The Grenouissian Intermezzo: behind the scenes 4

Now, what were we just saying about making assumptions? There I was, feeling good about myself having spent most of Wednesday poring over maps and orders before sending out everyone’s situation reports, assuming that the dozen players in this campaign had grasped the simplicity and elegance of my approach, when suddenly my inbox goes “Bing!” and the following message arrives from Iain Burt, better known on the WD3 forum as Essex Boy.

Hello Henry,

This is all looking rather brilliant.

My first mistake was to assume a ‘move’ is just one day. So, I need to know ‘stuff’ that I should have asked up front.

Can you please let us know about supply and resupply?

What about supply trains? Do they exist and how big are they?

What about resting troops? Do I need to worry about my heavy cavalry boogieing around the country?

Sorry. I don’t want to turn this into a book keeping exercise but…

All the best

Iain

Yup, good questions, and all perfectly reasonable, the sort of things that other visitors following this blog might also ask, so here’s my reply:

For this campaign, with such an eclectic bunch of participants, some of whom seem to have little experience of even tabletop wargaming, let alone campaigning, I am keeping it all very simple. And with a dozen players involved, and with a colossal workload of my own, I also have my own sanity to consider.

Therefore, you don’t have to worry at all about supply trains or any of the logistical minutiae — that’s all taken into account by your umpire. Nor do you need to concern yourself about resting troops, because the movement rates have been devised to take into account the fact that the men and horses need to be rested at regular intervals and the need for their supplies to keep up.

All this is based on my Wars of the Faltenian Succession articles that ran in issues 1-12 of Battlegames, where I explained everything in a great deal more detail, and what I’m doing for this exercise has been simplified even from what I wrote then. The whole point, after all, is for us to arrive in Yorkshire next weekend with a few games to play to bring the campaign to a climax. It’s going to be a close run thing even with this system, let alone if I let people worry about the number of bushels of wheat and wagons required by their quartermasters. As it is, some commanders are wandering off to explore areas that they have been told are categorically devoid of enemy, or just sitting like scared rabbits in the headlights!

Of course, when we meet, I’ll be happy to discuss ways of making a campaign as complicated as you like, though I would suggest starting with a different — and much shorter — list of participants…   😉

Cheers

Henry