters will be removed
from time to time by death in battle, but so far we have not made any
provision for death by natura! causes, accident, sickness etc. or for
either marriage or childbirth. All of these have to be allowed for, and
my system is to deal with this annually (cantinent year, of course)
except in the case of state marriages which af course are dealt with as
situation arise.

So, at the beginning of each continental year, I go through the

list of characters, and firstly test each for death during the coming year.
This is dane by a simple dice throw and a check on the age group as
follows:

Under 20 lf a 1 is thrown, throw again: 1 or 2 dead , 3 or 4 seriously ill,

will die if a 1 or 2 tums up next year, 5 or 6 a minor illness.
120
21-40 Throw of 1, dice again: 123 dead, 4 5 6 serious illness.

41-50 Throw of 1 or 2 throw again: as above.

51-60 Throw of 1 2 or 3 throw again: as above.

Over 60 Throw of 1 2 3 4 throw again: 1 2 3 or 4 dead, 5 6 serious

illness.

For anyone who dies other than after a serious illness, throw
to determine cause of death: 1 2 3 natura! causes; 4 accident; 5
suicide, or child-birth in a woman if applicable, 6 murder. In the case of
murder you can then endeavour to work out the reason and/or the
murderer.

Your next test is birth. Women are reckoned to be capable of

child-birth up till the age of 40; so, each year, every married woman is
tested to see if she has produced a child. A throw of 4, 5 or 6 means
yes. lf you wish you can complicate this by throwing a 6 again, a throw
of 6 means twlns. You then throw for sex in the normal way. lf you find
that you are getting toa many children or not enough deaths, you
can add extra rules, limiting a woman to so many children, or throwing
again after a birth, 1 the mother dies in child-birth, 2 the child is still-
born. There are all sorts of ramifications. you can add, and these will
occur to you as you go along. You can, of course, if you wish also test
unmarried women for children, making the test very much harder, in
order to get a small crop of illegitimate chitdren; you can then find out
the father by a simple process of elimination, allowing for the fact that
he may not be of noble birth! In the same way, if you wish to carry
things a stage further, you can see if any of the males have had
bastards by girls not of noble birth. These measurements can be taken
if your legitimate birth-rate is falling below requirements.

There are then marriages to be arranged. Each year you will find
that in every country you have a crop of unmarried men and girls, and
also widows and widowers. These should be married off as soon as
possible so as to both carry the creation a stage further and to
strengthen family alliances. In most cases you will find that the
marriage prospects narrow down toa few eligible parties; you have to
take inta account the relative standing of families, inheritance, political
alliances etc. This is of course of even more importance among the
royal families. Having determined who the eligible suitors are, a simple
dice throw will then determine who is the successful one.

Personally, I don't draw a character for a newly-born baby. I

leave it until the babe has grown to 5 years old before doing this; partly
because it seems a bit silly to have a child of 2 with a character which
describes him as lecherous, disloyal etc, partly because he may
121
anyway die off at an early age and your work is thereby wasted.
lncidentally, a point I haven't mentioned is that you can of course work
in a bit of heredity when casting your characters, iooking back through
the preceding generations and seeing if there is a common
characteristic which would be passed on through the genes.

Obviously, with all this information you will need a system for
recording it. Mine is, in effect, two-fold. For every family I have a family
tree drawn up, on the lines of the specimen on page 113, and these
are filed in alphabetica1 order of families in separate national sections.
When someone marries I record this information on the two family
trees involved, and this is the last entry regarding the woman which is
made on her original tree unless her husband pre-deceases her and
she is returned to her original family. All issue of the marriage are
recorded on the husband's family tree only. This gives an at-a-glance
record of family relationships since a look at the family tree will show
marriage alliances with various other families - not always of the same
nationality.

Then for each character I have an index card. These are filed
alphabetically under famity names so that if I want to look up the card
for Ramaos Vanir I merely look in the tray under V. Each card is
headed with the name in block capitals. Under this I record first of all
his immediate family history, such as "Son to Ban Cruach, Crown
Prince of Aquilonia" or "Second daughter to Vakar, Prince of
Hyrkania'', since this helps to establish the generation and the direct
family line; obviously after a while families become fairly prolific, with
fathers, sons, brothers, nephews, cousins etc. and with the same given
name used more than once. Nicknames also help in this respect, such
as Liane the Wayfarer, Kandive the Golden and such. After this is
recorded the character, and then follows any information which is
added from time to time - the barony he inherited on the death of his
father, his marriage to such and such a person, promotion to command
a brigade, taken prisoner at the battle of blank; it all helps to keep the
records straight, and while much of it may never be used, you wilf be
surprised at how much of it can come in useful at times.

This is probably a good point to mention the question of

inheritance. In these modern times, rules of inheritance are fairly
straightforward, in that normally a son inherits his father's goods etc;
but you have to remember that in ancient times many different systems
of inheritance were in vogue. In some cultures women counted for
nothing, and inheritance could therefore not be counted through the
female line; a son could inherit, but not a daughter or a widow. In
others, the position might be reversed. Again, because a man was
Count of Gunderland might not necessarily mean that on his death his
eldest son inherited the titte; the title and the lands might be in the gift
of the King, who might decide to confer them on an entirely different
person to whom he owed a favour. In the main, my own systems of
122
inheritance are pretty simple, in mast cases lands and titles are
hereditary, but having ta be confirmed by the King, who could in theory
set aside the legal claimant though in practice this rarely happens.
Minors, of course, automatically come under the guardianship of the
King, who attaches their revenues until they come of age or marry -
quite a good way of padding out the royal revenues!

This question of inheritance can be of considerable importance

and can be used as an excuse for both externa! and interna! war. The
death of an important and wealthy noble might leave several claimants
to his rank and position, there being no direct heir. Each claimant may
call upon the support of friends and related families, and the thing can
end up in full scale civil war quite easily. These things all add to the
enjoyment of the continent, since once again they tend to give it a life
of its own and a certain inevitability without you needing to rack your
brains for an excuse fora battle!

To revert to the yearly sarting out of births, deaths and

marriages: though this. is actualty done at the beginning of each
continental year, obviously it does not in fact all take place at once. I
therefore throw dice for each event, be it birth, marriage, death, illness
etc. ta determine which month it is due to happen in. With this
information, I then draw up a list month by month of these events and
communicate them to the players involved at the correct times. In this
way I have a goad deal af foreknowledge of the coming year, and it is
amazing how often these events fit simply inta the pattern as if they
were intended all along. A quite recent occurrence is a case in point: at
the beginning af this continental year in Hyboria, the annual head-
count threw up the fact that half-way through the year Calliope, Ranee
of Agrapur and mistress of Prince Vakar of Hyrkania, was due to be
murdered. At the time I merely recorded this and wondered who I was
going to blame for the deed when the time came. A month before she
was due for the chop, what shoutd I receive but a scheme from the
arch-villain Mnester, ariginally in the pay of Prince Vakar but having
recently abandoned his service for that of Valannus of Brythunia, for
the assassination of no less than the Ranee of Agrapur! No mention of
her impending doom had ever been made, so the whole thing was
quite spontaneous, and yet anather almost frightening example of how
Hyboria has developed a life of its own.

As I have repeatedly mentioned in this book, how much of the

foregoing you adept for yaur continent will depend entirely on the
amount of time you have to spare and your interest in working up these
sort of things. The initial effort involved is fairly large; once this is
achieved, only the annual culling of the flock involves you in a great
deal of work. Providing you have the time and the enthusiasm, your toil
will be well worth~while, and the results wilf give you many hours of
interest and amusement besides having a great effect on the campaign
as a whole. It must, however, be remembered that such a set-up is
123
essentially a long-range affair, designed to last for very many
continental years; obvious!y it's not much use going to a[[ the length of
having children bom in quantities if you are going to c!ose down the
continent within the foreseeable future.

Of course, you do not need to closely work out the affairs of the
continent for year after year, regardless of whether an actual campaign
is being fought. In the past, I have often finished off a war and then
jumped forward several continental years; intervening events are
worked out in considerably less detail, and the picture is then brought
back into focus with everyone a good few years older. This in fact can
be quite necessary at times, as otherwise not a month would pass
without bloody war raging over a good part of the continent, a situation
which could not endure for ever - economies and agricultures just
wouldn't be up to it! So periods of enforced peace are sometimes
necessary.

At all events, t hope that this chapter will at least have whetted
your appetites for carrying your creations a stage further, and shown ·
you same of the results which can be gained thereby.

124
 .)

7: CAMPAIGN EXTRAS
So far we have discussed both the essential ingredients of a campaign
such as maps, organisation, troops etc, and also the important but not
essential items like supply and characterisation. In this chapter I want
to deal with non-essential items which nevertheless can add a lot of
fun and interest to your campaign if you can afford to devote the time
and effort to them. These are things without which your campaign will
run quite efficiently, but which add a touch of humour to what can
otherwise be too serious an affair, and also bring in both natura! and
out of the ordinary events which would otherwise not come into the
scheme of things. All these items have been tried out at various times
in my Hyborian continent, and have I think helped its development.

The first item on the list is a calendar. When you are running a .
campaign in which time is important, it is essential to be able to date
events so that they relate to other happenings. Now you can of course
simply use a current calendar; but this is rather like the old joke about
the actor in the Elizabethan play shaving with an electric razor - it
doesn't fit the conception of ancient times. Therefore it is worth the
small effort involved of constructing your own calendar. When I set up
Hyboria I was of course basing my ideas upon Howard's Conan
stories, and these quoted years by name- theYear of the Lian, Year of
the Elephant etc. I imagine Howard may have taken his example from
old Chinese history since they also gave the years names instead of
numbers. At all events I decided to have a fourteen year cycle with
each year named after an animal; at the end of each cycle it is
repeated again, and the complete cycle runs:

Year of Year of
the the
Jacka[ Crocodile
Wolf Panther
Horse Doa
Ox Snake
Draaon Lion
Eleohant Tiaer
Leopard Bull

I then took this one step further by having twelve months named after
birds, and related them to our own calendar, thus:

January = Hawk February = Peregrine March = Falcon

April = Kestrel May = Eagle June =Vulture
July = Tiercel August =Owl Sept. =Kite
Oct = Buzzard Nov. = Merlin Dec. =Albatross

125
 By this means I can date an event as 1ih Eagle/Lian and
everyone knows when I mean. A number of similar calendars can be
constructed very easily; or of course you can work on the actual
calendars used by various ancient states.

Mention of calendars leads me on to the next point - a campaign

diary. This may seem an obvious thing, but surprisingly it does not
always occur to people. I find it simplest to buy a cheap desk diary
from Boots or same such place, of the type which has three ör four
days to the page with a reasonable amount of room for each day. A
page for each day would of course be better still, but this type of diary
costs more, and l'm mean about this sort of thing! The controller of a
campaign needs a fairly large diary since it is essential that he marks
down a variety of information such as dates troops are ready for action,
when supplies are collected, dates people are in certain places, etc.
You can mark in advance dates on which things are due to happen as
a reminder to you, and you can also look back easily ta check on
previous occurrences. For the ordinary player who has only one
country to look after the diary is less essential and less detailed, since
he can always ask the over-worked controller to supply the necessary
information; on the other hand, the controller is not infallible, and can
make errors or emissions, so it isn't a bad idea to keep your own
records! It is of course also an idea to keep a record of your monthly
expenditure if the campaign is being run on a monetary basis -
otherwise you may find you've spent all your resources with the year
only half gone. You can't always rely on the controller to warn you of
these dangers!

Our next item isa fairly new innovation in Hyboria, though l am

certainly not the first by any means to introduce it. This is a campaign
newspaper. Robert Louis Stevenson was probably the first to produce
one of these in the campaigns he waged. His was a very one-sided
paper, which continually vilified his opponent, making light of his
successes, emphasizing his defeats and criticising his personal habits
etc. This annoyed the chap so much that he made desperate efforts to
capture the town in which the newspaper was situated - after which he
hung the Editor with great jubilation and took over the paper. which
immediately changed its policy!

In a small group, and particularly if only two people are involved,

a newspaper hasn't a great role to play, although if any of the players
has a literary bent he can of course get some amusement out of
ragging his opponents in this way. I remember many years aga in an
American Civil War campaign with Don Featherstone, typing up what I
claimed to be newspaper clippings of my victories and giving them to
Don, but I don't recall his reactions. I suspect they merely ended up in ·
his wastepaper basket!

126
 However, with a larger group, and particularly a wide-spread one
who campaign largely by post, a newspaper can serve a very useful
purpose in disseminating rumours and publishing information which
players couldn't realistically get by other means. The snag, of course,
is that for this you need access to printing, duplicating or photo-copying
facilities, since you can't produce more than about six carbon copies of
reasonable quality, and the effort of typing the same thing several
times over will soon dry up your enthusiasm for the project, especially
if your paper runs into several pages.

Fortunately I am able to produce what I need by a reasonable

expenditure of time, labour and cash, so the Shadizar Herald was
bom. It was decided to site this at a fairly central point in the continent.
and to assume that it had reporters all over the map, plus magical
means of getting their reports back and also of distributing the printed
copies to players in remote areas! From the first I set out to produce
something that bore a faint resemblance to an actual newspaper, in
that it was printed in cofumns instead of typing straight across the page
- a conceit which adds to the labour but I think pays off in authenticity -
and to make each issue a composite of purely humorous articles,
"hard" news of events, rumours and exposes. In the early days all
material was supplied either by myself or my co-controller, but soon
the players themselves had caught on and were sending in
contributions. Richard Nelson, that doyen of propagandists, quickly
made it the vehicle for his humorous attacks, both in poetry and prose,
upon Vakar of Hyrkania, to such an effect that poor Prince Vakar,
whom I originally conceived as a lean, hard, cruel but soldierly
character, is now universally regarded as an over-weight coward who
wears corsets and cheats at dice! Such is the power of the Press.

With each weekly situation report I print an issue of the Shadizar

Herald - which means on average about once every four or five weeks
in our time. The paper runs to four or five quarto pages, and a typical
issue will carry a couple of battle reports - usually not completely
accurate, and sometimes two accounts of the same affair issued by
opposite sides! - a current events column, an excerpt from something
like Prince Vakar's diary or Princess Yana's memoirs supplied by
Richard Nelson, a humorous feature such as an account of the Annual
Torturer's Convention or the Aquilonian Archery Championships,
weather forecasts, etc. Small spaces at the end of columns are filled in
with humorous adverts which sometimes lead to bigger things - I once
casually put in a piece about the attractions of the Shadizar Pleasure
Palace and now find that I have had to actually create such a place.

Almost at once we had to deal with a take-over bid. Shadizar is

a city of the Kingdom of Corinth. In an early issue an uncomplimentary
though veiled reference was made to the Queen - it suggested, in a
slightly roundabout way, that she was overfond of cavalry troopers -
and the King of Corinthia, Dave Millward, used this as an excuse to
. 127
send a force of guardsmen to arrest the Editor and take over the
presses. This, of course, couldn't be allowed because it would have
made the Herald a Corinthian puppet; whereas it is intended to be
completely unbiased (or, as Phil Barker puts it, hostile to everyone!);
but we couldn't just tell Dave it was forbidden, so we had to organise a
riot among the citizens and students in favour of a Free Press, which
succeeded in staving off the situation. Dave had enough on his hands
with a Hyrkanian invasion, without facing interna! revolt as wetl! It was
all very good fun, and is an example of what can be done in this way. I
enjoy running the Herald almost as much as I do Hyboria itself, and I
think the players look forward to receiving it.

As we all know, religion ptayed a large part in historical conflicts,

and this is another campaign extra which can be introduced with good
effect. Originally I did not pay too much attention to this in Hyboria,
apart from vaguely feeling that the eastern regions were sort of
Mohammedans and the western pseudo-Christian. The only real part it
played in the early days was that Stygia was ruled by a Council of
Priests, since this fitted in with Howard's conception of the area, but
this system got overthrown at a later date. Religion really began to take
effect when Ed Smith was installed as King of Shem. Heat once asked
about local religions, so I proceeded to work some out. In Howard's
bocks the two main religions of the west centred round the worship of
Mitra (presumably derived from the Roman Mithras) and the lesser
known Ahura, so I set these up as the twin gods Ahura-Mitra with
Shem as the focal point of their worship. Ed at once began settlng up a
proper religious framework with priests, bishops, missionaries etc,
which he used as an illicit communications network with great success.
Other players followed suit - Richard Nelson for instance founded
monarch-worship in his country and proceeded to capitalise on it very
effectively.

Religions can thus be used for a number of things - as cloaks for

other activities, as either bolsters foror checks upon governments, and
of course as excuses for holy wars etc. Also, it should be remembered
that in mediaeval states the finances and often foreign affairs of the
country were usually entrusted to churchmen who were often the only
ones with the necessary education for such tasks.

Talking of education brings me quite smoothly to another point.

The members of my group being gifted with a good deal of low cunning
and the ability to think up ways and means of stretching the rules to
their advantage - hallmark of a good wargamer! - it wasn't long before
several of them hit on the idea of founding Universitles and Staff
Colleges. The idea of these was of course that University graduates
would be capable of higher skills in finance and other spheres, and
might be responsible for revolutionary new devices in the fields of
communications, agriculture etc, while officers who passed through the
Staff College would have their efficiency ratings increased. I am always
128
wilHng to allow ingenuity to gain its proper reward, so this was allowed
and proper regulations set up to see to it. I also made sure that such
institutions were costly to their inventors!

At one time an institution much used in Hyboria was that of

mercenary soldiers. To same extent, of course, any soldier who
receives pay could be termed a mercenary, but in this context I mean
the soldier who sells his sword to the highest bidder. In the early days I
had a number of mercenary bands, on the lines of the ttalian
condottieri, which hired out toa country for the term of one campaign.
Later I changed this to a system whereby anyone could raise
mercenary regiments, as opposed to regulars or levies. These would
count as fully-trained at once instead of having to go through a training
period since their basis would be old soldiers, not raw recruits. This
was very useful since you could raise them in a hurry at the start of a
campaign or in times of desperate need, and then dismiss them at the
end. of the campaign; the snag was that they cost, besides an initial
raising fee, twice as much as regulars and tended to be far less
reliable - most mercenaries were quite capable of selling out their
current masters, and woe betide anyone who used them to garrison an
important point!

Later, when I altered the campaign rules to allow players to

increase the size of their regular forces and their composition -
something which had previously been banned - I had intended to go
back to the original idea of special bands of mercenaries for hire. After
considerable thought I finally abandoned this idea, partly because it
would have necessitated a lot more record keeping, finding bases for
the mercenary leaders, deciding how they lived when unemployed,
keeping books for their earnings and expenditure etc, and partly
because I couldn't see players wanting to employ such notoriously
unreliable persons now that they could merely raise more regulars. So
at present there are no mercenaries in Hyboria as such.

Of course, when drawing up rules for the employment of

mercenaries there are two ways of looking at the problem. Firstly one
must consider the probability that mercenaries, as purely professlonal
soldiers, would be better trained and better fighters than would levies,
or, indeed, many regulars. They would be more capable of looking
after themselves in the field, their commanders would often be skilled
generals and, despite the popular picture, most mercenaries were loyal
to their paymasters as long as they received their pay. After all, it
reflected on their professional reputation and decreased their chances
of employment if they constantly betrayed their employers! The
obverse of the coin, of course, is that mercenaries were hard~bitten
and rapacious troops who could be relied upon to commit the worst
excesses on captured territory, and could be almost as dangerous to
friendly inhabitants; while since soldiering was their livelihood and their
lives their main capital, and since they were not inspired by any sense
129
of patriotism, they were not likely to go to extremes ta support a losing
cause. In difficulties they were prone ta surrender in the hope that their
opponents might one day need their services and therefore would give
them reasonable terms. Moreover, two opposing mercenary armies
tended ta manoeuvre rather than fight, their objectives being booty
rather than hard knocks. So you see, you can draw up rules for
mercenaries in almost any shape you please and be able to justify
them ta same extent.

lf you have created a monetary system in your continent, a

logical development is to also lay out some system of trade. In
Hyboria, when I first introduced supply rules, I warked out which
provinces and cauntries produced surpluses af certain items, and
which other cauntries needed these supplies. From this beginning J
was able to set up a pattern af trade routes, using for instance rivers
more often than roads as easier lines of communications, which in turn
gave me nadal points as large trade-centres and a basis for revenue
from custams dues etc. The danger here, af course, is of going toa far
in one's enthusiasm and getting the whole thing so complicated that it
becomes unworkable. In a country the size of Hyboria toa much detail
of trade is impracticable as I just haven't the time ta devote ta it; but in
a smaller set-up it is easy ta see that the movement of trade caravans
could be a useful feature, having an effect upon strategy and
particularly upon supply.

Another fairly recent innovation in Hyboria has been the

introduction of chance effects. We decided that in addition to all the
compllcations devised by the players, there ought ta be certain events
outside their central which played a part in the proceedings. Obviously
harvests could fluctuate, landslides could block impartant roads,
earthquakes could occur; similarly dishonest treasurers could
embezzle funds, riots could break out, and numerous other things
could happen. We didn't want ta make this too effective but merely to
introduce a certain chance element which would occur now and then to
generally liven up the proceedings.

First of all we drew up a list of events which came under the

categories we thought reasonable, some good, same bad. There
turned out to be 16 of these, and I list them below; doubtless if you put
your mind to it you can think of others as well.

Plague
Bumper Crops
Religious riots
Efficient Treasurer saves money
Crop Damage
Discovery of new mine
Peculation in the Treasury
Betrayal of enemy spy network
130
 Fraudulent Quartermaster
Success by own intelligence network
Treachery in High Places
Outbreak of Banditry
Forest Fire
Earthquake
Sex Scandal among Nobility
Assassination of important person

For each of these we made a Happening Gard, which we

shuffled and put face down in a pile. We decided to draw from this pile
once a month, so as to strictly limit the number of happenings; and, so
as to be fair to the players, since we had at the time have power
groups we decided to give each a certain number of draws. To make it
easier we split the largest, the Aquilonian Federation, into Northern
and Southern Aquilonia, so that six areas each had two happenings a
year. A simple draw soon decided the "order of play", Northern
Aquilonia drawing a card the first month, Hyrkania the second, and so
on till all six had drawn, and then repeating in the second half af the
year, not necessarily in the same order, of course.

As each month came along, we drew a card from the pile and
applied it to the requisite country. First of all a dice was thrown ta see
the strength of the happening. A six of course made it very strong, a
one relatively weak. We then worked out the actual locality of the
happening, either geographically or among the characters. Two
examples will show the sort of thing. A card drawn for Northern
Aquilonia gave us an earthquake, and the dice throw made it
moderately severe. By dividing the map inta areas (which was already
done anyway for other reasons) we settled an the area, and another
dice throw pin-pointed the occurrence in Bossonia. We then made
quite a thing of this, reporting it in the Herald, starting a Bossonian
Earthquake Disaster Fund, etc, and had a lot of fun from it. As it
happened, it had no effect upon any military activity, being far away
from the fighting fronts; but this was pure luck - it could have
happened anywhere.

A second happening card later fell upon Shem and called fora
success by their intelligence apparat. This called for rather more work,
but same dice throws indicated a happening in the capital of Vendhya,
with whom Shem was at war. A look in the diary for .the month showed
that the Hyrkanian Ambassador to Vendhya was due to die - and
Vendhya and Hyrkania were then in a delicate position vis avis each
other, where an incident could spark off war. So, we set up the death
of the Ambassader as an assassination, played it up in the Herald,
released rumours of Vendhyan plats - and lesser,rumours of Shemite
plots - and let things take their course. As it happened it didn't push
Hyrkania into war with Vendhya, but it did worsen relationships and
generally stir things up.
131
 lntelligence systems are of course another item which can be
used to effect in a campaign. Spying has always gone on in Hyboria,
and in the past I tended to be fairly lenient about this. Hyrkania
penetrated Turan early in the war against the Aquilonian Federation,
planting spies in all the main towns; these had a number of successes
and also a few defeats. They were responsible, for instance, for the
successful betrayal of Tadmor, the Turanian capita!, which virtually
finished Turanian resistance, but they failed in an attempt to burn the
Turanian fleet. Until players also set up anti-espionage systems I
allowed spies a good deal of latitude; only taking strong action against
them under special circumstances. Phil Barker, for instance, allowed
himself to be carried away by a desire to "needle" Charles Grant on the
occasion when the Hyrkanian fleet suffered damage in a storm and
straggled back into port rather the worse for wear. Phil directed that his
agents in the port should stick up copies of a scurrilous ballad, and this
alerted Charles to their presence. He directed a house to house search
and I ruled that Phil's whole apparat in the area was uncovered and
smashed.

Ed Smith, with typical cunning, set up a very complete network

of pseudo traders with regular routes and methods of passing
information. Gradually the idea spread until the continent began to be
infested with spies! At this point I passed control of spies over to my
fellow-controller, Peter Millen, who adopted a much harder attitude. He
worked out strict rules for spying, which were as follows:

lf it is required to send an order to an agent in foreign territory,

throw one dice, multiply by ten for the maximum number of hexagons
the message .can travel.

a) lf message received, will agent obey? 1 or 2, no

b) lf message not received, will agent move? 1 or 2, yes

, Divide up the potential cities and throw to see which the agent will
make for.

Throw for success of journey:

1 to 3 hexagons 2 or up, successful

4 to 6 3
7 to 9 4
10 to 15 5
16 up 6

lf unsuccessful, throw again:

1 Turned back
2 Changed Course
3 Killed by bandits
132
4 Captured by enemy counter-intelligence
5 Delayed - throw dice for number of weeks out of commission.
A major disruption, agent ends up in city at least twenty
hexagons from position.
6. Agents reports - receipt determined as in 1.

Agents having a permanent station will be immune from having

to throw as in 2b. Local circumstances may alter the chances of
success of travellers, i.e. excessive guerrilla activity etc.

133
 8: HORSE AND MUSKET CAMPAIGNS
So far, although many of the things we have discussed are appticable
in some ways to any period of campaigning, the emphasis has tended
to be on campaigning in the ancient and mediaeval periods; largely
because my own Hyboria, on which so many of these rules are based,
is set in that particular era. All of us, however, have our own pet
periods of operation, and campaigning fits just as well into any of
these, as I hope to show by dealing with each in turn.

The term Horse and Musket I use loosely to cover the period
which started around the Thirty Years War and came to an end with
the Napoleonic era or .a little later. In my early days of war gaming it
was also used to describe the American Civil War, but for campaign
purposes I have felt it necessary to draw our line before that famous
conflict, which you will find considered in the next chapter.

At first glance, one wonders just how many changes are

necessary to adapt our original ancient and mediaeval campaign rules
to those of Horse and Musket. We have not yet reached the period of
mechanisation, so transport remains on the level of the horse, horse-
drawn transport, and the footslogger. Naval and river transport still
depends on the oar and the sail. lndeed, as far as movement is
concerned, there is probably not a great deal of difference; possibly
there are more roads available, rivers are bridged more regularly and
ferries in operation over large ones where bridges are not available.
On the other hand, there is a distinct possibility that the physical
characteristics of our soldiers have, if anything, weakened slightly; with
the growth of towns and factories, recruits are not necessarily brought
up from boyhood on physical labour, so that marching ability and
staying · power may be slightly less than in ancient times. This is a
characteristic which will increase in ratio as we go forward in period;
there can be little doubt that the average soldier of say, World War
Two could be marched ·into the ground by a Greek hoplite or a Roman
legionnaire. The point can be made that both the former wore heavier
clothing and armour; on the other hand they carried little excess
baggage, while the foot-soldier af Marlburian or Napoleonic vintage is
usually depicted as bowed down under the weight of his pack, so this
tends to cancel out.

Still an the subject of movement, we have one extra item to

consider: the question of artillery. In our earlier periods we have
allowed for baggage wagons; normal artillery would certainly not move
faster than these, and much of it would indeed be slower. In the earlier
part of the Horse and Musket period, the Thirty Years War and the
English Civil War, guns were an extremely mixed breed but all of them
were slow, bulky, cumbrous pieces - if we discount the leather pieces
introduced by Gustvus Adolphus, for instance. They would really only
135
move by road, and in the slightest bad weather would be completely
immobilised.

In fact, it is not until the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic
era that we find artillery relatively mobile. By then horse artillery was in
vogue, and these light pieces could move at cavalry speed. Field
artillery could keep up with infantry on good roads, but it became
bogged down in mud and such conditions just as easily as its earlier
editions. Siege artillery would be very slow indeed and would need
!arge numbers of horses for its transport. Crossing an unbridged river
would present greater difficulties for artillery, being impracticable in
many cases by boat, thus needing the building of rafts of fairly heavy
construction. Forests and hills become much more difficult country.

As you progress into the period, so this problem of transporting

the artillery becomes more important. In the Thirty Years War and the
English Civil War, if conditions became too bad for the movement of
artillery, you abandoned it and pressed on with the cavalry and
infantry, just as you could leave your supply train behind to catch up
later. The absence of artillery was not usual1y of decisiva effect on the
battlefield, since the guns of the period were almost incapabte of
manoeuvre; they were placed in position at the beginning of the action
and had no means of moving from that position; it is hard to think of
more than half a dozen actions in which they proved the decisiva arm.

Even in the wars of Marlborough and Turenne artlllery is still a

subsidiary arm, important largety in siege operations or entrenched
positions; not so much because the guns themselves were still lacking
in execution, but because there was still little understanding of the way
to construct their carriages for mobility, to properly supply them, or the
need for a proper corps of artillery to deal with all their needs. But in
the days of Frederick the Great and Napoleon, artillery was a full
partner of the other arms, and no general in his right mind would
abandon his artillery because it bogged down and press on to accept
battle without it. So in these later periods bad weather or bad road
conditions become a much greater obstacle to the passage of armies.

It is when we tum to the question of supply that we find the

greater changes. To begin with, on the mere question of filling a
soldier's belly, we once again have to realise that times have changed.
It is necessary to provide food on a larger and more regular scale since
the average soldier needs more food than before and needs it in more
civilised styles; moreover, the average soldier is less capable of
fending for himself. This should not be carried ta excess, of course -
mast veteran soldiers could forage pretty successfully, but at the same
time they preferred to be issued with properly baked bread, regular
meat rations etc. On a march, riders would be sent ahead to towns on
the route ta requisition so many thousand rations, field-bakeries would

136
accornpany the arrny, and generally speaking the baggage train and
supply train would swelt to alarrning proportions.

When you corne to the question of weapons and equipment the

difference becomes really frightening. In the ancient, and to a limited
extent, the mediaeval period, alrnost all weapons and equipment could,
at need, be fabricated and repaired on the spot. Spears, javelins,
arrows, pikes, lances, breast-plates, chain-mail, a competent srn ith
with only a little equipment could produce new weapons and cobble up
damaged equipment. The only supplies needed were a certain amount
of meta!, and wood which was almost certainly obtainable locally. As
soon as you get into the gunpowder period, your difficulties are
increased tenfold.

Not only do the weapons themselves become more complicated,

more difficult to make and harder to repair, but ammunition can no
longer be cobbled up from local materials. You need ample supplies of
gunpowder, and gunpowder is dangerous stuff, high ly inflammable and
capable of causing great damage if set off accidentally - yet at the
same time easily ruined by wet or even damp. These latter dangers
decrease somewhat later in our period when powder is more
sophisticated and musket ammunition more of a pre-packed variety,
but it remains a matter of same consequence throughout this era.

You therefore have to reckon on setting up special factories for

making gunpowder, muskets, pistols, and artillery just as in the ancient
and mediaeval period you set up armouries to produce in bulk the
weapons you needed. But now the time element must be more closely
considered; you don't produce a musket or a field-piece in five
minutes. Captured stocks of weapons and ammunition become even
more important; and in this period there is still really no question of
difficulty of use, since we are not talking of exact calibres in guns or
artillery, and the bulk of your ammunition is not in cartridge form but
loose powder and ball. Thus supplies captured from the enemy will
often be usable in your weapons, and captured weapons take your
ammunition.

Even so, this again complicates your supply problem. In ancient

days, an archer carried his quiver with perhaps 20 arrows in it; a
baggage wagon might carry enough to refill the quivers of a whole unit
many times over. In this period, a musketeer, who gradually became
the standard infantryman, carried a small supply of charges on his
person, but relied very much on the supplies of powder and ball in the
train; and powder and ball are heavy and bulky items, so that your
baggage and supply train swells once more. Towards the end of the
period this becomes complicated by the introduction of special
weapons such as the rifle, which needs specialised ammunition; at
Waterloo, La Haye Sainte was lost purely because the ammunition

137
sent up for its garrison at a crucial period did not fit the men's
weapons, leaving them virtually defenceless.

Amphibious operations, too,. become more complicated by the

difficulty of embarking and landing all the heavy equipment now
needed over open beaches .. Ports are therefore much more necessary
for embarkation and disembarkation. Warships are far rnore
complicated than our old galleys, they rely now entirely on sail instead
of oars, so that wind is all important, they cannot beach on an open
shore as galleys could, and they need heavy ordnance.

lf, therefore, you are going to introduce financial rules, you need
to virtually start all over again. Your taxation rules can be adopted
without too much trouble, though they should be revised to a national
rather than a feudal system; the pay system for the troops can also be
retained on the same scales. But you need a whole new conception for
the supply of weapons, equipment and ammunition; especially
ammunition, since this cannot be used over and over again like arrows
or javelins. Cannonballs, of course, are recoverable to some degree,
but gunpowder and musket balls, once discharged, are gone for ever,
and consequently must be replaced before the next battle. Armies
must therefore either carry very large supplies with them or make
arrangements for regular replenishing from supply depots.

Battle losses, too, need slightly different treatment. The lasers

often had to leave a high proportion of their artillery on the field
because of animal casualties, and it is worth bearing in mind that
casualties caused by cavalry other than lancers have a far higher
recovery rate than those inflicted by fire.

The question of prisoners, too, takes on a somewhat different

aspect lf we disregard the exceptional circumstances and take the
normal ones, we find that arrangements now have to be made for
holding large numbers of prisoners of war under possibly hard but
usually reasonable living conditions, and to exchange them either
during truces or at the end of a war. No longer can they be simply sold
as slaves, which both got rid of them and earned a profit as well!
Financially, therefore, and supply-wise, allocations must be made for
this purpose, which also means that guards must be assigned to look
after them. Prisoners therefore retain a certain nuisance value.

Siege warfare has also altered to a considerable degree.

However, if you are merely wishful to treat sieges as necessary
nuisances - as in effect we did in the ancient rules - your problem is if
anything simplified as you go on. In the day of Vauban, the great
French engineer, and in later periods, siege-craft had become such a
predictable thing that, given a superiority of men and siege guns for the
attackers, and no interference from an opposing field army, a
competent engineer could predict almost to the day when the place
138
would fall. He would tell you that the first parallels would be opened on
such a day, the batteries would be planted so many days later, the
second parallels would be ready on such a date, and a breach ready
for assault later. Moreover, by this time sieges were so stylised that in
ninety per cent of cases assaults were never delivered; the place
automatically surrendered when the breach became practicable for
assault, to save unnecessary bloodshed on both sides. It is really on ly
when you getto the Napoleonic period that you find these rules of war
set aside and a return to such scenes of carnage as Badajoz and
Ciudad Rodrigo,

It is therefore a relatively simple task to set up new equations for

sieges, based on the numbers ·of garrison and attackers, the power of
the guns on cither side, and the resolution of the commanders. This
latter is mast important; a resolute commander of the defence could
greatly delay affairs by mounting constant sorties by counter-mining ,
and by repairing shattered defences and building new ones in their
rear. Only in the most exceptional circumstances, however, could this
defence be a successful one unless a relieving army arrived.
Moreover, while in earlier periods a city or fortress cou ld on ly be
reduced by the starvation of its garrison's bellies, in this period it can
also fall by starvation of its guns and muskets when supplies of
ammunition run out. All these things must be taken into account when
setting up your equation.

Strangely enough, in all my years of war gaming I have never

been involved in a Napoleonic campaign , even as a mere subordinate
commander. I can't think of another period that I haven't dabbled in at
one time or another, but Napofeonic has eluded me - largely I think
because for many years it was the most popular one and I avoided it
from motives of inverted snobbery! T he opinions I give are therefore
not based on practical experience as they are in all other periods.
Neverthefess the Napoleonic era, being in effect the culmination of a
period of experimentation with the possibilities of smoothbore muskets
and artillery, is only a logical extension of the rules which apply in the
earlier horse and musket eras, so l fee l that l am on relatively safe
ground.

One of the most important innovations of the Napoleonic period

was the introduction, in Continental countries, of the conscript army in
place of the old professional one. This did not apply in England , and
was probably one of the reasons for the superiority of Eng lish troops,
in the main, to their continental adversaries. The English, being
professionals, were better trained and disciplined, while in France at
least conscripts were sent into action with a minimum of training, in
some cases being barely able to load and fire their muskets. Th is
criticism of course can not be applied too sweepingly, as many of the
French regiments would contain a large percentage of veterans; but it
is certainly a point ta be born in mind when assessing the capabilities
139
of continental armies and the training periods necessary toturn recruits
into soldiers.

Another point was the increasing importance of artillery under

Napoleon's influence. Armies tended to include more and more guns in
relation to the number of infantry and cavalry, and calibres became
much more standardised - the French tending to concentrate on
heavier pieces than, for instance, the British. At Waterloo much of the
French field artillery was 12-pounder, while the British were only just
standardising on the 9-pounder. These things should be borne in mind
when setting up your armies for the opening of a campaign.

To recapitulate, therefore: campaign rules for the Horse and

Musket period can effectively be built on the framework of those for
earlier periods, but a good deal of adaptation is needed to allow for the
development of gunpowder and more sophisticated methods of war.

140
 9: VICTORIAN CAMPAIGNS
In this chapter we reach the beginning of the mechanised period. Not
only did it see the adoption of breech-loading, rifled artillery and the
repeating rifle, but, even more important, it saw the introduction of the
railway engine as a means of transport From now on, speed of
movement was not entirely to be expressed in terms of 1eg-power.
Accordingly we have to consider new movement rules to express this
new conception.

The railway, however, had not reached as yet the speed and
efficiency it was to achieve in later periods. It had a very great
influence upon the American Civil War, the first large-scale conflict in
this period, but this influence could be disastrous as well as
advantageous. Generals tended to become tied to railroads for
supplies and reinforcements, and railroads were easily torn up and
destroyed by relatively small raiding forces. On at least two occasions
in the West Federal advances were brought to a complete halt
because Confederate cavalry tore up the railroad tracks in their rear
and deprived them of the supplies without which they could not move.

The efficiency of the railroad depended on maintenance of its

track and a sufficiency of rolling stock, and this in turn called for raw
materials, factories and heavy industries. It is notable that as the war
progressed, the efficiency of the Southern railroads got progressively
worse as they were starved of these vital adjuncts. Thus, although on
the face of it, railways would increase speed of movement very greatly,
when you allow for these difficulties, for time taken loading and
unloading trains, breakdowns and the general fact that railroads were
still in their infancy, it would seem reasonable to make the average rail
speed three times that of cavalry.

Time spent on repairs to the raitroad would of course depend on

the type of damage done. lf a raiding party, as was usual, merely tore
up lengths of track, it woutd be a relatively simple task to replace
these, providing spare rails, sleepers etc. were availab1e. On the other
hand, a railway bridge, a culvert or a tunnel blown up with high
explosives would mean a very lengthy delay and the necessity for
skilled engineers. The same factors apply of course to the construction
of new railway lines.

It can therefore be seen that railways at this stage present as

many headaches as assets. Their main value, in fact, is as a means of
transferring troops from one front to another in a minimum time without
wearing out men and horses by forced marches; the American Civil
War gives us numerous examples of large bodies of troops being
moved great distances in this way.

141
 With the introduction · of the repeating rifle half-way through this
period - it was known in the American Civil War but not used in great
quantities, although toward the end many Federal cavalry carried
repeating carbines ~ problems of supply increase once again.
Obviously with the abundance of firepower thus offered, the
expenditure of ammunition lncreased by leaps and bounds, and with it
the necessity to stockpile larger quantities both with the army itselfand
at the forward supply depots. lf both sides are using the same basic
equipment, as in the Civil War, these supply depots become important
targets, both to deprive the enemy of needed supplies and to replenish
one's own.

Sea and river transport was also in the process of transition from
sail to steam, and to same extent from wooden ships to metal ones.
However, all that this achieved for the moment was a means of
movement against the wind or in the absence of one. Actual speed
was not increased, though speed of passage might be, and to a
degree this was offset by the need to give up cargo space for carrying
coal, and of coaling stations to supply the necessary fuel. In general,
therefore, we should regard the engines for the moment more in the
nature of auxiliaries, except in river transport, where the steamboat
was making a considerable impact by the time of the American Civil
War. The river steamboat tended to burn wood instead of coal, and this
could be cut locally without too much trouble; it therefore became a
valuable transport and warship on such rivers as the Mississippi.

The American Civil War offers much scope for campaigning on

either a large or small scale. On the large scale it is possible to deal
with the war as a whole; ample maps and information are available on
the period, and this will give scope for grand strategy in determining
where best to apply your resources to the best advantage. The one
real drawback is the inevitability of the whole thing: one cannot escape
the conclusion that despite all bravery and skill possible, the North only
needs to retain its will to fight (something a wargamer never lacks!) to
eventually overcome the South by sheer weight of numbers and
industrial potential. There was never any real chance that the South
would win unless the North !ost its nerve.

Coming down to a more local level, this disadvantage can be

discarded if you choose particular campaigns to fight within the main
war, or even to construct one of your own. t remember that in our early
days Don Featherstone and 1 fought several Civil War campaigns of a
local character, though I seem to remember that mast of them were
eventually abandoned without reaching areal decision. I know I greatly
enjoyed mast of these, probably because on the whole I had rather the
better of them, whereas when we later switched to the Franco-
Prussian War I never got to grips with the problems and suffered a
series of heavy defeats - in fact I think I only won one battle, so that I

142
don't remember the campaign with a great deal of enthusiasm. As I
was commanding the French, for once things ran true to history.

Reverting to the American Civil War, I normally commanded the

Federal forces, although by preference I must admit to being a
Confederate and a great admirer of Robert E. Lee. Funnily enough
Don thought more of Grant (presumably because he won in the end, I
can't think of any tactical reasons) so it's rather surprising that We
didn't switch commands! One campaign we fought was Jackson in the
Valley, and Don endeavoured to make this realistic by the device of
marking on the map two Confederate armies, only one of which really
existed. This was intended to reproduce the uncertainty Jackson's
speed änd secrecy created among the Federal commanders.
Unfortunately Don didn't think up any rules which forced me to commit
the errors made by the Federals, and although I never knew until
actual contact which was the real army, it didn't have the desired effect
ef cleuding my judgement. This was ene ef the campaigns which was
abandened, since after twe battles Jacksen was not in much shape to
continue!

We atso fought a campaign in the West with the addition of river

flotillas, and I have vivid memories ef a handseme victery ever Don's
fleet - ene ef the few occasions on which I shone as an admiral, my
record afloat being well below average! Perhaps l'm not seasick on
rivers! I also remember that campaign for an attempt to grapple with
the problems of rail transport - we each had three trains available and
went mad trying to work out time-tables etc.

There are of ceurse many other wars during this period which
can be reproduced as war game campaigns, though mest ef them
have not caught the imagination to the extent which the American Civil
War did. There is of course the Crimean War, the Austro-Prussian
War, or the Franco-Prussian War; of the three, the Crimean possibly
offers the mest since it was a limited war; without too much time and
effort a very good Crimean game could be set up. Both the others
involve very large forces and, unless much time is available, can only
be treated in a limited fashion.

However, this does not exhaust the possibilities of the period,

since this was the era of Colonial Wars, which offers much scope for
campaigning. The Indian Mutiny, for instance, is a natural for a
campaign. I may be slightly biased, since this was the first and possibly
the most enjoyable campaign I ever fought in - as· mentioned earlier I
commanded the mutineers with great success - but it has the
advantage that forces tended to be small and strategical opportunities
very wide. In our campaign we started off by dicing for all native
regiments to see if they mutinied or remained toyal. Those which
remained loyal were still, however, suspect, and when they first went
into battle, at any one time during the action I had the right to try and
143
bring them over to my side by a second dice throw. This gave a great
element of chance to the whole thing which distinguished it from any
other campaign I have fought, except a Wars of the Roses one which
included a slightly similar proviso.

There is also, of course, the Boer War, with its wide strategic
scope and the use of masses of mounted infantry. Like the American
Civil War; the outcome is of course inevitable, but if it was run on a
time limit - i.e. the British had a limited time in which to defeat the
Boers - this disadvantage could be overcome. Campaigns of this sort,
however, have one inherent difficulty - wargamers, with the
advantage of hindsight, don't usually commit such stupid blunders as
generals of the calibre of Sir Redvers Buller did, which further reduces
the chances of the Boers!

Apart from this you have the very many smaller colonial wars -
Zululand, Afghanistan, the Sikhs, the Sudan, etc. Any of them can
make an interesting single campaign to fill up a relatively short period
of time. In mast of them you have to balance a European army against
native forces, less well equipped and disciplined but probably needing
less in the way of supplies and often capable of faster movement than
their opponents.

This isa period, moreover, in which it is Very easy to makeup a

semi-historical campaign or a completely fictional one. An example of
the former is another campaign I fought with Don Featherstone. This
was set in Southern Africa and included a Boer revolt against the
British, but was slightly complicated by the inclusion of a powerful and
independent Native State in the same area. We had just been doing a
Jot of research inta the Sikh Wars, and Don had been very impressed
by the Sikh heavy artillery. This Native State was thus equipped with a
number of very heavy guns which made it an awkward customer. On
this occasion I for once commanded the British (it made quite a change
from my usual role of native chieftain) and soon got involved with this
Native State. Those darned heavy guns were always an awkward thing
to face with my lighter artillery - I seem to remember I complained
about this and Don obligingly built in a rule which made the heavy guns
capab1e of blowing up occasionally! - but we had a number of very
enjoyable games. There were some interesting points built inte the
campaign - for the first time I remember civilians were brought in, for
instance. These were the inhabitants of several out-stations; I couldn't
just abandon them as I !ost points for captured civilians, so I had to
conduct a series of fighting retreats to cover them and their cattle as
they moved slowly to safety. There was also a river gunboat available,
which was complicated by the fact that the main rive r went through a
tunnel which the Boers kept on trying to blow up, which made it
dangerous for the gunboat ta operate above the tunnel!

144
 The other example, of a completely fictional affair, is provided by
Joe Morschauser, who for years ran the Hauserian Empire in Africa.
This was a nativa state, but equipped with a good deal af modern fire-
power, which was bordered by French, German and British territory.
Many wars were fought between varying alliances, as the Empire
struggled to retain its territory and the European powers sought to
increase theirs at its expense. One outstanding feature af these wars
was that the battles were fought with 54mm figures an an immense
table in Joe's basement - probably one of the last campaigns fought an
this sort of scale. I also remembered being impressed by pictures af
the Great Wall of Morobad, the Hauserian capita!, and of Joe telling me
that he had constructed it by filling children's sand castle moulds with
plaster - it looked very realistic. Alas, the Hauserian Empire was at last
overrun and though at one stage there was talk af impending revolt
and its revival in a new campaign, I don't think it ever got off the
ground.

This sort of thing, however, can be created on much the same

lines as those laid down earlier for a mythical continent in former
periods. Central Africa, for instance, can be taken as the basis for your
map, giving you much of the geographical information you need, and
you can parcel out the territory between large native states and smaller
European enclaves. Much can then be achieved by diplomatic
manoeuvring in setting one off against the other, the aim of course
being the eventual absorption of all the native areas by the Europeans.
Care should, however, be taken not to make the latter too strong
initially, limiting the number of European troops and equipment, and
making them rely heavily upon locally raised regiments, Kings African
Rifles and the like. They should be encouraged to give support to the
native states as auxiliaries rather than, at first at least, being able to
openly attack the latter. This sort of set-up can provide a good deal of
enjoyment for either a couple of friends or a larger group, and can last
a long time ifwished.

A European war of the period I have so far failed to mention is

the Russo-Turkish War. This also makes fora good campaign if you
give the Turks better leadership, organisation and supply services - in
other words, treat them at the same value as the Russians. There are
plenty of strategic opportunities, yet the campaign itself isa limited one
and is therefore suitable fora relatively short-term operation.

Mention of the war, best remembered for the long defence of

Plevna by Osman Pasha, the one high-quality Turkish leader, brings
me to the point that this was the period in which fortifications, both field
and fixed, played large parts. Sebastopol in the Crimean War, Plevna
in the Russo-Turkish, Paris in the Franco-Prussian - and Metz as well -
innumerable field works in the American Civil War, Ladysmith and
Kimberley in the Boer War, all influenced greatly both the strategy and
tactics of the times. Although it was not yet properly realised, and
145
would not reach its full development until our next period, the increase
in rapid delivery and weight of ffrepower was giving the defence a very
great edge over the attack under most circumstances, and this must be
kept in mind in planning campaigns within this period. Fortifications of
the old style were, it is true, increasingly vulnerable to modern
weapons, but artillery was, as yet, incapable of seriously damaging
troops concealed in well-sited, well-constructed trenches, as the British
found to their cost in the Boer War. Relatively small forces could now
hold ground against much larger ones for fairly long periods if they
were resolutely led. Our rules for delaying actions, for instance,
therefore need bringing up to date and the stopping power of the
defence strengthened. Like most transitional periods, this presents
certain problems in setting up a campaign, but at the same time offers
a lot of opportunities and will, with the necessary research and
organisation, give you considerable enjoyment.

146
 10: WORLD WAR ONE
To my knowledge, the 1914-18 War has been sadly neglected by
wargamers, both tactically and for campaign purposes. It is easy to
understand why: mast of us think of the Great War in the context of the
stabilised Western Front, of abysmal tactical thinking, of blood-baths to
gain a few miserable yards of stinking mud. This, however, is a rather
short-sighted view for the wargamer.

For one thing, if you torget the Western Front you will find a
number of areas where fluid campaigns were fought from time to time.
The opening campaign in the West, for instance, is full of strategical
and tactical interest; much of the fighting on the Russian front was af a
fluid nature rather than full-scale trench warfare, partly because of the
huge frontages involved and partly because there was less con-
centration of men and depth of defence and thus the front was easier
to rupture than in the West; there was mobile war on a small scale in
Africa, and, above all, there was Allenby's campaign in Palestine.
Moreover, strategically even the Western Front can be converted into
an interesting exercise.

Having, I hope, convinced you that the period is worth more than
a cursory glance, let us now consider the changes from those
preceding it. Firstly, of course, mechanisation has now reached a fairly
high level, though in the actual fighting areas reliance is still toa large
degree on footslogging and horsepower. Railways now deliver troops
and supplies to the rear areas, light railways have some use further
forward, but the lorry has yet to make any real impact. Full mobility has
not yet been reached - it was, in part, the fact that the advance could
only be made at foot speed, and that continuous marching gradually
wore out the hard-pressed infantry, that militated against the success
of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914. Rifles and artillery have reached a high
level of efficiency, but they have also diversified to the extent that
captured ammunition and weapons are no longer of such value to their
captors; French ammunition does not fit German guns and vice~versa,
so unless you captured both guns and large stocks of ammunition to fit
them, they were of no value other than their loss to the enemy. Cavalry
as a shock weapon have last their value - a lesson which should have
been fearnt from the previous period but wasn't - but, if trained as
mounted infantry instead, could still be of considerable value in fluid
conditions, as the British proved in the opening campaign and in
Palestine, and the Russians likewise in their Civil War.

At sea, sail has now disappeared completely, as have wooden

ships, the latter replaced by armour plate, and the character of naval
war has been changed completely by the mine and the torpedo. Close
blockade is no longer possible, and even naval support for landings or
coastal operations has to consider the menace of enemy submarines.
147
Even more important, a third factor has been introduced which in our
final period is to complicate matters unbelievably - air power.
Beginning purely as a substitute for, or extension of, cavalry
reconnaissance, by the end of the war it was also to be reckoned with
on the battlefield and had for the first time in a century brought the
terrors of war beyond the battlefield by striking at towns miles from the
fighting lines.

One inescapable conclusion is reached as soon as we start

considering the impact af all this an our campaign rules. Up to now I·
have preached steadily the doctrine of a weekly map move in order to
keep ta the tempo of the times; now there is no option, even if we are
contemplating only a strategical campaign, but to change over to a
daily map move. Toa much can now happen in the course of a day
and, moreover, fighting is now constant - battles last for weeks, even
months, instead of hours, and movement can be so rapid that it is no
longer possible to issue positive orders for a seven-day period. The
situation can change toa rapidly.

This being so, we have in effect to scrap our old movement rules
and draw up new ones on the basis of daily averages. The difficulty
lies in deciding upon a daily average in this period, and to do so we
must in fact differentiate not so much between road movement and
cross country movement as we did in the old rules, but between
movement behind the lines and within the fighting area. Even so, it
remains a difficult question, because at different times different
conditions existed. For instance, in the Retreat from Mons, the B.E.F.
marched 59 miles in 60 hours on one occasion, and the advancing
Germans a1so covered astonishing distances. These were marches
entirely on foot: the men undoubtedly suffered, but after brief rests they
were capable af fighting severe actions. Yet it would be wrong to say
that the average daily movement for marching columns was twenty-
odd miles. Similarly, during the later fighting in Flanders, at
Passchendaele and such places, an approach march ta reach jumping
off positions of only same three ar four miles might take all day and
leave the troops so exhausted at the end af it that they were not fit for
offensive operations.

Movement rules must therefore be much more diversified,

making allowances for weather, terrain and special circumstances; this
applies likewise, of course, to artillery, now once more getting
cumbersome, in particular the heavy pieces so greatly needed for the
Western Front battles, and, later, for tanks, whose engines were far
from robust and, while quite capable of crossing trenches, tended to
ditch in shell holes and stick in the mud. On the other hand, rail
transport is now much more efficient, and relatively free from
interruption since the front lines are no longer fluid enough for raiding
forces to slip through at will, and the infant air forces are not yet
capable of serious bombardment of such facilities. Moreover, repairs to
148
 damaged lines are now routine matters, and it takes a great deal to put
a railway out of commission for very long. Sea transport is also now
much more rapid and cargo-carrying capacity has increased
considerably with smaller and more efficient engines.

Naturally, however, the amount of supplies needed to keep an

· army of this period at the proper leve! of efficiency has mounted very
tonsiderably, and living off the country has ceased altogether unless
circumstances are exceptional, such as the breakdown of organisation
during the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, it is no longer really
feasible to deal with supply on a monetary basis, since money has
ceased to be of first importance in the short term - no country in the
Great War was seriously embarrassed by financial difficulties, though
the results of frantic spending were later to ruin economies.

Supply must therefore be considered on the basis of resources

available: foodstuffs grown, factory capacity, availability of raw
materials, skilled and unskilled labour. This presents a very ·serious
problem, and one which can only be solved, in the time we are likely to .
have available, by rule of thumb methods. Arbitrary Figures can be
assigned for all these items: the skill then lies in the apportionment of
ones resources between the various calls upon them.

For instance, manpower: if this is limited, as in the case of Great

Britain, how do you apportiori it between the demands of factories,
agriculture, the Army, Navy and Air Force? All are important, and at
· different limes all will seem to be priority cases, yet you cannot rapidly
· shift men from one to the other without wasteful retraining. Similarly,
factory production: how much of it do you allot to the production of
guns, rifles, ammunition of various kinds, tanks, aircraft, shipbuilding?
A factory cannot produce aircraft one day, tanks the next and
ammunition on the third day; it would need retooling etc: Again, if you
have to import much of your raw materials, you may have limited
carrying power and have to decide whether you will allot it to items
necessary for explosives, or special metals for aircraft, etc. It can
easily be seen that quite a complex game could be devised, based on
strategy and supply, without any actual tactical work necessary. Battles
could be allocated certain proportions of men and materials,
comparisons worked out and dice thrown to determine the percentage
of success and failure; for a certain type of analytical mind this could
prove a most interesting game.

lf, however, you don't want to become toa deeply involved in

supply problems, but just to fight a relatively simple campaign,
probably the best for your purpose would be Allenby's Palestine
campaign. This has a great deal of interest and offers considerable
scope for both strategy and tactics. lf one starts off with the Turks
holding the Gaza-Beersheba position, then the British commander has,
as Allenby did, to solve the problem of avoiding costly frontal attacks
149
on heavily defended positions, and instead to induce his opponent to
concentrate on the wrong portions of his front. Lawrence and his Arab
guerillas can be included in the campaign if wished, and the small but
active air forces in the area must also be considered. I have never
heard of anyone reproducing this campaign, and yet it has all the
ingredients of a most enjoyable operation.

Another campaign of much promise is the Dardanelles. The fact

that the actual campaign was completely bungled should not be
allowed to disguise the fact that the idea behind its conception was a
brilliant one and that, if properly planned and executed, it could have
been a great success. It offers a good deal of scope to both attacker
and defender as either a straightforward naval attempt to force the
Narrows, or as a combined operation involving1 seaborne landings.
While, with the equipment and methods of the time, an opposed
landing was bound to be a bloody business and had few prospects af
real success, the Suvla Bay landings show that it was not possible for
the Turks to guard every possible landing point in real strength, which
leaves the whole operation as an exercise in guessing the other's
intentions. As a short-term operation, this toa could be a fascinating
exercise.

Moving on beyond the Great War itself, there is a certain broad

attraction in some of the campaigns of the Russian Revolution,
particularly those fought in the South where sweeping cavalry
operations were often carried out. True, there was never a great deal
of hard fighting in these actual campaigns, morale being the conclusive
factor in most cases, but this need not be bom too much in mind in
reproducing them. The Russian campaign against Poland would also
make for interest, as would the Greek attempt at the conquest of
Asiatic Turkey. These can be carried out as limited operations without
too much involvement in the difficulties of supply.

lf we go still further forward, there is the Spanish Civil War to

consider. Though it is close indeed to falling within the context of our
next and final period, that of World War Two, it was still fought very
largely with the method and armament of the earlier age. True, both
Germany and ltaly sent troops, equipment and aircraft and the
Russians also supported the Government side, these auxiliaries were
no more than that, the bulk of the armies being home-grown. Even the
imported equipment was, by later WWll standards, out of date and
soon to be obsolete. The war can be treated as a whole, or individual
campaigns can be refought. Strategy is particularly important; ordinary
supply problems could be largely ignored, but limits put upon the
amount of foreign help so that skill was needed in deciding just where
and when to employ this. As a larger canvas, this war probably offers
more attractions than the Great War itself.

150
 11: WORLD WAR TWO
World War Two, being relatively recent5 , has always drawn a large
body of devotees in war gaming, and certain areas of it have already
proved favourite campaigning grounds. More than any other, the
Libyan campaigns have attracted attention, partly from their great
fluctuations and partly from the relative ease with which the terrain can
be reproduced. However, I think it is true to say that most attempts at
relighting these campaigns have lacked in realism since they have
made titue or no attempt to inctude the supply problems which, to a
very targe extent, dictated the course of the Libyan fighting. lf we
examine the succession of desert campaigns, we find that each of
them, until the very last, fell short of complete success because the
victor ran out of steam at the crucial moment. In 1941 Wavell could
have finished the desert war at a blow if he had had the troops and
supplies necessary to continue his advance from Benghazi - for which,
of course, the Greek adventure was partly responsible; similarly,
Rommel was checked at the Egyptian barder because, not expecting
the success he achieved, he embarked on the offensive without
sufficient resources. Auchinleck's subsequent attack again ran out of
puffat Benghazi, and the suppression of Malta by the Luftwaffe at that
period allowed Rommel to build up his resources as fastor faster than
the British, with the result that he was capable of the riposte which
carr.ied him to the gates of Alexandria. But there once again supplies
ran out; it was now the Afrika Korps which was at the end of a long and
tenuous supply line, so that once again complete success eluded the
victor. In the final campaign, the supply problem was licked by the
British, while Malta was now sufficiently well supplied itself to seriously
cut down the intake of supplies for the Germans; this, plus the landings
in North Africa, prevented Rommel from ever being in a position to
mount the sort of counter-attack which had defeated Wavell and
Auchinleck.

The gravest difficulty, however, of reproducing World War Two

campaigns seems to me to be the impossibility of really bringing !arge
scale operations to the war game table. I have no claims to expertise
on this subject as I have never seriously dabbled in it, but discussions
with leading practitioners has convinced me that so far, owing to
ranges, speeds and scales, the largest fevel at which a modern war
game can be fought is probably that of a battafion with tank support,
and that company leve! with just two or three tanks and same artillery
is even better. There just isn't the room on a table to deploy an
armoured division. True, the recent innovations of extremely small
tanks and other pieces may have partially solved the problem, but

5
Recent, in so rnuch as the early wargamers had served in World War 11.
Editor.
151
even so the tactical basis of a campaign is going to be fraught with
difficulty.

Many years aga, before in fact I ever took up war gaming with
soldiers, I ran a semi strategical World War Il campaign purely on
maps, using pins to represent divisions. I worked out a dice formula for
the actual battles, and by using this method I could order an offensive
at a certain point, work out the points values of the troops, tanks,
artil1ery and aircraft involved, and by a dice throw decide what had
happened. Admittedly, this early campaign of mine was an extremely
crude affair and, run as a solo operation, was full of considerable bias.
The various nationalities of troops, for instance, were worth different
points values, and I seem to remember that a British division was
worth the same points value as three or four ltalian ones!

Later I worked up a very large campaign game in this period but

with radical changes in alliances to make it more interesting. For
instance, in this concept America was allied with ltaly and France plus
Russia against Britain, Germany and Japan, the two main reasons
being firstly that this gave a more balanced naval alignment and thus
some interesting naval strategy, and that I had a lot of detaited maps of
the U.S.A. which I was now able to use. I cheated rather by initially
deploying the whole of a somewhat increased British Army in Canada
and later adding some German divisions to give parity with the
Americans and was thus able to launch an offensive inta the U.S.A.
Rules were kept very simple and again all tactical actions decided by
dice throw but I got a 1ot of interest out of it until real war gaming
intervened and turned my attention in other directions.

Since then I have several times toyed with the idea of starting
this game all over again but with the addition of much more
sophisticated rules. Basically, everything was to be worked out to a
points scale. Firstly the layout potential of each country involved would
be calculated. I reckoned that about 25% of the total population would
be males of age suitable for either the services or for agriculture and
factory production, and that another 10% would be women who could
be drafted into the factories and on to the land. This would give the
necessary figures for recruitment, strength of various services etc.
Then each country would be assessed for production capacity i.e.
factory output, in terms of points, and this total would have to be
located in industrial complexes throughout the country. Raw materials
would be another assessment, what was available and what had to be
imported. Then all products would be rated at a points value per ton or
per thousand rounds of ammunition etc.

In this way a pattern would be built up of the resource potential

of each country, which could be deployed in slightly different ways at
different times. For instance of your factory production capabilities you
might allocate say 5000 points to aircraft production, 4000 to tanks,
152
6000 to artillery, 3000 to ammunition, 4000 to ship-building, making a
total of 22,000. But your annual intake of raw material might only be
17,000 points and your available labour, after filling up the services,
16,000 points. So you could juggle somewhat with your production,
one year making the full quota of aircraft but butting back on tanks,
another year reducing each product pro rata, and so on. The time
element would also be included, the various factories having monthly
production figures, and time taken to build ships worked out, so that
didn't for instance order 50 tanks anda couple of battle ships one day
and have them in action the next.

I also planned to work out rough estimates of carrying capacities

for railways, mercantile marine etc, and to calculate average
expenditures of ammunition etc. in battle. Then, when a battle began, I
would work out an equation for terrain, points values of troops and
equipment, amounts of ammunition available etc. and from this plus
dice throws get the results of the fighting. Similarly, the air forces and
naval operations would be worked out on paper - while I firmly
believe that modern naval actions cannot be reprocluced on a table, or
even with complete realism on the average living room floor - and who
can afford to regularly hire a hall for the purpose? - I do feel that such
a battle could be worked out very realistically by plotting movements
etc. on paper. For the air forces, their points value would be included in
with everything else for tactical purposes, while they could also be
used for strategic attacks on targets such as factories, railway
complexes etc.

Obviously, to do this properly would mean an immense amount

of work to set the whole thing up initially - presuming of course that it
was to be done on a wortd wide scale; and one of my besetting sins is
that I tend to go overboard on things and do them lavishly rather than
on a small scale. Once the initial work was done, the actual
campaigning could be done in an unhurried fashion, using only
whatever time was freely available. ,So far, I have never had the
opportunity to really make a start on the scheme at all whenever t have
same time potentially available someone seems to set me off on
another project, like writing this book, for instance! However, one of
these days 1'11 get around to it ~after all, its only another nineteen years
till l'm due to retire!

The attraction, of course of doing a campaign , or rather a whole

war, on this basis is that when you have i:111 your various resources
plotted as to area etc, you have in effect set up strategic targets which
will effect the course of the campaigns. When an invasion takes place,
the over-running of an area that contains an industrial complex will
!essen the production resources of that country and in turn witl affect its
ability to wage war. This in tum sets a pretty problem to whoever is first
engaged in apportioning the production resources - do you for instance
concentrate all your aircraft production in one area for ease of various
153
problems, and take the risk of losing it all if the area is over-run, or
heavily bombed, ordo you scatter everything around the whole country
in penny packets. An interesting decision to make when you think of
the various factors to be taken into consideration.

I have often thought, also, that another interesting game could

be worked out on the basis of strategic bombardment from the air. I
think it would almost inevitably need three people, i.e. an attacker,
defender and umpire, although it is possible that a variation of the
matchbox system described elsewhere could be used successfully with
just the two players. The defender would have his country set up with
the various strategic objectives such as important factories, shipyards
etc. He would be supplied with certain quantities of anti-aircraft guns,
radar stations, searchlights and such defensive equipment which he
must position to cover these objectives and the routes to them, plus
aerodromes and squadrons of fighter aircraft.

The attacker would have knowledge of where the principal

objectives were, but not of course, initially at least, of the positioning of
the defences and the fighters. He would have his squadrons of
bombers, and, depending on distances and whether it was a question
of day or night attack, escorting fighters. He would then launch his raid
or raids, and the umpire would plot its track, giving the defender such
information as became available to him from his radar stations,
tracking positions etc. so that he could alert his defences and get his
fighters airborne. Lasses from anti-aircraft fire could be determined by
a simple equation of density of fire, number of aircraft etc. plus a dice
throw; actual contacts between the attackers and defending fighters
could be worked on the same method or by one of the several tactical
games whlch exist. lf the bombers got through to their target, then
bomb damage again would be assessed by use of a chart and dice.

Winning or losing the campaign could be decided by a variety of

methods, depending upon the type of campaign envisaged. Victory
might mean the crushing of the defensive power of one side by the
elimination of its fighters, or the attacking side losing too high a
proportion of its bombers; or it could mean a points total of damage
done to the enemy less damage suffered oneself. It could be
complicated by making the damage to factories reffect on the
availability of replacements for lost aircraft, or by both sides
possessing bomber forces and suitable targets for them. The
possibilities are very numerous and the work involved needn't be too
strenuous.

One thing about this period is that there is certainly no lack of

information available on every aspect of the war. Not only are there
dozens of books on each and every carnpaign from a purely military
point of view, but every item of equipment, each tank, aircraft and
warship type has been the subject of reams of paper. Statistics are
154
available on war production of almost every type, on the effects of
bomb damage on industry, on the use of available manpower in both
industry and the armed services - the researcher can quite easily find
all his heart desires. In fact, it is of course this plethora of information
which tends to complicate the period from a campaign point of view;
the endeavours to make use of it all lead to more and more
complications in the rules and the keeping of more and more recörds.
Essentially this is a period of paperwork, and if you wish to avoid the
latter then you might well be best advised to switch your attention toan
earlier period when life was less hurried.

On the other hand, the modern period - as one stil l tends to call
it, though it is now over twenty years in the past and far o utdated by
later developments - offers certain attractions in the wideness of its
canvas and the scope of strategical and logistical accomplishment. For
anyone who likes to play with statistical figures it is of course the ideal
period.

So far no mention has been made of more up to date events

such as the various wars of one kind and another which have been
fought since the close of World War Two. These have all been limited
type conflicts Korea, Vietnam, the guerrilla operations in Malaya etc.
- and have been fought very largely with just more sophisticated
versions of World War Two equipment. Korea offers the same
disadvantages from the tactical point of view as any World War Two
campaign - the difficulty of reproducing action on the war game table.
As a strategical campaign it offers rather more attraction, with its
emphasis on naval ca-operation and the fact that neither side in effect
attacks the other's sources of supply - the North Koreans and Ch inese
because they were unable to, the Americans because they did not
dare risk the escalation of the war by operating north of the Yalu. The
war is therefore fought in a sort of vacuum.

The French struggte for control of lndo~China and the

subsequent Vietnam wars are of a different pattern. Though there were
of course occasional large-scate actions - Dien Bien Phu and the like
- the war is largely a guerrilla one and therefore of a very different
pattern than the normal war game campaign. The same can be said of
the Malayan war against the terrorists, which was even more of a
police action. This could no doubt be reproduced for the purposes of a
campaign, but is possibly a little outside the scope of this volume,
since guerilla activity really needs a book of its own - and several
such exist.

Again, the struggle in the Middte East between Israel and the
Arabs offers a certain scope as another example of a limited style war,
but the opponents were of such different calibre that a realistic re-
enactment of it gives little chance to whoever ptays the Arabs. Skill and
morale were far more important than equipment, and th is is always
155
harder to legislate for in a campaign than anything else. One would
presumably need to establish reaction tests of a very different standard
for the two sides!

All in all, therefore, to sum it up would seem that this period has
a good deal to offer strategically and to the analytical mind, but not so
much for the war garner who prefers his campaigns to be simpler and
more free and easy. Possibly the very fact that war gaming is itself in a
way an escape from realism, from the stresses and strains of modern
life inta a world of the pastor of fantasy, militates to a degree against
the period with its semi-modern complications. Who knows - in fifty or a
hundred years time, when it is completely out of date, it may be as
attractive to the war garners of the time (and they will exist, never
doubt it) as the Ancient and Napoleonic periods are today.

156
 12: MINI CAMPAIGNS
ln all the preceding chapters we have discussed ways and means of
running relatively complicated campaigns which involve a good deal of
paperwork and much calculation of movement rates, all of which tends
to take up time. There are, however, other ways in which battles can
be linked together so that their results will influence future actions;
these are suitable both for those who wish to start off campaigning in a
simple fashion and for those who do not wish to devote excess time to
map movement and prefer getting on with the actual battles. They are
also usfull as "fillers" between more important campaigns, when you
start to have a quick means of laying on battles fora few weeks while a
main campaign is in progress, or as auxiliaries to a bigger campaign
you are involved in. I have regularly used these both in between
campaigns in Hyboria and lately as a sort of local campaign to fill in the
periods when Hyborian battles weren't available, and they can, if
properly thought out, provide just as much fun as a full-scale
campaign, with often just as much scope for strategical and tactical
skill.

One of the first affairs of this sort which I ran was an attempt ta
get all the local players involved. There were at that time six af us, and
we tended to fight fairly regularly either at my house or Don's, but
usually in two's or three's. For this particular effort we split inta two
teams of three. Each team was given a complete army, both being of
the same total strength and composition, which it had to split up inta
three corps commanded by the three players. Maximum and minimum
numbers were laid down fora corps, but within these limits you could
juggle around somewhat. The team also decided on an order of play,
i.e. who commanded the teading corps etc. A batttefield had been
mapped out in advance and both sides had copies of it. After these
arrangements had been made, the two leading corps commanders
fought the first battle with their corps, fighting for the space of an
evening. Positions at the end of that time were marked on the map,
and notes made of what troops were left in action. (Of course, if l'd had
a permanent table it would have been much simpler, because I could
have just left the troops in position}.

On the second evening, .the survivors of the first corps were put
back in position, and the second corps of each side, with its
commander, arrived on the base-line. Again fighting lasted alt evening,
positions were marked, casualties noted etc. On the third evening the
last corps of each side arrived and the action was carried to a final
conclusion with all 6 players present.

This sounds, of course, a very simple and ordinary affair, and

certainly from the point of view. of work involved this is so; but,
especially if your players are not all of the same experience and
157
calibre, it can pose some very interesting questions of procedure. In
this case, for instance, Don and I were very much more experienced
than the other four players, and it was therefore a matter of importance
at which stage of the battle we were committed. Again, was it best to
commit a !arge corps in the opening action in the hope of gaining an
early success and a commanding position, or to hold your largest
corps back and fight defensively in the initial stages? As it happened,
Don's team chose to divide their troops fairly equally but to commit
Don first in the hope of gaining an advantage; my team put in our
second string as opening commander with an under-strength corps to
fight a purely defensive action, while I went in second with a large
corps. As it happened this paid off, largely because our second string
put up a great resistance and held Don quite successfully; I was thus
enabled to go for the kill in round two against a weaker opponent and
put our team in an almost unchallengeable position for round three.

There are of course several variations of this mini-campaign.

You can fight all three corps battles separately on different fields, and
either award points for win, lose or draw, or carryforward the survivors
to a final battle with everyone involved. Or again, you can use the
method Don once adopted for the Battle of Spicheren, which was
fought in the Franco-Prussian period after we had finished the main
campaign. He drew up a detailed map of the battle-ground, and split it
into three corps areas; we then assigned corps to the areas, and
fought three separate battles between them. Winning corps had the
alternative of moving forward or swinging in on the flank of another
area; losing corps had to retire. A final battle was then scheduled. The
main disadvantage of this sort of thing is that if ene player wins too
decisively in two of the three initial battles, there is not much point in
fighting the final one.

Moving on from this, my next effort was to try a sl!ghtly wider

range historical affair, by doing a mini-campaign on the Wars of the
Roses. For this, I selected a number of battlefields of the period and
assigned to them armies of the relative size and composition as the
historical ones. I also, as mentioned earlier, brought in a chance
element by having a wing commander from each side who was not
totally reliable - one was the Duke of Clarence, I can't remember who
the other was. Clarence sticks in my mind because he defected from
my Yorkists at a crucial moment with disastrous affect! We fought each
of these battles on a points system, and what was left from each of the
armies involved then gathered on Barnet Field for the final. In those
days we tended to fight battles much more to the bitter end than in
these enlightened times, so the survivors of six armies barely made up
one reasonably sized one! This was quite an interesting little campaign
which involved almost no paper work.

Another very simple campaign I indulged in was a semi-postal

affair conducted between myself and Joe Morschauser of New York.
158
Joe obtained for us some fairly detailed maps of the Lake Champlain
area and we set up a war between the two countries of Boozonia and
Gluttonia in the Valley of Cheese. (We had a lot of fun naming army
commanders and towns but this was all part of a regular weekly
correspondence between us and was not an essential part of the
campaign}. We each had 6 town depots, each with an army of fixed
size, and we moved these around the map on the available roads in 1O
mile moves, advising each other of our moves by post. When two
armies contacted each other, we took it in turns to fight the battle and
advise the other of the result. Obviously this had to be a case of
complete trust as it would be easy to falsify results if either of us
wished to cheat. A winning army remained at full strength, the losing
ene was cut to half. You were not allowed to bring overwhelming force
to bear by concentrating two armies against ene; two defeated armies
could be joined together to make one whole ene. The objective was, of
course, to capture the enemy depots while holding your own.

Though this campaign was very limited in simple map movement

and the rule against two to one, it did give scope fora good deal of
strategical thought in manoeuvring to protect your depots and threaten
your opponents, when to take the offensive and when be defensive,
etc. lt also had the big advantage that the person fighting the battle
could do so in any way or period he wished as long as both sides had
an equal chance of winning or tosing, slnce it made no difference at all
if one battle was fought with ancients, another with Napoleonic and a
third with American Civil War troops; the result was all that counted.

Talking of mixing the periods reminds me of something Don

Featherstone and I tried in this manner ~its possibly digressing from the
subject a little, but it may well be of interest. As l've mentioned before
Don cotlected predominantly horse and musket armies, while I
concentrated on ancient and medieaval, and we fought with each
other's troops on alternate weeks. We came up with the idea of using
my map of Middle Earth from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series as a
sort of undiscovered continent, still in ancient/mediaeval stage, which
was suddenly found by an American expedition of Civil War vintage.
We worked out some tactical rules in which siege engines became
something of the equivalent of artillery, the Americans had the
advantage in long range firepower but my troops had a similar
advantage at close quarters from their superior protection and better
hand to hand weapons. Movement was very simple: Don selected a
landing point and said he'd invade there, I brought my army to meet
him. It was all very amusing and enjoyable except for the fact that after
two attempts the modern invaders hadn't succeeded in establishing
themselves ashore, having been driven back to their ships on both
occasions! In an attempt to get the campaign going better I finally
allowed Don an unopposed landing but nevertheless the campaign
ended in the complete repulse of the invasion. I have a sneaking
feeling that the rules distinctly favoured my side!
159
 About this time two factors influenced my campaign thinking.
One was the discovery of two large wall maps printed for schools by
George Philip and Co. - one of Ancient Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula,
the other of Biblical Palestine. They were quite cheap and gave a good
deal of historical detail and I quickly obtained a copy of each. The other
was the fact that I had just started the Society of Ancients and I was
getting a series of weekend visiters, each of whom of course wanted to
fight a battle. Willing as I was, I had reached the stage that single
battles no longer had such an attraction for me, so I wanted same sort
of system under which these visiting firemen could play a part in the
larger canvas.

The idea I came up with was very simple. First of all I linked up
the cities by a series of roads which, at six points, ran off the edge of
the map. These were known as entry points. Two of them were
allocated to each of the three local players who would regularly take
part in the campaign, and each player was allocated two armies per
entry point. All armies were of a regulation size, based on the points
chart I was then using, but could be of different composition according
to the player's individual choice. Each player then moved in tum. A
move was the distance by road between two towns, regardless of
distance - you couldn't move across country, so you could only get
directly from one town to another if there was a connecting road. An
attack move was made by moving an army from the entry point to the
next town along the road, which would have a defending army, and a
battle would be fought. lf the attacker won, the defending army was
eliminated and he occupied the town; if he last, his own army was
eliminated. He then made another attack move, either by moving his
victorious army forward to the next town, or by moving on a different
route. Having completed his three attack moves, he then drew a fresh
army for each victory he had achieved. The fresh armies appeared at
the entry points, and the march move could then be moved to advance
one stage along the route to the front.

To add to the interest I then added certain other features. Firstly

I took advantage of the possession of large numbers of troops of
greatly varying kinds to work out a list of 31 armies, all of the same
points value but differing in some detail from each of the others. Some
might contain camels, others elephants, others chariots; same had all
missile troops, others no missile troops; same were nicely balanced,
others hideously uneven. Then, when a neutral town was attacked by
one of the players, a card was drawn to see which type of army it
possessed. This gave the attraction that you never know what type of
army you had to face, and it was very rare for two identical armies to
face each other. It could, of course, lead to the occasional completely
one-sided battle, if, for instance, a light all-missile army faced a heavy
non-missile one; but a basic rule for these battles laid down that the
defender, to avoid defeat, must maintain his communications with his
160
city - so that a defender with a light missile army couldn't manoeuvre at
will all over the board, and the heavy attacker had a chance of bulling
through by sheer brute force.

The other additional item was a choice of terrain and situation.

To start with I worked out 11 basic terrain types, as fo[[ows, numbered
2 to 12:

2. Plain with river(s)

3. Plain with village
4. Wooded P1ain
5. Hilly Country
6. Hills with river
7. Hills with woods
8. Hills with vmage
9. Heavy Forest
10. Open P!ain
11. Forest and River
12. Mountains and river

Two dice were then thrown to determine the basic terrain type when a
battle was fought, anda terrain to fit this type was set out.

Eight different situations were then worked out, as given below:

1. Defender's who!e army already in position
2. Part of defender's army already in position
3. Attacker's army already in position
4. Part of attacker's army already in position
5. Both armies in process of arriving
6: Both armies concentrated on base-line
7. Part of defence army making flank march
8. Part of attacker's army making flank march

In the case of (1) or (3) a dice was thrown to decide how long
the position had been occupied. lf a 5 or 6 were ro[[ed, it had been
occupied long enough for it to be strengthened by barricades if wished .
This would of course depend on the terrain type ,and whether the
commander intended to fight a defensive or offensive action.

In the case of situations (1) to (4), the army or part of an army

may occupy any part of the table it chooses. It may be assumed that
terrains (5) to (8) will all offer defensive positions of some sort, and that
terrains (9), (11) and (12) wm offer strong defensive positions, while the
remaining terrains wil! be fess advantageous from this point of view.

In the case of situations (2) or (4) the side with only part of its
army in position may decide how this part is ·composed, up to 50% of
its strength in points. A dice will then be thrown to see how many
moves elapse before the rest of the army reaches the base-line. The
161
opponent will not know the result of this throw, but it must be written
down together with the point on the base-line at which the rest of the
army will appear.

In the case of situation (5), both sides will divide their armies into
van, centra and rear. At the outset only vanguards will be on the base-
line; centre will appear at the beginning of move 3, rearguard at the
beginning of move 5. Place of entry must be decided in advance, but
that of the rearguard can be different from that of the centre if wished.
Proportions should be roughly 25%, 50%, 25%.

In the case of situation (6) both sides will start as usual from
their respective base-lines.

In the case of situation (7) or (8) the army not undertaking the
flank march is assumed to be already in position in its own half of the
table. The army making the flank march then dices to determine on
which move the detachment (which may not be stronger than 40% of
the whole) will arrive at whichever point is selected for its entry. This
point will be selected at the start of the battle and stated in writing; if at
any time it is wished to change this point, the player must throw a 5 or
6 in the presence of his opponent, and can then alter the point by 12"
without penalty; if he wishes to alter it more than 12" he must delay
entry by one move. Such alterations must be Jogical - i.e. a detachment
sent off to march round the enemy's right flank must appear
somewhere in that area, and not on his left flank! lf the entry point is
within 9" of enemy troops who are facing in that direction, they must be
informed of the presence of the flanking force before the move
commences on which such force moves on to the table.

In the case of situations (1) and (3) the army not in position may
elect to try a flank march of its own. In that case the same procedure is
adopted as in (7) or (8), but 6 is added to the dice throw; thus the
flanking force cannot arrive before Move 7 at the earliest and it may
not appear on the enemy's rear before Move 10. lf its appearance is on
Move 7, 8 or 9 it must be on a flank. lf the enemy's flank is more than
24" from the base-line (or side-line, rather) then the flanking force can
be placed on the table further in rather than on the side-line to be
within 24" of the enemy.

At any time prior to the actual commencement of battle the

attacker may decide that his chances are not good enough. lf he has
an attack move still in hand, he can elect to manoeuvre the enemy out
of his position. In that case, the current attack is abandoned, and a
fresh draw is made for terrain and position. It is assumed that the
attacker has moved round the first position, and the luck of the draw of
course decides whether the attacker or defender does better out of the
manoevure.

162
 When once a battle is commenced, the line of retreat of the
defence army is important. It will be laid down beforehand and may
consist of up to two roads, tracks, or points. lf all these lines of retreat
are blocked by the attackers, any stalemate will give victory to them
since the defender's troops are unable to regain the city, which can be
occupied unopposed.

This thus formed a very simple little campaign from the point of
view of paperwork involved, but it called fora good deal of strategical
thought: which way to tum at a road junction, where to commit your
new armies; whether to press on with a victorious army er halt it for
reserves to come up. Also, sooner or later your line of advance is
going te intersect that of one of the other players, so you have to bear
this in mind. The big advantage, however, from my point of view was
that a visiting general could now be simply asked to take command of
a defence army, and the resulting battle helped the campaign along,
as well as providing some variety. Normally, of course, one of the other
two local players would take the defence.

Some while after this I was unwise enough to bring up the

subject of war gaming at my office, and before I knew what hit me I
had three new recruits who were soon hotly engaged in regular visits
to my house. As at this time I was engaged not only in a Hyborian
campaign, a Colonial campaign at Don's, in two postal campaigns and
editing "Slingshot", the regular magazine of the Society of Ancients, I
certainly didn't feel like getting involved in another fullMscale campaign;
but here were these three enthusiasts demanding same sort of
campaign to fight. Our first campaign was a very simple mediaeval
affair, in which we all started off with a certain number of points we
could invest in troops. We then took it in tums to draw up terrains and
situations, and on the night of the battle we drew cards to see which
quarter of the table we took. Everyone was then free to fight anyone
else fora certain number of moves; at the end of this time points were
·awarded for territory held, special features, and troops left, and these
could be invested in more troops. This was enjoyable enough but it
developed inta atendency to ganging up on one person.

In any case, my friends were now ready to try ancient troops as

a change from mediaeval, so I devised a new simple campaign, again
making use of the Biblical map of Palestine. On this were selected
thirty six towns, and we drew to see which nine each of us possessed
at the opening of the campaign. One of the nine was selected as a
base town. Each participant started with 1,250 points. From this he had
to provide a field army of 200 points and garrisons for his eight other
towns. These had to be a minimum of 20 points or a maximum of 200.
All the 1;250 points had to be selected at the outset, and certain types
of troops, such as cataphract cavalry, cavalry with composite bow,
elephants etc. were limited to certain maximums, both as to total
selection and maximum in one field army.
163
 Each player also had an initial treasury of 1,000 crowns. Each of
the towns was allocated a certain type of terrain on each side it coutd
be attacked from. This, as in the former town campaign, was a general
description but helped to give some idea of what garrison to put in it or
what troops to attack it with; obviousty if it was heavily forested you
didn't garrison the town with heavy cavatry and elephants!

At the outset the field army was placed in the base town, and we
then drew for order of movement, each of us making a move in tum.
This order was then permanent..

The first player then made his move. As before, a move

consisted of the movement of either a fietd army or a garrison between
two neighbouring towns. He could thus move his field army from the
base up to the next town along the road; if this was atready in his
hands, nothing else happened. lf it was hetd by one of the others, then
he attacked it with his field army. Atternativety, he could use the
garrison of one of his advanced towns to attack a neighbouring town
betonging to another player. Since the draw had scattered towns fairly
widely between us, both the initial deployment and subsequent
movement called fora certain amount of strategical thought!

When an attack was made, the battle was fought outside the
town on the specified type of terrain. The defenders would be the town
garrison. This, of course, so far only involved two players. But each of
these was now entitted to hire a mercenary company from one of the
remaining two players, the attacker having first choice. Each ptayer at
the outset was allocated three different companies; only six were
actually available, each one being altocated to two different players.
Each company was 150 points strong, and it cost 150 points to hire,
this hire fee being paid to the player it was hired from, who now
commanded it in the battle as lieutenant to the player hiring him. Thus
all four players took part, but the two mercenary commanders had no
axe to grind, since casualties in their companies were automatically
replaced; they could therefore concentrate on simply enjoying the
battle.

Each side could thus have a maximum of 350 points engaged in

the battle. lf, however, the city garrison was 50 points or less, even
with the support of mercenaries it would be too weak to fight
successfully: a card was therefore drawn from an ordinary pack. lf a
Heart turned up, the town surrendered and the garrison was taken over
by the attacker.

tf it was a Club, the town again surrendered but the garrison was
disbanded. lf a Diamond, then the town could hold out fora complete
map tum in the hope its owner might get reinforcements to the scene.
Finally a Spade entitled it to hold out for two map tums.
164
 lf the defence force could make up a total af 220 to 300 points,
the defender drew the terrain map and would be entitled to a
reasonable defensive position which he could occupy at the outset.
Otherwise he still drew the map but the attacker could object if he
thought it was unfair, in which case the other two adjudicated. The map
always had to show the line of retreat to the city under attack.

lf the result af the battle was still in doubt when time was called,
victory would go to the side halding the most graund if they had startad
equal, otherwise to the side which had last fewest casualties. In paint
of fact I don't remember us ever having ta use this rule, because my
three friends were all late retirers who were quite happy ta ga on
fighting till twa a'clock in the morning ~ a not uncommon occurrence!

The laser af the battle last 50% of his actual casualties, the
winner 25% af his. Mercenaries were not of caurse included in the
casualty count. lf the attacker last, he fell back ta his starting point. lf
the defender last, but was still in contact with his city, he fell back into
it, and then withdrew to the next city if that was friendly. lf he had no
other city to retreat to, the garrison was disbanded. lf, however, the
defeated defender had lost contact with his city, he last all. his
casualties, not just 50%, and the survivors were taken over by the
victor.

lf the attacker was the winner he of course occupied the city,

and in addition received a bonus of 200 crowns. When each of the four
players had made his map move, each could use his reserve funds ta
recruit fresh troops, paying 1 crown per point. All such fresh troops had
to enter at the base town and could only be maved up from it by the
usual movement.

This in fact made a very successful and enjoyable campaign.

First of all there was not much to do in the way of recard-keeping after
the initial work, and the actual map moving took a few minutes after the
end of each battle. Each af us kept his own individual record of troops,
losses etc. Next, a good deal af skill came inta the initial choice of
troops, the disposition of the garrisons and armies according ta the
terrain types and one's preconceived strategy. Then, when either
attacking or defending, there was a certain skill in selecting which
mercenary company and which other player ta have an your side -
particularly as abilities varied somewhat! For instance, the other three
considered me ta be some way above them in ability (it was really
more a matter of longer experience) so it was a good thing to get my
services - but none of my three companies might be the sort af troaps
either ta fit the terrain or to fit in with the troops already in hand. So it
was a matter of juggling the advantages and disadvantages.

165
 Similarly, since mercenary troops didn't have to be accounted
for, one could afford to be much more reckless with them than with
one's regulars. It was notable that not only did the attacker or defender
attempt to fight the battle as much as possible with his mercenaries
while trying to do as much damage as possible to his opponent's
regulars, but that the mercenary commanders tended to jump in with
both feet and thoroughly enjoy themselves.

Mind you, as usual things didn't go quite as planned. For

instance, we had laid down at the start that there were to be no
alliances; at once, everybody got around this to a certain extent by
making non-aggression pacts in certain areas, and also there was a
certain swopping of indefensible cities in order to strengthen one's
general position. Before long a pattern emerged, however, and we all
got one area of the map under control. A number of most interesting
battles were fought; I always enjoyed being a mercenary without any
responsibility and indulged myself in escapades I wouldn't have
dreamed of risking with my own troops!

More recently I again needed a simple campaign to cover the

regular Saturday meetings of three people. I had recently inherited a
very nice map of a mythical continent which someone had started and
then abandoned, so this provided the geography. It was divided inta 39
provinces, and as in the previous campaign the three of us drew for
possession of them, with the result that our possessions were fairly
well scattered across the map. Each province initially produced an
army of 350 points, and in addition each player was given three spare
armies of the same value. I should make it clear that here I am talking
about my own points system and not that used in Research Group
rules, which is entirely different.

For these 16 armies I drew up a list of the following nationalities,

each with its composition of 350 points: Mongols, Egyptians,
Assyrians, Goths, Saracens, Carthaginians, Persians, Barbarians,
Romans and Greeks. In fact except for the first four, which were single
armies, the other nationalities were each given 700 points which had to
be split inte two separate 350 point armies at the discretion of the
individual player. Each player now had to place one army in each of his
provinces, and could place his three spares wherever he desired in his
dominions. Numbered and coloured pins were used for this, red, blue
and yellow for the three players, and thus it was easy to see from a
glance at the map the general distribution of forces. Of course, no-one
knew which type of army his opponent's pins represented until he
actually encountered one; and as the campaign progressed a pin didn't
necessarily mean a straight 350 points as armies had casualties or
reinforcements.

We then tossed for sequence of moves. The first player then

made his attack move, which meant that he moved one of his armies
166
into a province belonging to another player. As before, a move was the
distance between cities by road, and it was also possible to move by
sea providing the distance was not more than 12 hexagons. As most
provinces contained more than one city, invading a province did not
automaticafly mean contact with a defending army at once; if a
province was isolated from the main bulk of one's possessions, or
contained what one considered to be an inferior type army (no-one
fancied the chances of the Egyptian army, and the barbarians weren't
toa popular) you put the army in a town not directly linked to an enemy
town if you could, and thus delayed any contact with an invading force.

Normally the attacker would only move one army; but provision
was made that if he could attack a province from more than one
direction he might do so. As the campaign progressed this became
more common.

When two armies met outside a city there was of course a battle
unless the disparity in numbers was toa great - in which case the
weaker side retired if it had anywhere to retire to. lf the defender lost
the city automatically fell, and the defender retired to the next friendly
city, presuming there was one. The attacker, if he lost, retired as
before to his starting point. The laser of the battle lost all his casualties,
the winner only one-third of his.

In order to avoid battles being carried on past a certain point;

once an army was reduced below 50% bf its strength a dice was
thrown; if it turned up 4, 5 or 6 the army could fight on, but otherwise
must retire. lf it went on fighting, a dice was thrown again when losses
reached two-thirds, when a 6 was needed.

After the attack, the attacking player was entitled to move one
more army, providing that in doing so it didn't come inta contact with
the enemy. This was known as a free move.

At the close af a round - i.e. when all three players had made
their attack moves - each player received replacements of 350 points
which he could deploy in any of his provinces except any which were in
dispute - i.e. had been invaded by an enemy. In addition, for each
battle he had won du ring the current turn he received an extra 100
points. These fresh troops could be made up entirely as the player
desired, and need not be disclosed until they came inta action. In fact,
after about six complete rounds we cut out the 350 points, since
armies were getting toa numerous, and reduced the bonus to 50, so
that the numbers of troops in the continent gradually began to
decrease.

Any troops caught without any line of retreat to friendly territory

and thus forced to surrender were incorporated in the army of their
captor.
167
 This system gave us an easy and quick means of running an
enjoyable campaign. Each of us had to work out the initial disposition
of his armies and set up a suitable record; after that it was merely a
question of writing off casualties and adding reinforcements, a matter
of a few moments. An attack move took five minutes after the end of
the current battfe: both sides then disclosed the make-up of their
armies, and the third player, who attended the battles to act as umpire
in case of need - very rare - and to make snide remarks upon the
generalship of both the other pfayers and give unwanted, irrelevant
and usually bad advice, besides cracking corny jokes (the oldest and
mast favourite being, as one side put his archers in a wood, to inform
him that the local name for the pface was the Wood of Dead Archers),
was entrusted with drawing a terrain map for the coming battle, on the
grounds that he woufd be unbiased, or hostile to both sides!

In all the battles fought, I don't remember a single encounter in

which armies of similar nationalities clashed, tet a!one armies of similar
composition. Thus every battle was a fresh one, and in mast of them
you had to think out fresh tactics to deal with the new foe you faced.
Personal idiosyncrasies soon became established: I am of course well
known for my love of elephants, while one of the others became
equally addicted to javelin cavalry, which one personally despised -
though I had to admit that they were pretty formidable under his
leadership. A strong controversy grew up over the correct method of
dealing with cataphract cavalry, which under my rules are deadly
fellows. It was agreed that elephants made a good counter to them, but
there was much argument over the effectiveness of Macedonian pike
columns against them - I fielded pikes very successfully against
cataphracts on one occasion, but when one of the others tried the
same thing a couple of weeks later his pikes got terribly cut up, so the
controversy continued!

The several methods I have discussed of course by no means

exhaust the possibilities of mini-campaigns, and have merely been
included in the hope that they will direct your minds inta the right paths
if you want to regularise your battles into a campaign of sorts without
going inta toa much detail. Many more ideas will no doubt occur to you
if you put your minds to it. Amusing as these limited campaigns are, it
is to be hoped that they will act in the main either to fill in time between
larger and more detailed campaigns or to wet your appetite for better
things. After all, if our object in war gaming is to reproduce historical
realism in any detail, and to match our skills with the generals of the
past, we must set ourselves more detailed problems than can be found
on the average battle-field; and the only way in which this can be done
is to engage in campaigns which will test our resources in both
strategy and administration. Only in this way can we reap the full
benefits of our hobby.

168
 13: NAVAL CAMPAIGNS
Although sea transport has been touched upon in the preceding
chapters, it has only been as a subsidiary to the main land campaigns.
Fora war garner whose principal interest lies in naval affairs, however,
purely naval campaigns can be conducted in much the same way as
continental ones. At first sight it might appear that naval warfare, with
its greater fluidity, lack of rigid frontiers etc, is not so suitable to
campaigning, but a closer study will show that this is not so. Naval
battles throughout history have been fought within the context of
campaigns more often than as unrelated actions. Moreover, fleets
need bases and supplies just as much, and often more, than do armies
- while an army can often live off the land, this is only possible fora
fleet if it is tightly tied toa coastline which presents ample harbours. In
very few wars, therefore, has it been a simple matter of two opposing
fleets merely sailing out to meet each other and fight; always there
have been the considerations of supply and strategy; the desire to
protect one's own shores and commerce while damaging those of the
enemy. Often, of course, such protection or damage is actually carried
out by light craft of various types; but even so, this can only be done
under the shield of the main fleet which prevents enemy heavy ships
from interfering. This factor did not change radically until the
introduction of the submarine and the aircraft carrier - although
privateers in both the Napoleonic wars and the War of 1812 could
damage British commerce, in the absence of an effective fleel of heavy
ships they were unable to strangle it in the manner in which the Royal
Navy strangled the commerce of its opponents.

lf we start in ancient times, we find ample scope for either purely

naval or amphibious campaigns in the Mediterranean in Greek and
Roman times. The Greek war galley carried its complement of
marines, so that a Greek fleet had a built in expeditionary force even if
it was not accompanied by actual troops, and could easily engage in
land warfare of a limited nature. The disadvantage of the times lay in
the fact that the galley, quite apart from its lowfreeboard which made it
vulnerable to bad weather, was not designed for living in; nights were
usually spent with the crew ashore and the ship beached in a suitable
cove, and the amount of rations and water carried aboard was very
limited. This had two important effects: by and large fleets or
squadrons were tied to the coast, tending to reach their destination by
coastal routes rather than taking a direct line from point to point - and
this in turn led toa certain cramping of strategy, since admirals had no
real room for strategical manoeuvre. You always had a pretty fair idea
of which route your opponent would take, and where you were likely to
find him, Though the possession of a fleet greatly increased your
mobillty, it didn't necessarily widen your sphere of operations to any
great extent.

169
 This disadvantage, of course, would not be so apparent in a
campaign fought largely in the Aegean, where islands are very often
within sight of each other, and thus a certain freedom of choice is avail-
able. As long as islands were within a day's sail of two or more others,
a far greater strategic freedom was given, since choice of routes was
more varied and it was no longer so certain that opposing fleets would
follow the same course, or head for the same objective.

A very good campaign could be worked up, for instance, on the

basis of the revolt of the Greek lonian cities against the Persian Empire
- a revolt which, in the final analysis, might well have succeeded but for
the fatal inability of Greek cities to work together in an atmosphere of
mutual trust; a point which could be worked inta the campaign rules.

Most of the other campaigns of the Greek period were, naval-

wise, largely auxiliary to the main land fighting, but several interesting
amphibious operations were carried out. The Athenian expedition to
Syracuse, for instance, would certainly make a valuable limited
campaign, and later operations in the Peloponnesian War around the
Dardanelles are also worthy of consideration.

Moving on to Roman times, we find that the backbone of the

fleet has now become the larger quadriteme and quinquereme, and
that ffeets are no longer quite so restricted in their operations. Both
Rome and Carthage had little hesitation in despatching fleets on the
direct run from Africa to Sicily - admittedly not a voyage of great
duration, but nevertheless out of sight of land for days - and that,
though the Romans lost more than one fleet to storms, they were not
last in mid-ocean but by being driven ashore on the rocks - the
indication being, therefore, that it was in fact probably safer to stand
further out to sea than to risk being caught on a lee shore by a storm.
This is bom out by the fact that most writers now attribute the coUapse
of Cretan seapower in an earlier period to the fact that when
earthquakes and volcanic eruption devastated Crete mast of the
Cretan fleet was either in harbour or offshore and so wrecked, while
the fleet of the mainland Greeks was at sea and survived, despite the
tidal wave raised by the disturbances.

In fact, during the Punic Wars both sides failed to make full use
of their fleets, the Romans because they were not basically a seafaring
people, the Carthaginians from lack of an enterprising central control of
the war effort. Had they produced an admiral of the same calibre as
Hannibal displayed on land, it could have made a vast difference to the
result of either war. lnstead, it would seem that Carthaginian admirals
allowed themselves to be hypnotised by the Roman introduction of the
corvus. Nevertheless, a little departure from strict historical reality can
produce same basically interesting campaigns throughout Roman
armies.

170
 Remaining in the Mediterranean and with the galley as the main
warship, much can be done both with rivalries between ltalian cities
such as Genoa and Venice, and larger scale operations between the
Barbary States and Spain and later between the main Turkish fleet and
those of the Christian states. The campaign af Lepanto in which the
combined Christian fleets under Don John af Austria broke the power
af the Turkish navy for all time can be merely the climax af a series af
campaigns throughout the Mediterranean and including several
amphibious operations.

The 1ih Century Wars between England and Holland give us an

example of a purely naval war. Neither side made any attempt to
invade the other - it is doubtful whether either could have found the
troops even if undisputed sea supremacy could have been achieved
for long enough - and the war was fought almost entirely for
commercial reasons, the control of the ocean trade routes. Main
objectives were not only the destruction of the enemy fleet but the
interception of his inward and outward bound trade - in which
England's geographical position should have given her a decided
advantage. In the result, naval strategy was not yet far enough
developed for her to take full advantage of. this opportunity.
Strategically, in fact, these wars are somewhat cramped, being fought
in the narrow waters of the Channel or off the British and Dutch coasts.
Nevertheless, interesting results could be obtained from
reconstructions of this period.

With the opening of the long period of Anglo-French conflict, first

just for colonies and later for European supremacy, we are in the
period which I personally prefer for sea warfare. Our ships are now
bigger and more seaworthy; sail has replaced oars as motive power,
which makes the wind all-important; guns have replaced the ram and
the marine as principal weapons (though boarding might often decide
single ship actions it had little place in fleet battles); more space for
sleeping and supply carrying, plus great advances in navigation, have
made the fleets free of the chains which tied them to the coasts. On
the other hand, bases now become of much greater importance. No
longer can you run your ships ashore on a shelving beach; a harbour is
needed, preferably one which gives shelter from the prevailing wind.
Ships take longer to build and need more. and bigger timbers;
dockyards are necessary to a much greater degree than in ancient
times. Ships have settled into a pattern which does not change greatly
for over a hundred years: the main fleets are composed of line of battle
ships of from 64 to 120 guns; frigates mounting anything from 24 to 50
guns act as scouts, commerce raiders, convoy escorts; and lower
down the scale come sloops, brigs, gunboats, bomb vessels etc. for all
the inshore work, commerce protection and thousand and one jobs
which the bigger warships cannot do or cannot be spa red for.

171
 Though naval operations and naval actions took place virtually
all over the world during this period, certain areas seem to offer better
campaign opportunities than others. I have always thought that the
little-known series of actions fought between Hughes and Suffren off
the coasts of lndia and Ceylon would make the basis of a fascinating
little campaign, with shortages of supplies and lack of proper bases
affecting both sides. The other area which teams with opportunities is
of course the West lndies. Either a purely naval campaign or an
amphibious one af limited scale could be extremely interesting, with
both sides getting the occasional reinforcements - or demands for
troops and ships - from Europe.

A campaign in this area could be treated very simply, with rules

only for movement, or it could be made more complicated by
introducing supply factors, base values and possibly a few troops.
Movement in this period is relatively simple: each type of vessel has an
average speed under certain conditions, so that it is easy enough to
work out a daily mean in light winds, good winds, tacking against the
wind etc. Prevailing winds in the area at different seasons are easy to
discover with a little research, and a daily dice throw or chance card
will determine variations from the norm.

Supply, again, offers a fairly straightforward problem. lf we

assume that the various bases contain enough spare masts, yards and
cordage to make good reasonable battle damage, the only supplies we
have to consider are food, drink and ammunition. Food is no great
difficulty since the islands are close enough together fora base to be
within reach when a ship needs food; all that is necessary is to decide
that a ship will normally carry X days supplies and must call at a base
for more before she runs out. Water can be obtained not only from
bases but also from local rivers - again so many days supply would
be carried. An additional chance could be introduced by having a
possibility of food or water going bad, a very reasonable possibility in
those days.

Ammunition is a slightly different proposition. First you would

have to work out the average consumption in battle, and the amount a
ship would carry. This would have to be done by reasonable
guesswork; to try and relate actual expenditure to the number of
salvo's fired in a war game would be a very ticklish proposition! You
would start the campaign with your ships presumably fully stocked,
plus reserve supplies of so many tons at the various dockyards; this
could be all that would be available, or you could have one or more
factories turning out so much extra per week. lf the latter, it would be
interesting to limit the number of these factories drastically, rather than
having one on each island, as you would then have to arrange for
transporting fresh supplies to bases on those islands without factories.
This at once introduces new strategic objectives: firstly the factories

172
themselves become objectives, and secondly the interruption of
supplies from them to the bases.

Capture of bases themselves can be determined by a simple

equation much on the lines of those in the siege section of our ancient
land campaigns. On the one side we have morale of base commander,
points value of defences, and of garrison. On the other is points value
of attacking troops, a value for naval gunfire (not too heavy, since in
this period it was an accepted fact that ships could not fight shore
batteries with any degree of success, though specialised enes like
bomb vessels were a different proposition) morale of both general and
admiral, and one other factor- degree of ca-operation or lack of same
between general and admiral, since again in this period there was
often little love lost between navy and army. A dice throw then
determines success, failure or relative degrees of either.

With its strongly seasonal prevailing winds, the area needs

considerable strategic thought in planning both defence and attack,
and a study of the campaigns fought in these waters during the Seven
Years War, War of American lndependence and the French Revolution
will be of great assistance to the prospective commanders. Weather
conditions play a far greater part in operations of this sort than in land
campaigns: lack of a suitable wind for two ar three days can mean all
the difference between success and failure.

lf desired, of course, this could be expanded ta take in nava!

operations on the American coast during the War of Jndependence.
This would be a logical development as the two areas were
interdependent in a naval sense. Both British and French followed the
practice of sending out a fleet to the West lndies for the campaigning
season, with instructions to move on to the American station at its end.
This was a practical use of prevailing winds and weather conditions,
and the early or late arrival of one of the contending fleets could be a
matter of vital importance.

Moving on in time, a period of perhaps sentimental attraction is

that between the American Civil War and the lntroduction of the
dreadnought battleship. It was a curious hybrid period. Steam had
replaced sail, though both admirals and naval architects still flirted with
the latter for a considerable while, and the rifled, breech-loadirig gun
was now the main weapon. But for same reason no-one thought of
building ships with armaments of a single calibre, but would arm a
battleship with guns of six or seven different sizes, greatly complicating
the supply problem, since so many kinds of ammunition had to be
carried. Yet many of the ships produced were extremely graceful
looking craft, and they were painted often in gay colours rather than
the dark greys we are used to in these days.

173
 Freed from the !imitations of sail, but restricted nevertheless by
the necessities of refuelling bases, I feel that a limited type campaign
in this period could be a lot of fun.

The Great War offers us the last period in which it is possible for
massed fteets to engage in large-scale battles. As a campaign,
however, the possibilities are not very great if we stick to history, since
the North Sea is the only possible area of operations. Again, a non~
historical war in this period based upon the available fleets could be
worked into a worthwhile campaign between fairly well-balanced
navies. Though the torpedo and the submarine have to be taken into
consideration, the period is still fairly uncomplicated from the naval
point of view.

For those who like complications, of course, the period of the

Second World War is ideal. Though naval fighting in the West was very
one-sided, the Pacific fighting offers innumerable fascinating
campaigns, both large and small. One of the best, indeed, would be
the Guadalcanal campaign, in which both sides deployed strictly
limited naval forces and in which, for once, the decisive part was
played by surface warships rather than aircraft carriers. A
reconstruction of this would give ample opportunity for the budding
admiral.

Similarly, if one did not wish to refight historical campaigns, the

West lndies could again be used for a limited modern campaign.
Postulate a war between England and the U.S.A. - unthinkable
though it might be - and assume that the main strengths of both
countries are committed in Canada and the North Atlantic. As a
secondary operation, however, America decides on the conquest of
the West lndies, and assigns toit two or three divisions of troops, and
a naval force which might muster a battleship, a carrier, a couple of
cruiser squadrons and same destroyer flotillas. Give the British
defenders about a division of regulars plus perhaps another of local
defence forces, and a naval force a little inferior in strength to the
invaders. Limitthe air forces of both sides. The result could be a very
interesting and enjoyable affair; and, as in our earlier West Indian
campaign, you could bring in the chance of occasional reinforcements
or calls upon the resources of the area, presence in the area of a
squadron of heavy ships of one side or the other for a very limited
period, etc.

A totally different campaign could also be devised to imitate the

German attempt to strangle Allied commerce by submarine attack.
This would call for a good deal of paperwork and could be best run
with an umpire to carry out the map moves of the British and German
players, though once again the old matchbox system could be used.
The German player would be given a certain number of submarines,
each of which would only be allowed to patrol for a limited period
174
before returning home for rest and replenishment; the British
commander would similarly have a limited force of escort vessels and
perhaps aircraft, and would have to run regular convoys across the
Atlantic. Results would be on a points format, points being awarded for
submarines and merchant vessels sunk, merchant vessels safely
reaching port, etc. Though without the romance and glamour of battles
and amphibious operations, I think it could make an interesting and
intriguing game.

175