Campaign For France - Simple - The Rules

A new campaign is beginning very soon. After a few meets to discuss rules and maps and battles, we have nutted out the campaign to tabletop rules and published them here in this post. Should the rules need updating, I will simply adjust this post and redate it in case others want to use these rules for their campaign. The aim of this campaign to move simple province based movement using a Provincial map of France and generate tabletop battles.

Here are the rules:

2013 SIMPLE CAMPAIGN FOR FRANCE

AIMS: 

Quick and simple map movement in order to generate tabletop battles

OBJECTIVES:

Players to own and their OOBs

Opportunity for players to field their own 28mm figures and fill any gaps with figures from the group

Players gain Generalship points through Victory Points gained in fighting battles

Players gain Campaign Points for French vs Coalition victory conditions

THE CAMPAIGN

This campaign will be based on France in 1813. 

Players:

France - Peter and Leith

Prussia - Doug

Russia - Jose

Austria and Bavaria - David and Mark

England and Iberia - Dave

Any plausible OOB from 1813 or 1814 may be used. 

Any of your own figures can be used for your nation if you have them and they are based for Empire. The idea is get your own figures some table time if you have them. Then fill the rest of the OOB with figures from collections at Peter's.

The map will be a French Provincial Map issued to all players.

There is no weather, no attrition, no wounder, no supplies on the campaign map, but weather will play an affect on the tabletop. 

CAMPAIGN POINTS

Campaign Points are awarded to players at the end of each Week of Campaign time for each Province they "own"

Each week is made up of 2 "half-week" Campaign moves or rounds

France "owns" all provinces from the beginning and will therefore be awarded Campaign Points each week until the Coalition act fast and aggressive

CAMPAIGN MOVEMENT

Leaders move first 1 province per movement round and can attach to the moving command if needed to add modifiers to the roll

All armies/commands can move 1 province per movement round 

Moves can only be actioned if it the owning players turn and if the commander of that command passed his orders test as per Empire's Army/Corps orders test 

If a command moves into a province held by an enemy command, both sides declare if they will withdraw backwards or contest the province

If contest the province, a battle ensues

If the province is occupied and chooses not to withdraw, they are the defender, the moving side is the attacker. The defender has extra benefits on the tabletop such as choosing terrain and erecting defensive structures

If both sides moved into this province this round, then its a meeting engagement and there is no attacker or defender

Each players commands on the map will be represented the same number of command cards, eg 3 commands will give the player 3 command cards

Once the correct number of cards for all players have been totalled, they will all be added to a single pile which will be shuffled and then the top card drawn to find out which player can move. 

The player owning the card drawn can then move any leader and/or any command

A round (1/2 Week) is complete when every card has been drawn and no cards remain

If needed, movement instructions can be sent through to the group via email in between Tuesday nights so as not to hold up campaign movement

BATTLES

If a battle is joined, the map for that battle is randomly selected unless there is a defender

A defender can choose a map of his choice

Defenders can also deploy battlefield defenses and fortifications according to attached engineering units

Should a battlefield contain a river, standard crossing searches and bridging units rules from Empire V apply

If a player is notified of a battle, they must be present on the following Tuesday night to take command of his force on the tabletop

Should the player not be available that night, another randomly generated player will take his place

Should a battle be part way through and the player not be able to make the Tuesday night, again a randomly generated player will take his place

A single battle will only be played for a maximum of 2 nights unless the players agree to "calling" it earlier or agree to go to a 3rd night. 

Once a battle is complete, losses are recorded, Victory Points totalled and unit promotions are actioned as per the relevant sections below 

BATTLEFIELD LOSSES

Losses to units will take affect in 1 of 2 ways. 

The commander selects PER UNIT AFTER EACH BATTLE one of the 2 following options:

1. That unit will lose figures based on each 25% increment of losses to date with none lost for less than 25%. eg a 12 figure battalion that loses 1 figure from a battle will return for the next battle at full strength. 

If the battalion lost 3 figures (ie 25%), it would return for the next battle as 9 figures. 

Should it lose 4 figures (ie 33%), it will still return for the next battle as 9 figures. 

Should the unit lose 6 figures (ie 50%) it returns for the next battle at 6 figures strong. 

If any unit loses 75% or more of its strength, it will be struck from the OOB never to return. 

The same rules apply for Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery.

2. The unit can return for the next battle but will drop in 1 morale grade for every 33% figures lost to date

This will not apply for Artillery who have to use option 1

PROMOTIONS

Units can increase in Morale Grade at the end of battles through the spending of Victory Point gained in that battle by the commander

A single unit can only be awarded 1 Morale Grade increase per battle and cannot go above Grenadier status

BATTLE VICTORY POINTS

Before a battle, each commander is allocated a 4 Victory Point token, a 2 Victory Point token and a 1 Victory Point token. 

Assign each of these to an objective of the battle from their side and hide those points (but not the token) from the enemy by placing them face down on a physical point on the battlefield (such as a town or bridge) or a written order (such as to destroy an enemy cavalry formation).

Once that objective has been achieved, the points are awarded to that commander and when the battle is finished, those points are locked in to make up the Final Victory Point calculation for that battle

Victory Points gained at the end of a battle are multiplied by a Force Factor. 

This is calculated as a ratio between the 2 forces at the beginning of the battle by finding the average ACE Rating of each force. eg Force A has an average ACE rating of 10 and Force B has an average ACE rating of 12 giving a 10:12 ratio or 1:1.2. 

This means any Victory Points gained by Force A are multiplied by 1.2 and and any Victory Points gained by Force B will be multiplied by 1. 

This final score makes the Final Victory Points for that battle and can be used to promote units involved in that battle as above.

Click here for Part 1