Wargaming Campaigns – Battlegames

Hello, and thanks for visiting!

This area of the Battlegames site is to accompany Wargaming Campaigns.

Scheduled to be published on 30th June 2022 by Pen & Sword, it was actually released early, on 8th June, and went straight to #1 in the publisher’s lists, #4 in the Wargames and Roleplaying category on Amazon.co.uk and, to the delight of its author, #1 in that category on Amazon.se!

You can see the author talking about the book in a video here.

You can hear the author describing the contents in detail on Jay Arnold’s Veteran Wargamer podcast here.

Producing the book was a labour of love which took far, far longer to compete than anticipated. I had hoped to have everything available when the book was launched, but those of you who have followed the progress of the book—or even just read the Preface and Afterword—will understand that life has thrown me a number of ‘curve balls’ in recent times, so it’s taken me a bit longer to get around to this!

See below for exclusive additional content for readers, including larger versions of many of the maps in the book and gaming aids.

Free Downloads

Henry in his studio Hello! I’m Henry Hyde and first of all, thank you for buying a copy of Wargaming Campaigns! Producing the book was a labour of love which took far, far longer to compete than anticipated. I had hoped to have everything available when the book was launched, but those of you who have followed the progress of the book—or even just read the Preface and Afterword—will understand that life has thrown me a number of ‘curve balls’ in recent times, so it’s taken me a bit longer to get around to this!

This section of the site is exclusively available to readers so that you can download the additional materials mentioned in the book. Please be patient as I gradually add more content here.

The Campaign Event Cards

Described in the March to Glory rules in Chapter 3, created as a PDF file or, if you prefer, click on the individual sheets below to download them in page-by-page JPG format.

A large (2381 x 1653 pixels, 2Mb) version of my Dahlia-Chindrastan map. Click on the image below for the larger version.

Live links to those map-making software sites mentioned in Chapter 3.

Note that these sites are entirely the responsibility of their respective owners and I have no affiliations with any of them. Also, I don’t have to tell you that websites are ephemeral things, and URLs may change or disappear altogether over time.

From Chapter 8, the Battlegames Barometer™

Again, click on the image for a larger version.Recommended websites and blogs from Chapter 14:

Berthier Napoleonic campaign manager (Windows): https://sites.google.com/site/berthiercampaignmanager/homefor a software solution to running campaigns. It says, “Berthier is a Windows program that manages wargames campaigns for miniatures. Berthier is a generic campaign engine that is suitable for historical, naval or fantasy wargaming in most periods. Berthier allows two campaigners, without an umpire, to run simple strategic campaigns leading to tabletop battles. Alternatively umpires can use Berthier to run two sided campaigns.”
Steve’s Balagan, a blog run by Steven Thomas. Here, there’s a really useful page listing the campaigns he has run for the DBx series of rulesets by Phil Barker and the Wargames Research Group—see https://balagan.info/wargaming-campaigns-for-dbx-dba-hott-dbm-and-dbr. In addition, there’s a terrific post about how to conduct an Italian Wars campaign based on the Machiavelli boardgame: https://balagan.info/machiavelli-for-miniatures-a-campaign-based-on-the-machiavelli-board-game
A set of DBMM Mini-Campaign Rules by Rob Brennan, available as a free-to-download Google doc can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PDk1I4MGxFxcg4p-hsoTZ2fBEHsmoZ2UjEETwy351Lw/edit. These could easily be adapted to suit any ruleset or period of history and I commend their brevity!
Thomas Brandstetter’s blog The Raft: Wargaming Adventures, including rules for a map campaign for Gripping Beast’s SAGA: https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/resources/
James Roach has a magnificent blog—Olicanalad’s Games—worth visiting in any event, but I was most delighted to see him post details of his Seven Years War Grid Campaign, which gives detailed rules and the series of pre-drawn maps used for the game. See http://olicanalad.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-seven-years-war-grid-campaign.html
Nikolas Lloyd is probably best known for his huge Crossfire WWII games and his YouTube channel, but he also has an extensive blog on which he published a set of campaign rules. See http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/vintageSite/wargames/skirmish/campsyst.html
The Wargaming Site run by Phil Broeders has a set of DBA Ancients Campaign Rules for the Mediterranean at ‘Rise of Rome’ that can clearly be adapted for any era: https://philbancients.blogspot.com/p/dba-campaign-rules.html
Take a look at the extensive Napoleonic campaigns, fought both solo and as Play By E-Mail (PBEM), by Paul Leniston at http://napoleonicwargaming.blogspot.com/
For a more unusual series on campaigns and linked battles set in the modern era, try the remarkable Cuba Libre! An Alt History Wargaming Blog at http://cubalibrewargame.blogspot.com/ run by retired US Marine “Just Jack”.
Let’s not forget enthusiast John Hetherington’s own blog, which contains many entries related to his own campaigns—including a campaign ‘teaser’ that I set in an issue of Battlegames that John has fought through. https://hereticalgaming.blogspot.com
Veteran wargamer and re-enactor Paul Wisken has written a guide to using Microsoft Excel for creating campaign maps (yes, really!). It can be downloaded from his blog at https://generalwhiskers.com/2013/10/16/using-excel-for-game-mapping/. Interestingly, he’s not the first person I’ve seen using this method, and seem to recall American gamer Bill Protz mentioning that he does something similar.
Jay’s Wargaming Blog was originally created for the owner’s solo wargaming projects, but in fact in recent years, he has started playing with live opponents too. It carries a number of interesting posts on the subject of campaigns and solo gaming: see https://solowargamer.wordpress.com
The Caliban-somewhen blog actually takes the ideas expressed on Jay’s Wargaming Blog and expands on them in an interesting post at http://caliban-somewhen.blogspot.com/p/programmed-wargames-campaigns.html
The Campaigns board on The Miniatures Page http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/topics.mv?id=264 is often a useful place to find interesting ideas that players have tried themselves. Sadly, it also serves a salutary lesson as there are many posts by people who have had nothing but disappointment from their campaigning! Really, as I hope this book will have shown by now, it doesn’t have to be that way.
A free PDF of campaign rules by Peter Riley and Sven Lugar for the Franco-Prussian War can be downloaded from the Baccus 6mm site and again, obviously, can be adapted to other periods: https://www.baccus6mm.com/includes/polemos/FPW/Campaigns.pdf
2Hour Wargames (THW Game Design) produce a variety of wargames rules, most of which appear to have campaigns systems included. See http://twohourwargames.com/index.html
Now, the remarkable and anonymously-owned site called The Perfect Captain. Not only can you download a host of miniatures gaming rulesets FREE (though they have an honour system that asks you to make a donation to charity), but they also have an absolutely brilliant campaign system that I wish I’d thought of myself, called Battle Finder! which allows you to play campaigns set at any time from 1000 to 1700 AD. Simply brilliant stuff, with beautiful graphics—and did I mention that it’s FREE? Download from http://perfectcaptain.50megs.com/request.html and the home page is at http://perfectcaptain.50megs.com/captain.html. As if that wasn’t enough, there are campaign and siege systems included in their Spanish Fury rules: see http://perfectcaptain.50megs.com/SpanishMain.html.
And last, but by no means least, the simply remarkable blog of well-known wargaming personality Sidney Roundwood, whose single-minded pursuit of perfection on his 17th century Laarden campaign is simply a wonder to behold – he even creates character cards for the many personalities who play a part in his fictitious set-up, and his campaign diaries are simply breathtaking. Just head over to https://sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com and start scrolling down through his blog entries for an amazing journey into one man’s passion for the hobby.

And, of course, https://boardgamegeek.com/

Hexes galore!

A whole host of aids for creating hex maps, including paper of various sizes covered with hexes and so on. Click on images for full-size versions. Click here for a ZIP file containing Adobe Illustrator versions of the files.

A hex for creating more detailed terrain in the ‘horizontal’ position.