We started a Marengo campaign a week ago. There are 11 wargamers involved, 3 in Canberra, the rest around Hobart. Battles will be fought at camp Cromwell with remote command by Zoom.
Personnel:
Bonaparte: Mike. Victor: Dale. Moncey: Dave. Suchet & Massina: SteveD.
Melas: Mark. Gorrup & Ott: Nick. Kaim: PeterW. Haddick & Vakassovich: SteveJ
Umpire: Jim
Plastic pushers & cameramen for Zoom battles: French: Chris. Austrians: Jim.
Historical basis:
The campaign is based on Bonaparte's 1800 invasion of Italy that lead to the battle of Marengo. Esposito is being used as each sides' initial intel report, but the actual OOB's initial deployments & objectives of the two sides have been varied by the umpire in preparing each side's secret briefing.
Campaign system:
We are using the same system we used for our Spain 1808 campaign of 2017 & our Shenandoah 1862 campaign of 2018, but of course with a few tweaks based on that experience. The system relies on an umpire to control hidden movement & imperfect intelligence. It is not turn based. The players give the umpire orders, he plots them day by day until he sees a decision point & pauses the plot while he sends an Intel report to the relevant player(s) & gets a reply. Delays are applied for distance between events & commanders. Independent Corps Commanders make their own decisions on local details, but cannot make strategic moves without orders from the CIC.
Maps:
The campaign map is one of Esposito's with the historical overlay removed using paint.net. In the two previous campaign we used a hex grid, but I have discovered that the campaign system works fine without one.
Battles:
To set up the terrain for battles we use Michelon terrain maps, Google Earth & Google Satellite & make judgement calls on what wasn't there in 1800. This allows the player to search for terrain to suit them when seeking a place to fight.
We are using our Camp Cromwell Action rules with some mods for Zoom. Where possible we will use a ground scale of 36" per km which makes our 6" wide 28mm infantry units 750 men. This will work fine for battle between armies up to about 30,000 a side. If we get a bigger battle we have two options:
1. Use 28mm figs but adjust the scales: For instance: 50% increase where the 6" infantry unit represents 1,125 men & the ground scale is 24" per km.
2. Use 6mm figures & our Austerlitz Rules for big battles.
Progress so far:
We started the campaign on 14th May. It is now 25 May. There have been no battles so far, but there has been plenty of movement & actions at 3 forts on the Alpine passes & an on-going siege at Genoa. These actions have not been fought on the table. The process is to find a similar historical situation to use as par & throw D10 for both sides to see how far they deviate from history. Results range between two extremes: If the attacker throws 10 & the defender 1, the white flag goes up as soon as the storming party stands up. Or if the other way around the attack fails with double the historical losses.
Blog Reports:
Security prevents me writing up-to-date progress reports on the blog, but reports will be published eventually.
Personnel:
Bonaparte: Mike. Victor: Dale. Moncey: Dave. Suchet & Massina: SteveD.
Melas: Mark. Gorrup & Ott: Nick. Kaim: PeterW. Haddick & Vakassovich: SteveJ
Umpire: Jim
Plastic pushers & cameramen for Zoom battles: French: Chris. Austrians: Jim.
Historical basis:
The campaign is based on Bonaparte's 1800 invasion of Italy that lead to the battle of Marengo. Esposito is being used as each sides' initial intel report, but the actual OOB's initial deployments & objectives of the two sides have been varied by the umpire in preparing each side's secret briefing.
Campaign system:
We are using the same system we used for our Spain 1808 campaign of 2017 & our Shenandoah 1862 campaign of 2018, but of course with a few tweaks based on that experience. The system relies on an umpire to control hidden movement & imperfect intelligence. It is not turn based. The players give the umpire orders, he plots them day by day until he sees a decision point & pauses the plot while he sends an Intel report to the relevant player(s) & gets a reply. Delays are applied for distance between events & commanders. Independent Corps Commanders make their own decisions on local details, but cannot make strategic moves without orders from the CIC.
Maps:
The campaign map is one of Esposito's with the historical overlay removed using paint.net. In the two previous campaign we used a hex grid, but I have discovered that the campaign system works fine without one.
To set up the terrain for battles we use Michelon terrain maps, Google Earth & Google Satellite & make judgement calls on what wasn't there in 1800. This allows the player to search for terrain to suit them when seeking a place to fight.
We are using our Camp Cromwell Action rules with some mods for Zoom. Where possible we will use a ground scale of 36" per km which makes our 6" wide 28mm infantry units 750 men. This will work fine for battle between armies up to about 30,000 a side. If we get a bigger battle we have two options:
1. Use 28mm figs but adjust the scales: For instance: 50% increase where the 6" infantry unit represents 1,125 men & the ground scale is 24" per km.
2. Use 6mm figures & our Austerlitz Rules for big battles.
Progress so far:
We started the campaign on 14th May. It is now 25 May. There have been no battles so far, but there has been plenty of movement & actions at 3 forts on the Alpine passes & an on-going siege at Genoa. These actions have not been fought on the table. The process is to find a similar historical situation to use as par & throw D10 for both sides to see how far they deviate from history. Results range between two extremes: If the attacker throws 10 & the defender 1, the white flag goes up as soon as the storming party stands up. Or if the other way around the attack fails with double the historical losses.
Blog Reports:
Security prevents me writing up-to-date progress reports on the blog, but reports will be published eventually.
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