setting up a Wargames

Campaign

INCLUDING THE FULL RULES FOR THE FAMOUS HYBORIAN CAMPAIGN, AND THE FULL LOW DOWN ON MAP
MOVEMENT, CONTACTS AND BATTLES, UMPIRING, SUPPLY AND FINANCE, CHARACTERISATION, CAMPAIGN
NEWSPAPERS, POLITICAL SKULL DUGGERY, AND ADAPTIONS FOR ALL ERA’S.

A WARGAMES RESEARCH GROUP PUBLICATION.

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 FOREWORD

This addition to our range will, we believe, fill a need that we know exists among wargamers, whether
their interests lie in board wargaming, or in the use of model figures.
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 literature, and
a 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 International 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 mischances of
conflicts, becomes far less belligerant 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.

Phil Barker,
Bob O’Brien
May 1973 Wargames Research Group
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2023 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/settinguowargameOOO00Ounse
 CONTENTS

Page
Foreword

Introduction

i How to Set up Your Campaign

Map Movement

Contacts, Battles and After Effects

Umpires — and the Lack of Same

Supply and Replacement

Characterisation

Campaign Extras

Horse and Musket Campaigns

Victorian Campaigns

World War I

World War II

Mini Campaigns

13. Naval Campaigns

Appendix — Wargames Research Group Publications.

— Magazines.
ee es
 INTRODUCTION

When Phil Barker first suggested to me that I should write a book on 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 to 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 of detail. If this is annoying to more experienced readers I am sorry;
but in anything as complicated as this subject can be, it is essential to start off with a firm idea of what
you are trying to do.
Almost 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
lacking: that these individual games, though well enough in their way, need some connecting link to
make them more satisfying and to 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. Some
people are capable of doing this, but for many it can end by getting bogged down among the compli-
cations 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. If you try these successfully you will probably then find the urge to go on to
something bigger and better.
Again, to indulge in a campaign you need at least two but preferably more people who can engage on
it in a regular basis. Campaigns are ideal for local clubs to embark on, but they can also be run by more
widely scattered groups. Ideally, 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 ofbattles etc.,
of visiting firemen. Suggestions and rules for all these eventualities will be found in this book.
What makes campaigning 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 ruler 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
is a complicated one, matters of diplomacy etc as well. He must learn one of the hardest lessons for a
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 run a mythical continent of my own was a sign of
power mania;I replied that this was possibly true to some extent, since most of us like the idea of
playing God to some degree, but more important was the freedom it gave to a 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 is a 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 some 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 success 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 unneces-
sary 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 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 level 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 critiscism 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.
 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.
If you decide to stick to realistic history as your basis of operations, you will have to 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 limitations of the historical
approach and deny yourself use of many of the most interesting and enjoyable of the rules mentioned
later purely because they do not fit into this context.
If you choose this course, there are numerous interesting wars you can select. From the strategical view-
point, 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 some 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 dependance 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 ofthis particular war is of course that the land battles
were almost exclusively fought by armies of hoplites; light troops were used to some 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.
Both the Ist and 2nd 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.
Most of the later Roman wars were too one-sided to make interesting campaigns, and the same applies
to some 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
Crusades 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 committeed 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 on
this course, an excellent campaign can be constructed on the basis of 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 limitations
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 Ancient
Egyptian to the 13th 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 large as Hyboria
not all countries would be on the same level of culture and development (as was the case on 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 some of the
more backward areas; but while regular armies have tended to 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 of 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 control you have or whether you
have created a Frankenstein’s monster!
If 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. If you are going to limit yourself to
relatively small-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 Incognita, walled off
by thick forests or high mountains. Or of 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 books; he included a reasonably detailed map on the end-covers
of his books, and I merely took this, blew it up to some 4’ by 4’, and proceeded to map in much
greater detail.
Plenty of other worlds are waiting for you to take possession of them. Sprague de Camp, one of the
finest living writers of fantasy fiction, offers much material for mythical worlds in many of his
books, 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 Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, 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 independant duchies to take up blank spaces between
them, he soon had the outlines of all his countries drawn in on his map. Similarly, rivers were taken
from local Ordnance Survey maps, while the coast-lines of such countries as Norway and Sweden were
aegis to give his sea-coast. This sort of thing is within the scope of anyone, and can be fun to 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 into
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.)
toss again, and if a second double is thrown then the hexagon is extreme of its kind — for example
Hills 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 into the scheme of
things, the rivers rising in higher ground and tending downhill. Remember that national boundaries
very often follow natural 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. If 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. If you need a method of 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 some 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 to 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!
If 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 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 for a 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 of 75 for farm or castle, 150 for a hamlet, 1,500 for a village,
15,000 for a town, 150,000 for a city.
You now have the problem of 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 of names. Again, no difficulty:
let the professionals do the work for you! The pages of fantasy fiction literally teem with suitable
names — or if you don’t have access to this, use a large dictionary, a Latin or 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 of 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 isa good idea to have main roads and lesser roads — call them Ist Class and 2nd Class for want
of a better name — and these can be shown by using different colours. I personally use red for Ist and
green for 2nd Class, but any colour code will do. The amount of roads will depend on individual taste,
but of course all inhabited localities will be linked into 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, | Celts, 6 Mediaeval, 1 Norman, 3 Greek, 1 Roman, 2 Persian, 1
Assyrian, 2 Saracen, 1 Indian, 1 Aztec, 2 Egyptian, 1 Numidian, 2 Carthaginian and 2 mixed Asiatics;
with several independent city states and a wilderness peopled by natives akin to Red Indians!
I also began by laying down standing regular 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 colour for individual regiments.
It is not, of course, necessary to go as far as this, but since you are presumeably 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.
 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 some 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 distances:

Ist Class 2nd Class Country Desert

Road Road or Mountain

Infantry 4 hexagons 3 hexagons 2 hexagons 1 hexagon

Cavalry 6 Y 4 1
Chariots 6 5 1
Camels 6 5 4 4 Desert
Nil Mountain
Elephants + 3 2 Nil
Supply Train = 3 1 Nil
Pack horses 5 4 3 1

2. Movement of couriers, spies, scouts or individual horsemen will depend on circumstances, drawing
of chance cards etc but will normally be in the region of 30 hexagons by Ist Class road and the
remainder proportionally.
3. 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. If its path is blocked 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 ofthe
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.
If 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 single column. When the enemy are met, a series of
separate battles may need to be fought between the individual forces on both sides.
4. 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. If so pursued, the stragglers are lost for good.
Ships at sea will move, under normal weather conditions, at 8 hexagons per move.
Ships on rivers will move at 4 hexagons up-river, 6 hexagons down-river. Where there is a tidal flow
near the river mouth, this can be taken into account so that ships moving with the tide use down-
river speed.
Mountains can only be crossed by formed bodies of troops where roads lead over or through
them. Forested country can only be traversed by road except by infantry, who are reduced to 1
hexagon per move.
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. If boats
have been collected in advance, delay will only be 1 hexagon. If the force has a bridging train
with it, delay will be 2 hexagons, If neither, a dice will be thrown: 5 or 6, boats can be collected
locally, delay of 2 hexagons; 3 or 4, delay of 3 hexagons while boats are collected; 2 delay of
one 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.
1: 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.
[ss 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

Troops can be embarked on transports anywhere along a river bank. Infantry alone take half a
map move to embark or disembark, anything else a full map move.
Troops embarking or disembarking at a port will require 1 hexagon for infantry, 2 for anything
else.
Infantry 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, | 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.
Iie 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 will 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. If a storm blows up, ships must run for a beach if they are within one hexagon of the
coast. If 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. If the result is good, all ships will beach safely; ifit is moderate,
dice for each ship: | it beaches but receives severe damage in doing so, 2 moderate damage, 3
slight damage. If the shore is rocky, dice again, 1 2 3 lost on rocks with all hands, 4 5 lost on
rocks but half crew get 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 time 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 determining 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 fore-
casts for each area, one general and one local. In order to make your weather logical, it is best to
relate your map in some way to places on Earth, so that you have a basis on which to work out your
weather. This can be done quite simply by identifying some of the focal points on your continent
with similar 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 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 into 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 naval operations. You also need to make some sort of daily weather selection, since a
storm would not necessarily last for a 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 line 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.

11
Having discovered the weather, you now have to decide on its effect upon movement. The following rules
should cover most 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 travel 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.
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.
During heavy rain movement on Ist 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 Drought will begin when there has been no rainfall for a period of four successive
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, all except
large rivers becoming fordable in most places, and will reduce the navigability of
large 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 losses among
cavalry and draught animals unless they are moving in the vicinity of a large river.
Fog Fog does not as a general rule have a great deal of strategical effect on movement by
land when this 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. Asa 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 all
movement in mountains, and reduces movement elsewhere to half speed. If the
weather remains cold when snow ceases, movement remains restricted. When it
thaws, movement will still be restricted for one period due to slush etc.
Blizzard Blizzard will halt all movement anywhere during the period. After blizzard counts as
after two periods of normal snowfall.
Intense 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.
High Winds High winds prevent transports putting to sea, and make it too dangerous for ships
at sea to use their sails, proceeding only under oars. In desert areas, high winds raise
sandstorms and bring movement to a halt.
Intense Heat Intense heat will reduce movement by one hexagon due to heat exhaustion. It may
also cause forest or grass fires.

h2
 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
ees this system without virtually making my original map ten times larger, a labour which was quite
eyond 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 into 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 | 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 some 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.
Thus, by now each general will have some 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 will attempt to avoid one. If 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 manouevre 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, knowledge 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 item 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.

13
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 either practicable or even desirable to
use the entire forces on one battlefield. If, 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
manouevre and turn the battle into a simple slogging match. You can of course avoid this by using
skeleton forces and a roster system, but this will 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 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. Ideally, 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 one, 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 of tactical moves possible in the course
of a full day’s fighting will of course depend on the tactical rules you are using, most 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 thinginthe 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 movesare 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 for a 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.
If the fighting went on till nightfall, the loser 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. If, 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 coyfusion and b) whether the victor has fresh
cavalry, or at least 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, throw an average dice and from the resultant score consult a chart.

14
Factors Army withdrawing in good order +)
Reasonable cavalry force to cover withdrawal +}
Organised rearguard +
Suitable defensive terrain +1
Army withdrawing in some disorder —]
Army withdrawing in panic rout —2
Fresh cavalry pursuing —2
Reasonable cavalry force pursuing —]
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%
=| Loss of 50%
a 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
see 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 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. If at this stage its commander
decides to withdraw, and succeeds in getting at least 25% of 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.
If, 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).
If 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; | or 2, all units engaged hand to hand with the enemy or cut off from a line of retreat
will surrender, remainder will withdraw in disorder. If 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 thus has 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
Ollie 3 01-4.
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; | 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 of the several throws is that it allows for a wider range of results,
and at the same time gives more room for dice luck to average out than in a single throw.

15
We now come to the question of assessing losses from a campaign point of view. We could of course
merely accept the full 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 left where
they are to recuperate and then moved on, or taken with the army in baggage wagons. In the latter
case, should the baggage train be lost any wounded with it become prisoners. Prisoners must be sent
to 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 or disposed of in other
fashions.
In assessing campaign casualties they must be applied pro-rata to the losses 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.
If the outcome 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 both
decide to encamp on the ground.
An army retiring by forced marches will, even if not pursued, lose an additional 25% ofits casualties
by straggling and desertion. However, if not pursued half of these will rejoin the colours after a delay
of one move.
Losses in equipment and weapons must also be considered. Obviously a good deal of armour and
weapons will be broken in action, and there will be considerable expenditure of missiles. In the case
of the retiring loser, 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
isa way of useable equipment, whereas if the defeated were also Romans almost all the spoils should
e of use.

16
 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 es

were fairly crude. I think our first ever was Don’s Indian Mutiny; he naturally took the part of the
British, while I was cast as the Mad Mullah of Muckypore and ended by driving the filthy British from
India! 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
to a logical system both of starting wars and of manouevring 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. 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 I 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. I 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!

17
SET OF MATCHBOXES FOR CONCEALED MOVEMENTS

GSTS GMS + SOS Looe A ve

LI. LE MMOD (Lb St te Lk!

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, and at the same time its
very easy to Say ina 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 | to
whatever number you have; down the side you use letters. If your depth is more than 26 you simply begin
begin again with Al, BI etc. If 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 for a little more work initially.
If 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. If, however, you haven’t
a wall available (and some 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 some
such substance. Again the ubiquitous plastic sheeting and chinagraph pencils are pressed into 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. If, 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 are going deeply into 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 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 with 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 turn 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.

19
 or
Up till the time that a player finds one of his opponent’s counters in a matchbox that he is entering
made of strengths, dispositions etc. When two counters reach
passing through, no disclosure is of course
the same box, however, some 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 early 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 points, a corps from 80 to 200, an army over 200.
This simplified things considerably, but it still tended to give away too much information and prevented
the possibility of a small force boldly handled imposing on a larger force. If, of course, either force was
stationed within a town or fortress it was not required to 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 to 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 inter-
posing some obstacle. This led to 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 dis-
positions. 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. | 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 some 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. Instead 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 of more than 2 captured him. If 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. If 2
scouts achieved this, the figure must be correct. If 3 or more succeeded, then details of the composition
of the force had to be given as well. If an enemy scout was captured and brought back to the base-line,
a dice was then thrown: | or 2 he refused to give any information; 3 he gave false information, i.e. the
figure could be inaccurate by as much 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 manouevring 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 to a gridded terrain map, and a 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 discloses the strength of the
unit or units within the box, with the usual margin for inaccuracy. Each commander then decides
whether to stand or retire, and gives his decision.
If 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 into 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.

20
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”). If 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 in time 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. If 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 some 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 most countries will 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, most 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, I therefore worked out a set of rules 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 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 1st, 2nd and 3rd
Class 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 are as follows:

Strength Maximum Garrison

lst Class Fortress 150 points No Limit
2nd Class Fortress 100 200 figures plus engines
3rd Class Fortress 60 100 figures plus engines
Walled Town 40 200 figures plus engines
Strong Fort 100 60 figures 6 engines
Weak Fort 20 40 figures
Field Fortifications 60 No Limit
4. A defended locality can be captured by the following means:
a) Treachery b) Poor morale of garrison commander
c) Starvation d) Surprise
e) Assault f) Regular Siege Operations
oe Ist and 2nd Class Fortresses and Strong Forts cannot be carried by assault as long as they have a
minimum garrison of 20 figures for a fort, 50 for a fortress, and their morale is good.
6. 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. If it is only
of
a suspicion of treachery, a dice throw of 1 will confirm it. Having established a traitor, a throw
1, 2 or 3 means that his treachery is successful, in which case the whole of the garrison become
prisoners.

ze
 if their
Poor Morale. Class B or C commanders are liable to loss of nerve, and this will increase
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 Class com-
mander always adds | to his throw. 4, 5, 6 the garrison fights; 2 or 3 surrenders on terms, garrison
gets safe conduct; | surrender unconditionally, garrison prisoners. Class D commander of course
subtracts 1 and is automatically a bad risk.
Any defended locality can only hold out as long as its supplies last. If it is a town, with civilian
population, you can assume that the civilians have supplies for a month, and after that must be
fed from the military stores.
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.
Once supplies run out, dice following move: |, 2 or 3, surrender unconditionally; 4 or S, garrison
cut their way out, dice to see how many escape; 6 garrison get safe conduct. A garrison which
becomes prisoner is of course lost in toto, not proportionately.
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.
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 Class D halve it. Do the same with points value of
attackers. Having obtained relative strengths, throw | dice and consult chart:
Score Odd of 3:2 eal Sal
] Bloody Repulse Bloody Repulse Repulse — both sides
Attackers lose Attackers lose lose 25% garrison
50% garrison 50% garrison strength
strength strength
2 Bloody Repluse Repulse — both Repulse — both sides
Attackers lose sides lose 50% lose 25% garrison
50% garrison garrison strength
strength strength
3 Repulse — both Repulse — both Repulse — both sides
sides lose 50% sides lose 25% lose 25% garrison
garrison strength garrison strength
strength
4 Repulse — both Repulse — both Position stormed;
sides lose 25% sides lose 25% garrison lost, attackers
garrison strength garrison strength lose same strength
5 Repulse — both Position stormed Position stormed;
sides lose 25% garrison lost garrison lost, attackers
garrison strength Attackers lose lose 20% garrison strength
same strength
6 Position stormed Position stormed Position stormed,
Garrison lost garrison lost garrison lost, attackers
Attackers lose Attackers lose lose 20% garrison strength
same strength same strength

Odds of 4:1
| Repulse — both Position stormed Position stormed
sides lose 25% Garrison lost Garrison lost
garrison strength Attackers lose Attackers lose
same strength 20% garrison strength
ee) Repulse -- both Position stormed Position stormed
sides lose 25% Garrison lost Garrison lost
garrison strength Attackers lose Attackers lose
same stength 20% garrison strength
oe
 Odds of 5:1

] Repulse — both 3 Position stormed 5 Position stormed

sides lose 25% Garrison lost Garrison lost
garrison strength Attackers lose Attackers lose
same strength 20% garrison strength
2 Position stormed 4 Position stormed 6 Position stormed
Garrison lost Garrison lost Garrison lost
Attackers lose Attackers lose Attackers lose
same strength 20% garrison strength 20% garrison strength

13. In the case of a bloody repulse, attackers dice again. Throw of | or 2, they raise the siege and
retire. Cannot resume siege again until reinforced.
Regular Siege Operations. It takes 2 map moves to get siege engines into 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.
3rd Class 2nd Class Ist Class
Attacker has advantage
oe 4 weeks 6 weeks 8 weeks
Ol 3 4 i
Sy) D 3 6
Sl 1 2 5
More ] ] 4
15. Breach once made, attacker summons fortress, which dices:
3rd Class: 1 2 surrender unconditionally
3 4 surrender, garrison given safe conduct
5 6 refuses surrender
2nd Class: 1 surrenders unconditionally
2 3 surrenders, garrison given safe conduct
4 5 6 refuses terms
lst Class: 1 2 retires to inner defences
3 45 6 Fights on in outer defences
16. If 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.
Wie If 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.
In the case of a Ist Class Fortress, if the assault is successful but the garrison throw a 4 5 or 6 they
can retire into the inner defences, losing 25% oftheir strength, including engines. They can of
course retire voluntarily before the assault if they wish.
19. If the besieging force continues the siege for more than a month, each move it must dice: throw
of 1 followed by second throw of | 2 or 3 means sickness in the camp, loss of 5% of strength
every following move. After 2 months, throw also for garrison. If 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 simply, but at the same time major
decisions still remain 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. If 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 delaying actions, where a small force sets out to hold up the advance of a greatly
superior one for a set period, to 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 most difficult
to portray on the table. Often, too, 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 adopt 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.
The maximum superiority in numbers which can be delayed in this way is 3 to 1.
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.
OpenGround Wooded _ Hilly
Unit of Light Infantry 10 20 2S
Heavy Infantry 20 10 1S
Light Cavalry 20 NIL 15
Heavy Cavalry 30 NIL 10
Horse Archers 40 NIL 20
Camels 15 NIL 10
Each Elephant 10 NIL =
Chariot 5 NIL 3
Siege Engine 5 NIL 10

24
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

Lost last battle engaged in
No fighting this campaign
Won last battle engaged in
Won last two battles engaged in Ke
ABWN

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

2) Having thus discovered relative strengths, consult the following chart:
Ratio of attacker Dice Throw
to defender Delay 6 ] 4 3 Z

4:3 Days 10 8 6 5 a 3
322 8 gi 6 4 3 2
He) a 5 3 2 1 ND
pe | 5 5 1 ND ND ND
aed 4 2 1 ND eD” 1D
3:1 g) Z 1 ND DD

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.
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.
23 Delayer gets away but loses 25% of his force in doing so.
1 Delayer only extricates 50% of his force.
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 putting in a real attack, rather than actual hard
fighting on the position.
The final point we have to consider is the effect that chance can play on such things as the speed of couriers
and the reaction of officers on 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 ordered to march to the support of their comrades will obey instantly and efficiently. While
this makes for a 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.
i 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
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.

Ok
2. If 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.
If you give your individual generals proper characters you will already have some 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 Class 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 to
discover the position.
d) Force takes wrong road, dice: | 2 3 loses 1 day, 45 6 4a day
3. Ifa general who has run into trouble knows there is help within reach and sends a courier to ask
for it, that commander will draw a card:
a) Will move to his comrade’s help with all available force — 2 cards
b) Will 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 to have numerous separate 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 war gaming, all tastes must be catered for.

26
 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 and a 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 II,
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 complicated rules 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. If 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. If 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 very artificial 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. It 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 some 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. If 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!
If, however, you have created your own continent, world 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 supply, 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 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 woods.
f) Hill Country. Some hunting. Often good sheep country. Poor crops.
g) Mountains. Some 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 into the subject. For my purposes |
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 I didn’t want
to be swamped with mines. Moreover, this was only to establish known deposits; later I allowed players
to fit out special expeditions to try and discover fresh lodes 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 lode. 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, |
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 at the wrong time could greatly reduce food production, kindly weather
bring bumper crops, floods and other natural 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 into
account these possibilities. At all events, a player knows the basic resources of his own country; he may
know something of those near his borders, either from experience, or traders, or spies, and can thereby
plan his operations, knowing that here he can collect supplies, btit there he must bring them in from
outside.

28
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 some 20% are of military age. In times of crisis, of course
older 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
ona 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 turn 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 dealt 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 historical and accurate — just as I tend to speak of regiments, brigades and divisions rather than
using historical 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 — I could
have called it the talent, 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 turn made
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 learned
of local resources, this can be done fairly simply. You first of all put a monetary value on the resources
you have allocated to your types of ground, thus:
a) Cultivated Ground 1000 gold crowns per annum
b) — River Banks 1200 gold crowns per annum
c) Coast Lines 600 gold crowns per annum
d) Plain 800 gold crowns per annum
e) Forest 500 gold crowns per annum
f) Hills 600 gold crowns per annum
g) 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 allow for the local
nobility, 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 State. Finally we have customs dues, which are levied on all trade routes
and entry and exit points such as seaports.

29
From all of these you can calculate the tax 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 Ist 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 transport it to the central treasury, allowing time for this to be
done. If one had the time to devote to it, this alone could be an interesting exercise, in which one could
bring 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 tell
them the cost of same!
The values I worked out are as follows:
Salaries per annum: Infantryman 50 silver crowns
Cavalryman 150 silver crowns
Infantry Colonel 100 gold crowns
Cavalry Colonel 200 gold crowns
Infantry 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 100 silver crowns.
Galley Captain 50 gold crowns for command of a trireme. with an
additional SO 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 some 600 men)
Leather armour 25 gold crowns
Y% Armour 50
Full Mail 100
Plate 200
Shield 25
Horse Armour 100
Sword 20
Spear 10
Lance 1S
Axe/Halberd 15
Short Bow 10
Composite Bow 15
Longbow 1S
Javelin 5
Pilum 10
Pike 15
Crossbow DS
Sling Nil
Ponies 50
Horses 75
Heavy Horses 100

30
 Elephant 100 each
Elephant Armour 125-each
Light Siege Engine 50 each
Heavy Siege Engine 75 each
Camels 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 some 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:
Infantry , 100 gold crowns per quarter
Cavalry 200
Camel Squadron 50
Chariot Crew 25
Elephant Crew 30
These were peace-time rates of pay, and troops have to be paid regularly 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 for a regiment 30 gold crowns per month
Fodder for a cavalry regiment 30
Fodder for an elephant 10
Fodder for a camel squadron 20
Food and fodder for a 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:
Shipbuilding.
Type Cost Building Time Pay of Crew
3er 300 gold crowns 7 days 40 gold crowns per quarter
4er 400 10 60
Ser 500 14 100
6er 600 pa is)
Fer 700 28 175
8er 800 35 200
Ser 900 42 300
Ship Repairs:
Minor Damage Medium Damage Severe Damage
Type Cost Period Cost Period Cost Period
Ser 50 gold cr. 1 day 75 gold cr.2 days 150 gold cr 3 days
4er 60 100 ps 200 5
Ser 80 1 120 3 250 |
6er 100 l 150 3 300 10
et 120 2 175 + 350 14
8er 130 2 200 4 400 17
Ser 150 2 250 7 450 ZA
Ww —
Some of the other costs involved were also worked out:
Hire of a transport 100 gold crowns per month
Building new roads: Ist Class 40 gold crowns per hexagon
2nd Class 25
New Bridges: Over Small river 25 gold crowns
Medium 50
Large 200
Fortifications:
Building Strengthened
Type Cost Period Cost Period
Small Fort 200 gold crowns 1 week 200 gold crowns 2 weeks
Strong Fort 400 3
Walled Town 1500 12 300 -
3rd Class
Fortress 3000 18 1000 6
2nd Class
Fortress 3500 22 1500 10
Ist Class
Fortress 4500 28
Repairs after a siege: Small Breach 200 gold crowns | 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! If 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, or on his
nobility or towns; but such an act may possibly cause unrest, or 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, and a selection of these
is given below:
lL: Each year, recruits may be levied from each province up to the agreed percentage of population.
These recruits can serve as infantry or cavalry.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New troops may be equipped in whatever way is desired and compatible with facilities available.

e)
 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 lost 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 weaponless.
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.
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. If 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. If this is not sufficient, supplies must be brought up from other
areas by supply train.
az: 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.
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 fleet or an army.
|
toe Cities, fortresses etc. will draw their daily needs from the surrounding countryside. Supplies may
of course be stock-piled there either as supply depots or against the possibility of siege.
16. Supply trains may also carry spare weapons and equipment. It takes | 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 weapons and equipment will take place at special armouries. Usually these will be
located near to iron mines in order to have ready access to raw materials. If not, arrangements must
be made for the necessary materials to be brought to them. Armouries will be rated Ist, 2nd and
3rd Class according to their production capabilities and the skill of their workers.
18. 3rd Class 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 % armour and also longbows and
composite bows providing such construction is known locally.
Abs 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 historical campaigns, or in mythical continents how you originally set things up. For,
instance, Western nations would not have knowledge of the composite bow, crossbows would be
more prevalent in the West, as would plate armour.

33
23. 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.
24. The same is true of types of horse, which will be indigenous to certain areas. Large, strong horses
are not normally found in hill country, for instance. Horses likewise can be imported, and such
imports can be used to raise breeding standards over a period. In such cases, however, imports of
breeding stock must be maintained, or otherwise over any long 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. If an army engages in battle and loses a lot of its equipment, the fact that you have
enough money to purchase replacement equipment — even if the money is with the army — will avail
you nothing if the replacement equipment itself is not also in the army supply trains, since you will
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 greatly reduced.
It will therefore be seen that these supply rules make players look very much ahead of present needs
and attempt to provide for later eventualities. Money, supplies 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 possible, 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 himself 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 plunder its treasury and also levy a fine on the citizens if you wish. If you have
good intelligence of the area you may be able to seize one of his principal mines or armouries and
force him to either give up valuable resources or fight at a disadvantage. The possibilities are indeed
endless and, if you have the time necessary to devote to them, supply rules will greatly increase your
campaign enjoyment.

34
 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 essential.
Obviously, if you are setting up a new continent, you must provide its various countries with rulers,
with ruling 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 giving your creation a real life of its own.
You will be surprised to find how simple it is to make decisions and to influence events merely by
consulting the characters of the people you have created. An example 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 large force of mercenary soldiers left unemployed at the close of a campaign.
Lodivarman himself 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 to 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 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 lot 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 to a
great deal on what you have based your various countries. If, 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 form a County; two or three
Counties would form a Duchy or an Earldom. In addition to this, there would be several Court officials:
the Chancellor, High Constable, Earl Marshal etc.

35
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 formed 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 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 for a 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, I’m a convinced Royalist, not a
democrat!
For your Roman state you must choose between Republican and Imperial Rome. You may of course
start off with a Republican culture and let it graduate into an Imperial one. If 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 main families.
You can also have various less civilised states, usually of the smaller kind. For instance, I had two Viking
countries; each of these was ruled 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 ruled 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.
Other ideas will undoubtedly occur to you if you think about it; all you need is a little historical
research into 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 Ambassadors and
various other posts. Here, of course, it is not strictly necessary to formulate all the intricate relation-
ships 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 relationships.

36
At allevents, I found that once having decided on the various systems of Government, it was worth-
while 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.

Principality of Hyrkania
Prince

Beglerbeg of Babilu Beglerbeg of Tabal Beglerbeg of Barsip

Voivode of | Voivode of Voivode of

Auriga Kutu Haurani

Voivode Voivode . Voivode

of of of
Bisri Halman Zarka

V oivode Voivode Voivode

of of of
Yuetshi Shushan Quarar

House of Hyperborea
Namedides I m. Nemone

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

Belesa of Conaire of of Zem Vakar of
Corinth Hyrkania Hyrkania

Ramizail-m Fritharik Kandive the Golden-m Yana

of Cimmeria Sais of Zem

Namedides II -m.
Parsyates of Hyrkania

oT
 to create noble
Having created your ranks, you now need people to fill them, in other words you have
simple: for each particular position you create an original family i
families. My system for this is quite
to take the example shown, of Hyrkania, you would need to start with thirteen families,
in other words,
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. Some years ago I came
across a cheap little game called “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 and a 7 on the special dice would give you an age of 27. If 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 into
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. If 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.
It is, of course, desirable to have the head of the family married so that you can logically 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 fit; 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; some families will have two or even three generations, others may have
a large 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 similarity between families.
Your next task is to name all these people. Be advised, and first fix on a family name for each house-
hold. 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
would 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 family — 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 books — 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 ona
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
books 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!

38
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 families, 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 adopt
these methods.
The same methods may be used if you wish to set up military 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, there-
fore, 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 generation. A man of 52, for instance,
could easily have a son of 36, and he in turn could have one of 20. I 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
suitable 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 I found 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 most outstanding characteristic: a Heart will indicate Good Nature, a Diamond Love of Wealth,
a Spade Ambition, and a Club Love 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 has a value of its own, as given below:
Ace: Spade or Club, a disloyal intriguer. Diamond, loyal intriguer. Heart,exceptional good nature.
King: Spade or Club, Energy: Heart or Diamond, Courage
Queen: Great lover
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.
Sixt 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.

39
A reversed Ace (i.e. one dealt upside down) signifies a hunchback or cripple.
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. If, for instance, you
turn up a Nine of Hearts and a Nine of Spades, then physical beauty obviously 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 coward. 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. If 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 loyal, 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 or kill their
victim. Anything in between can be worked out as shades of success or failure.
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. If an even score turns 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 will obviously need a better idea of their military capabilities and possibly their
loyalty. When I first worked this out for Hyboria I in effect set up four classes of officer, A, B, C,and
D and gave each class four rankings. Class A stood for Loyalty, Class B for Disloyalty, Class C for
Military Ability, and Class D for Military Stupidity. An Al was completely 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 than a D4; 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, Clubs 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:

40
Throw | dice for each of the A characteristics except the Popularity factor. If both 1s and 6s are
present, convert them to 2s and Ss 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 1s 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
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 | upgrade. This can only be claimed twice in an officer’s career, and not within the same
period of five years.

CHART OF CHARACTERISTICS

1 2 8 + 5 6

A 1. General Savage & Gloomy Average Cheerful Happy Open &

Disposition Morose Sunny
2. Morals Totally Vicious Drink & Drink or Highly Saintly
Depraved Women Women Moral
3. Generosity Miserly Thrify Thrifty Generous Open Spendthrift
Tendency Tendency Handed
4. Loyalty Completely Bribable Dutiful but Dutiful Loyal Totally
untrustworthy can be Loyal
blackmailed
5. Appearance Repulsive Ugly Undistinguished Striking Handsome Adonis

6. Popularity Universally Disliked Average Popular Much Beloved

Factor Detested Liked by All

i Idiot Stupid Average Intelligent Very Outstanding

fi cere - ‘ Intelligent Intelligence
Idle and Lazy Average Active Active with Erratic
2. Activity
Sluggish Initiative

None Outstanding
3. Martial
Aptitude :
Outstanding
4, Martial None
Experience y
Outstanding
5. Political None
Aptitude alts
utstanding
6. Political None
Experience

41
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 Intelligence and Activity.
The complete 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 witha
popularity factor of 4. The Prince is cheerful, with a weakness for drink and women, open-handed,
dutiful but ugly. Now 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 own state for 2 years; he has thus
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 Skill grade 7. As for his
popularity, this is measured as the average of the popularity factor and half the military or political
skill 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 upon 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 natural causes, accident, sickness etc. or for either marriage or childbirth. All
these have to be allowed for, and my system is to deal with this annually (continent year, of course)
except in the case of state marriages which of course are dealt with as situations 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 done by a simple dice throw and a check on the age group, as
follows:
Under 20 If a 1 is thrown, throw again: | or 2 dead, 3 or 4 seriously ill, will die if a 1 or 2 turns
up next year, 5 or 6 a minor illness.
21—40 Throw of 1, dice again: | 2 3 dead, 45 6 serious illness.
41—5S0 Throw of | or 2 throw again: as above.
51—60 Throw of 1 2 or 3 throw again: as above.
Over 60 Throw of | 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 natural
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;
if you wish you can complicate this by throwing a 6 again, a second throw of 4 5 or 6 gives you twins.
You then throw for sex in the normal way. If you find that you are getting too 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 children; 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 measures will
usually be taken if your legitimate birth-rate is falling below requirements!

42
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 to a few eligible parties; you have to take
into 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, | 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 anyway die off at an early age and your
work is thereby wasted. Incidentally, a point I haven’t mentioned is that you can of course work in a
bit of heredity when casting your characters, looking back through the preceding generations and seeing
if there isa common characteristic which would be passed on through the genes.
Oviously, 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 47, and these are
filed in alphabetical 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 family names so that
if Iwant 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 will be surprised at how much of
it can come in useful at times.
This is probably a good point to mention the question ofinheritance. 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 title; 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 inheritance are pretty simple, in most cases lands and titles are hereditary, but
having to 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
external and internal 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 itsown and a certain
inevitability without you needing rack your brains for an excuse for a battle!

43
To revert to the yearly sorting out of births, deaths and marriages: though this is actually 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. to 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 good deal of fore-
knowledge of the coming year, and it is amazing how often these events fit simply into the pattern as
if they were intended all along. A quite recent occurrence is a case in point: at the beginning of 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 should I receive but a scheme from the arch-villain
Mnester, originally 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 another
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 adopt for your
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 will 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 essentially a long-range affair, designed to last for very many continental years;
obviously its not much use going to all the length of having children born in quantities if you are going
to close 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, I hope that this chapter will at least have whetted your appetites for carrying your
creations a stage further, and shown you some of the results which can be gained thereby.

44
 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 natural 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 — the Year of the Lion, 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 the Jackal Year of the Crocodile
Panther Wolf
Dog Horse
Snake Ox
Lion Dragon
Tiger Elephant
Bull Leopard
I then took this a step further by having twelve months named after birds, and related them to our own
calendar, thus: r

January = Hawk February = Peregrine March = Falcon

April = Kestrel May = Eagle June = Vulture
July = Tiercel August = Owl Sept. = Kite
Oct. = Buzzard Nov. = Merlin Dec. = Albatross
By this means I can date an event as 12th Eagle/Lion 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 some such place, of the type which has three or 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 I’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 to 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 omissions, 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!

45
 means
Our next item is a fairly new innovation in Hyboria, though I am certainly not the first by any
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 villified his
opponent, making light of his successes, emphasizing his defeats and critiscising 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 ago 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!
However, with a larger group, and particularly a wide-spread one who campaign largely by post, a news-
paper 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 born. 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
columns 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 humourous 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 humourous 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
humourous 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
humourous adverts which sometimes lead to bigger things — I once casually put ina 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 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 internal revolt as well!
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.

46
As we all know, religion played 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. He at once asked about local religions, so I proceeded to work some out. In Howard’s books
the two main religions of the west centred round the worship of Mitra (presumeably 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 setting 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 for
or 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 Universities 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 willing 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 some 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 Italian condottieri, which hired out to a 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 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.

47
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 professional 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 employ-
ment 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 of
patriotism, they were not likely to go to extremes to support a losing cause. In difficulties they were
prone to 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 to 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 to some extent.
If 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 worked out which provinces and
countries produced surpluses of certain items, and which other countries needed these supplies. From
this beginning I was able to set up a pattern of trade routes, using for instance rivers more often than
roads as easier lines of communications, which in turn gave me nodal points as large trade-centres and
a basis for revenue from customs dues etc. The danger here, of course, is of going too far in one’s
enthusiasm and getting the whole thing so complicated that it becomes unworkable. In a country the
size of Hyboria too much detail of trade is impracticable as I just haven’t the time to devote to it; but
in a smaller set-up it is easy to 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 complications devised by the players, there ought to be certain events outside
their control which played a part in the proceedings. Obviously harvests could fluctuate, landslides
could block important roads, earthquakes could occur; similarly dishonest treasurers could embezzle
funds, riots could break out, and numerous other things could happen. We didn’t want to 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, some 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
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

48
For each of these we made a Happening Card, which we shuffled and put face down ina 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 five 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 of 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 to 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
into areas (which was already done anyway for other reasons) we settled on 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 for a success by their intelligence apparat.
This called for rather more work, but some 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 a vis each
other, where an incidient could spark off war. So, we set up the death of the Ambassador as an
assassination, played it up in the Herald, released rumours of Vendhyan plots — 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.
Intelligence 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 capital, 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:
1. If 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.
2. a) If message received, will agent obey? | or 2, no
b) If message not received, will agent move? 1 or 2, yes
3. 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
4to6 3
7to9 4
10 to 15 5
16 up 6

49
5. If unsuccessful, throw again: Turned back
Changed Course
Killed by bandits
Captured by enemy counter-intelligence
Re Delayed — throw dice for number of
ABWNHN

weeks out of commission.

a 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, ie. excessive guerilla activity etc.

50
 8: HORSE AND MUSKET CAMPAIGNS
So far, although many of the things we have discussed are applicable 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 foot-
slogger. Naval and river transport still depends on the oar and the sail. Indeed, 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 legionaire. 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 footsoldier of Marlburian or Napoleonic vintage is usually depicted as bowed down
under the weight of his pack, so this tends to cancel out.
Still on 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 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 large 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 usually of decisive effect on the
battlefield, since the guns of the period were almost incapable 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 decisive arm.
Even in the wars of Marlborough and Turenne artillery is still a subsidiary arm, important largely 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.

5]
It is when we turn 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 to excess, of course — most 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 to requisition so many
thousand rations, field-bakeries would accompany the army, and generally speaking the baggage train
and supply train would swell to alarming proportions.
When you come to the question of weapons and equipment the difference becomes really frightening.
In the ancient, and to a limited extent, the mediaeval period, almost 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 smith with only a little equipment could produce new weapons and cobble up
damaged equipment. The only supplies needed were a certain amount of metal, 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, highly 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 some 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 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 more 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.
If, 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.

52
Battle losses, too, need slightly different treatment. The losers 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. If 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 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 only
when you get to 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 either side, and the resolution of the commanders.
This latter is most 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 could
only be reduced by the starvation of its garrisons 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 Napoleonic 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! The opinions I give are
therefore not based on practical experience as they are in all other periods. Nevertheless the Napoleonic
era, being in effect the culmination of a period of experimentation with the possibilities of smooth-
bore muskets and artillery, is only a logical extension of the rules which apply in the earlier horse and
musket eras, so I feel that I 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 English 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. This 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 to be
born in mind when assessing the capabilities of continental armies and the training periods necessary to
turn 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.
53
 9: VICTORIAN CAMPAIGNS
adoption of
In this chapter we reach the beginning of the mechanised period. Not only did it see the
artillery and the repeating rifle, but, even more important, it saw the introduction
breech-loading, rifled
of movement was not entirely to be
of the railway engine as a means of transport From now on, speed
new movement rules to express this
expressed in terms of legpower. Accordingly we have to consider
new conception.
periods.
The railway, however, had not reached as yet the speed and efficiency it was to achieve in later
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 rail-
roads 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 railroad would of course depend on the type of damage done. If a raiding
party, as was usual, merely tore up lengths of track, it would be a relatively simple task to replace
these, providing spare rails, sleepers etc. were available. On the other hand, a railway bridge, a culvert
ora 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 with-
out 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.
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 increased by leaps and bounds, and with it
the necessity to stockpile larger quantities both with the army itself and at the forward supply depots.
If 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 some 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 steam-
boat 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 lost its nerve.

54
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. I remember that in
our early days Don Featherstone and I fought several Civil War campaigns of a local character,
though I seem to remember that most of them were eventually abandoned without reaching a real
decision. I know I greatly enjoyed most 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
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 its 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 and 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
of clouding my judgement. This was one of the campaigns which was abandoned, since after two
battles Jackson was not in much shape to continue!
We also fought a campaign in the West with the addition of river flotillas, and I have vivid memories of
a handsome victory over Don’s fleet — one of the few occasions on which I shone as an admiral, my
record afloat being well below average! Perhaps I’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 course many other wars during this period which can be reproduced as war game
campaigns, though most of 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 most 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 loyal. 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 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 provise.
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 most 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.

aD
This is a period, moreover, in which it is very easy to make up a semi-historical campaign ora
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 lot of research into 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 capable of blowing
up occasionally! — but we had a number of very enjoyable games. There were some interesting points
built into the campaign — for the first time I remember civilians were brought in, for instance. These
were the inhabitants of several out-stations; Icouldn’t just abandon them as I lost 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 river went through a tunnel which the Boers kept on trying to blow up, which made it dangerous
for the gunboat to operate above the tunnel!
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 native state, but equipped with a good deal of 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 of these wars was that the battles were fought
with 54mm figures on an immense table in Joe’s basement — probably one of the last campaigns
fought on this sort of scale. I also remembered being impressed by pictures of the Great Wall of
Morobad, the Hauserian capital, 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 over-
run and though at one stage there was talk of 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
maoeuvring 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 if wished.
A European war of the period I have so far failed to mention is the Russo-Turkish War. This also makes
for a 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 is a limited one and is therefore suitable for a relatively short-term operation.

56
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 would not reach its full development until our
next period, the increase in rapid delivery and weight of firepower 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 bringit.g 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.

|
 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: most 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 forget 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 of 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 to a large degree on footslogging and horse-
power. 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 lost their value — a lesson which should have been learnt 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. 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 substitue 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 of all this on our
campaign rules. Up to now I have preached steadily the doctrine of a weekly map move in order to
keep to 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 dally map move. Too 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 too 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 also covered astonishing distances. These were marches entirely on foot: the men undoubtedly
suffered, but after brief rests they were capable of 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 to reach jumping
off
positions of only some three or four miles might take all day and leave the troops so
exhausted at the
end of it that they were not fit for offensive operations.

58
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 raidigg forces to
slip through at will, and the infant air forces are not yet capable of serious bombardment of such
facilities. Moreover, repairs to 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 needea to keep an army of this period at the proper level of
efficiency has mounted very considerably, 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 apportion it
between the demands of factories, agriculture, the Army, Navy and Air Force? All are important, and
at different times 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.
If, however, you don’t want to become too 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. If 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 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 involving 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 of 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 too could be a fascinating exercise.

ae)
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 born 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.
If 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 Italy sent troops,
equipment and aircraft and the Russians also supported the Goverment side, these auxiliaries were no
more than that, the bulk of the armies being home-grown. Even the imported equipment was, by later
WWII 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.

60
 11: WORLD WAR TWO
World War Two, being relatively recent, 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
refighting these campaigns have lacked in realism since they have made little or no attempt to include
the supply problems which, to a very large extent, dictated the course of the Libyan fighting. If 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 border because, not expecting the success he achieved, he
embarked on the offensive without sufficient resources. Auchinleck’s subsequent attack again ran out
of puff at Benghazi, and the suppression of Malta by the Luftwaffe at that period allowed Rommel to
build up his resources as fast or faster than the British, with the result that he was capable of the
riposte which carried 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 large 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 level at which a modern war
game can be fought is probably that of a battalion with tank support, and that company level with
just two or three thanks and some 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 even so the tactical basis of a campaign is going to be fraught with
difficulty.
Many years ago, before in fact I ever took up war gaming with soldiers, I ran a semi-strategical World War
II 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, artillery 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 Italian 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 Italy 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 detailed 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 into the U.S.A. Rules were kept very
simple and again all tactical actions decided by dice throw but I got a lot 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
in terms
services etc. Then each country would be assessed for production capacity i.e. factory output,
throughout the country. Raw
of points, and this total would have to be located in industrial complexes
available and what had to be imported. Then all
materials would be another assessment, what was
etc.
products would be rated at a points value per ton or per thousand rounds of ammunition
61
 be
In this way a pattern would be built up of the resource potential of each country, which could
deployed in slightly difference ways at different times. For instance of your factory production
capabilities you might allocate say 5000 points to aircraft production, 4000 to tanks, 6000 to
artillery, 3000 to ammunition, 4000 to shipbuilding, 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 and a
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 reproduced 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 world 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 intial 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 I have some time potentially available someone seems to set me off on
another project, like writing this book, for instance! However, one of these days I'll get around to it —
after all, its only another nineteen years till I’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 all 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 lessen the production resources of that country and in turn will
affect its ability to wage war. This in turn sets a pretty problem to whoever is first engaged in apportion-
ing the production resources — do you for instance concentrate all your aircraft production in one area
for ease of various problems. and take the risk of losing it all if the area is over-run, or heavily bombed,
or do 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. Losses from anti-aircraft fire could be determined bya
simple equation of density of fire, number of aircraft ete. 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 which exist. If the bombers got through to their target, then bomb damage again would
be
assessed by use of a chart and dice.
62
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 reflect 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 campaign 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 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 records.
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 to an earlier period when life was less hurried.
On the other hand, the modern period — as one still tends to call it, though it is now over twenty years
in the past and far outdated 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 guerilla 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 co-operation and the fact that neither side in effect attacks the other’s sources of supply — the
North Koreans and Chinese 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 struggle for control of Indo-China and the subsequent Vietnam wars are of a different
pattern. Though there were of course occasional large-scale actions — Dien Bien Phu and the like —
the war is largely a guerilla 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 Middle 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 plays the Arabs. Skill and morale were far more
important than equipment, and this is always harder to legislate for in a campaign than anything else.
One would presumeably need to establish reaction tests of a very different standard for the two sides!
Allin 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 gamer 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 into a world of the past or of fantasy, militates
to a degree against the period with its semi-modern complications. Who knows — in fifty ora
hundred years time, when it is completely out of date, it may be as attractive to the war gamers of the
time (and they will exist, never doubt it) as the Ancient and Napoleonic periods are today.

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 12: MINI CAMPAIGNS

In 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 usual as “fillers” between more
important campaigns, when you start to have a quick means of laying on battles for a 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 to get all the local players involved.
There were at that time six of 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 into 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 into three corps commanded by the three players. Maximum and minimum numbers were
laid down for a corps, but within these limits you could juggle around somewhat. The team also
decided on an order of play, i.e. who commanded the leading corps etc. A battlefield 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 I’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 all 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 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 large 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 carry forward 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
one player wins
too decisively in two of the three initial battles, there is not much point in fighting
the final one.

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Moving on from this, my next effort was to try a slightly 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. 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 10 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 one was cut to half. You were not allowed to bring over-
whelming force to bear by concentrating two armies against one; two defeated armies could be
joined together to make one whole one. 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 for a good deal of strategical thought in manouevring to protect your depots and
threaten your opponents, when to take the offensive and when be defensive, etc. It 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 losing, since 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 I’ve mentioned
before Don collected 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!
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 visitors, 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
some sort of system under which these visiting firemen could play a part in the larger canvas.

65
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 turn. 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. If
the attacker won, the defending army was eliminated and he occupied the town; if he lost, 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; some had all missile troops, others no missile troops; some 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 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 follows, numbered 2 to 12:
2. Plain with river(s)
3. Plain with village
4. Wooded Plain
5. Hilly Country
6. Hills with river
7. Hills with woods
8. Hills with village
9. Heavy Forest
10. Open Plain
11. Forest and River
12. Mountains and river
Two dice were then thrown to determine the basic terrain type when a battle was fought, and a terrain
to fit this type was set out.
Eight different situations were then worked out, as given below:
. Defender’s whole army already in position
. Part of defender’s army already in position
. Attacker’s army already in position
. Part of attacker’s army already in position
. Both armies in process of arriving
. Both armies concentrated on base-line
. Part of defence army making flank march
. Part of attacker’s army making flank march
CONDNBRWN

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In the case of (1) or (3) a dice was thrown to decide how long the position had been occupied. If a 5
or 6 were rolled, 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) will offer strong defensive positions, while the remaining terrains
will be less 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 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, centre and rear. At the outset
only vanguards will be on the base-line; centre will appear at the begginning 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 which-
ever 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 logical — 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!
If 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. If its appearance is on Move 7, 8 or 9 it must be on a flank. If 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. If 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.
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. If 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 for a good deal of strategical thought: which way to turn at a road junction, where to commit
your new armies; whether to press on with a victorious army or halt it for reserves to come up. Also,
sooner or later your line of advance is going to 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.

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 and
Some while after this I was unwise enough to bring up the subject of war gaming at my office,
in regular visits to
before I knew what hit me I had three new recruits who were soon hotly engaged
campaign, a Colonial campaign at
my house. As at this time I was engaged not only in a Hyborian
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 full-scale campaign; but here were
these three enthusiasts demanding some 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 turns 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 for a
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 into a tendency 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.
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 could 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; obviously if it was heavily forested you didn’t garrison the town with heavy cavalry 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 turn. This order was then permanent.
The first player then made his move. As before, a move consisted of the movement of either a field
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 already in his hands, nothing else happened. If it was
held by one of the others, then he attacked it with his field army. Alternatively, he could use the
garrison of one of his advanced towns to attack a neighbouring town belonging to another player.
Since the draw had scattered towns fairly widely between us, both the initial deployment and
subsequent movement called for a 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 entitled to hire a mercenary company from one of the remaining two players, the
attacker having first choice. Each player at the outset was allocated three different companies; only
six were actually available, each one being allocated 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. If, 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. If a Heart turned
up, the town
surrendered and the garrison was taken over by the attacker.
If it was a Club, the town again surrendered but the garrison was disbanded. If a Diamond, then the
town could hold out for a complete map turn in the hope its owner might get reinforcements to the
scene. Finally a Spade entitled it to hold out for two map turns.

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If the defence force could make up a total of 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.
If the result of the battle was still in doubt when time was called, victory would go to the side holding
the most ground if they had started equal, otherwise to the side which had lost fewest casualties. In
point of fact I don’t remember us ever having to use this rule, because my three friends were all late
retirers who were quite happy to go on fighting till two o’clock in the morning — a not uncommon
occurrence!
The loser of the battle lost 50% of his actual casualties, the winner 25% of his. Mercenaries were not of
course included in the casualty count. If the attacker lost, he fell back to his starting point. If the
defender lost, but was still in contact with his city, he fell back into it, and then withdrew to the next
city if that was friendly. If he had no other city to retreat to, the garrison was disbanded. If, however,
the defeated defender had lost contact with his city, he lost all his casualties, not just 50%, and the
survivors were taken over by the victor.
If 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 to
recruit fresh troops, paying 1 crown per point. All such fresh troops had to enter at the base town and
could only be moved 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 record-keeping after the initial work, and the actual map moving took a few minutes after
the end of each battle. Each of us kept his own individual record of troops, losses etc. Next, a good deal
of skill came into the initial choice of troops, the disposition of the garrisons and armies according to
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 to have on your side —
particularly as abilities varied somewhat! For instance, the other three considered me to 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 of troops either to fit the terrain or to
fit in with the troops already in hand. So it was a matter of juggling the advantages and disadvantages.
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 ofindefensible 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 alway 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 into 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.

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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 into 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 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 automatically 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 too 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
too great — in which case the weaker side retired if it had anywhere to retire to. If 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 loser 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%
of its strength a dice was thrown; if it turned up 4, 5 or 6 the army could fight on, but otherwise must
retire. If 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 into contact with the enemy. This was known as a free move.
At the close of 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 during 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 into action. In fact, after about six complete rounds
we cut out the 350 points, since armies were getting too 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.
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 battle: 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 players and give unwanted, irrelevant and
usually bad advice, besides cracking corny jokes (the oldest and most favourite being, as one side put
his archers in a wood, to inform him that the local name for the place was the Wood
of Dead Archers),
was entrusted with drawing a terrain map for the coming battle, on the grounds that he would
be
unbiased, or hostile to both sides!

70
In all the battles fought, I don’t remember a single encounter in which armies of similar nationalities
clashed, let alone armies of similar composition. Thus every battle was a fresh one, and in most 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 I 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 into the right paths if you
want to regularise your battles into a campaign of sorts without going into too 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.

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 13: NAVAL CAMPAIGNS

Although sea transport has been touched upon in the preceding chapters, it has only been asa
subsidiary to the main land campaigns. For a war gamer 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. More-
over, 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 for a fleet if it is tightly tied to a coastline which presents
ample harbours. In very few wars, therefore, has it been a simple matter of two opposing fleets merely
sailing oyt 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 inter-
fering. 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 fleet of heavy ships they were unable to strangle it in the manner
in which the Royal Navy strangled the commerce of its opponents.
If 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 hada 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 low freeboard 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 to a 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 mobility, it didn’t necessarily widen
your sphere of operations to any great extent.
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 Ionian
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 into 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
quadrireme and quinquereme, and that fleets 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 lost 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
born out by the fact
that most writers now attribute the collapse of Cretan seapower in an earlier
period to the fact that when
earthquakes and volcanic eruption devastated Crete most 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.

da
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. Instead, 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 some basically
interesting campaigns throughout Roman .imes.
Remaining in the Mediterranean and with the galley as the main warship, much can be done both
with rivalries between Italian 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 of Lepanto in which the combined Christian fleets under Don John of Austria broke
the power of the Turkish navy for all time can be merely the climax of a series of campaigns through-
out the Mediterranean and including several amphibious operations.
The 17th 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 spared for.
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 India 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 Indies.
Either a purely naval campaign or an amphibious one of limited scale could be extremely interesting,
with both sides getting the occasional reinforcements — or demands for troops and ships — from
Europe. é
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. Move-.
ment 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.

a3
Supply, again, offers a fairly straightforward problem. If 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 for a 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 presumeably fully stocked,
plus reserve supplies of so many tons at the various dockyards; this could be all that would be avail-
able, or you could have one or more factories turning out so much extra per week. If 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 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 ones like bomb vessels were a different
proposition) morale of both general and admiral, and one other factor — degree of co-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 Independence 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 or three days can mean all the difference between success
and failure.
If desired, of course, this could be expanded to take in naval operations on the American coast during
the War of Independence. 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 Indies
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 introduction 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-loading gun was now the main weapon. But for some 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.
Freed from the limitations 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.

74
The Great War offers us the last period in which it is possible for massed fleets 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 Guadacanal 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 Indies 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
Indies, and assigns to it two or three divisions of troops, and a naval force which might muster a
battleship, a carrier, a couple of cruiser squadrons and some 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. Limit the 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 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.

7d
 APPENDIX
WARGAMES RESEARCH GROUP

Produce sets of Rules for Ancient, (1000 BC — 1000 AD), 1750-1850, covering Napoleonic, and 20th
century, from 1925 onwards.
Also a growing range of reference books, the first two dealing with Ancient Armies, and now joined by
Warfleets of Antiquity, covering the ships and tactics used by the Ancients in Naval warfare.
Our first board game, Decline and Fall is a boxed game of Grand Strategy and Diplomacy set in the
difficult years of the Roman Empire between 375 and 450 AD.
Campaign material will also be available, comprising blank hexagon sheets, followed by campaign maps
showing the Ancient World, Medieval and English Civil War Map of Great Britain, and 18th century and
Napoleonic Maps of France, Germany and Eastern U.S.A. for the War of Independence.
These maps will become available during 1974/75, as time and opportunity permits.
For a list and prices of current productions, write enclosing an SAE, to:

Wargames Research Group,

75, Ardingly Drive,
Goring by Sea,
Sussex.
WARGAMES MAGAZINES
We list here those specialist magazines of long standing and wide circulation. There are many more, some
produced by Clubs or similar bodies, and space does not permit a list, but most are mentioned in the
publications mentioned below. We have not quoted prices, but suggest sending on SAE to the addresses
given, asking for details.
WARGAMES NEWSLETTER — Don Featherstone.
A monthly magazine for enthusiasts, 69, Hill Lane, Southampton, Hants.

Don Featherstone is also the author of a number of books and sets of wargaming rules.

MINIATURE WARFARE
Stanhope House, Fairbridge Road, London N19 3HZ.

AIRFIX MAGAZINE,
MILITARY MODELLING,
MODELWORD.
These three are larger circulation monthly magazines dealing with many aspects of modelling, wargaming
and other matters in the Military Field, all the principal manufacturers and suppliers of books, models and
equipment advertise in their pages. All three can be obtained in model shops and W.H. Smiths and similar
shops.

STRATEGY & TACTICS

An American magazine of board wargaming. Each issue contains a game, and articles deal with military
history, campaign and equipment.
from Simulations Publications (UK) P.O. Box 46,
Altrincham, Cheshire WA15 6PE.
or in U.S.A.
Simulations Publications, Inc.
44, East 23rd Street,
New York, N.Y. 10010
In Australia
MINIATURE MANOEUVRES
50, Clissold Parade,
Campsie, NSW 2194.

In Italy
MODELLISMO MILITARE
Casella Pastale,
1445 — Firenze.

Both these magazines are new productions, on the same lines as the three mentioned above.

THE SOCIETY OF ANCIENTS

Previously mentioned, this is the premier group for all interested in the history of warfare in Ancient and
Medieval periods, and wargaming in those eras, produces a bi-monthly magazine — Slingshot — which is
universally recognised as the best value in wargaming magazines anywhere.

Write to the Secretary —

Stephen Reed,
33; Salvington Hill,
Worthing,
Sussex.
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