Brazos Evil Empire: July 2013

Monday, July 29, 2013

Brazos Evil Empire Campaign Ideas

I've been a war gamer (organized i.e. with rules) since the
late 1970s and have tried just about everything along the
way, and being a bit of an iconoclast I happily mix in role
play influences into my standard miniature games. Also
because of circumstances I do allot of solo play, so I needed
a matrix of sorts to facilitate this.These are some of the
resources I plan to use and why and how etc. My six chief
sources of inspiration for the organization of my war game
forces are, Series 78 standard MTO units, Peter Shulman's
War,Chris Kemp's NQM and Summer Holiday Toy
Soldier Campaign,Tim Gow's Megablitz, Jon Tuffley's
GZG Stargrunt/Dirtside II,and Marc Miller's Traveller.
There are of course many more sources of inspiration that
I've picked up over the years but, the six above are the
driving factors for this outline.

From my beginnings, The Series78 units where made for
WW II gamers and were composed of either of I/72nd scale
or Roco Mini Tank vehicles. These units were for sale as
complete formations, the one thing that they all had in
common was the reduction in the size of the units and in
battalion or larger there are always the appropriate support
units.The lack of support units (THE ASH AND TRASH)
has always been a pet peeve of mine,left to his own devices a
gamer will bring as many guns with him as his point system
will allow. The beauty of a standardized MTO is the gamer
can be required to think in broader terms i.e. resupply and
recovery. In a campaign game in particular these factors can
be of great importance and where possession of the battlefield
(with your recovery assets) can be down right lucrative...) The
main thing with these MTOEs is that all units fight as they
would under the rules used i.e. a tank although representing a
platoon under these T.O.s is in fact just a tank that moves
shoots and fights as it would normally.

Inspired by Peter Shulman's War, I've decided to organize my
forces along lines similar to his with a few notable exceptions.
The BEE will use American equipment,British vehicles and
equipment will be used by the New Anglian Confederation,
from GZG games (NAC) an allied power of the BEE.The
Gray Army will use modern West German, Russian, and
French Equipment for the most part.There are also several
nonaligned minor powers that use what ever they can produce,
buy, or steal...Mainly these minor states are just a good pretext
for a game, and all the lead up diplomatic skullduggery before
hand...

Equipment will run from pre-WWII to near future (figure a
hundred and fifty year time span)

Commander naming convention:I'll use a system quite similar
to Peter's with the addition of using the same people twice,
once for the Green Army or NAC, and were possible using one
of their gaming names for the Neo Basileis ton Rhomai (NRE)
Gray Army.An example :Brigadier T Gow Royal NAC
Armored Corps 6th Division, and his evil twin:K Boris
Domestikos ( Major General) commanding Dyrrachium:
2xMechanized Turma,2xRegular Light Infantry Turma,
4xReserve Light Infantry Turma, 2xAkritai Moira)

I'm inspired by Chris Kemp's, NQM Summer Holiday Toy
Soldier Campaign, ideas.I particularly like you having to think
out of the box in ways most table gamers do not in most cases.
His ideas that you need (from his page):

Each Faction owns a Country. Draw or trace a Map, or cover
an existing map with sticky clear plastic. You can then draw
on the map with re-usable markers. At the start of the war,
each Formation must be in a home town or city. I define a
formation as the number of troops, vehicles, aircraft or ships
that will fit into one of my standard boxes. There is no reason
for the boxes to be a standard size, but you must write the
name of the town on the box, and you must mark on your map
where the town is. Real belligerent nations can join in as allies,
but they support one of the two warring factions.

2. Each country must have the following facilities in towns :

a. Oil and petrol production resources. There may be more
than one location.The total number of production resources
must equal the number of boxes that a country owns.

b.Repair facilities for Tracks, wheels, Aircraft, artillery and ships.

c. Ports, Railway yards Hospitals and Airfields.

d. A Capital City with Radio Station, Palace, Ministry of War
(or Defense!), Cultural buildings.

I really like these ideas and will build on them here shortly.

From Tim Gow's Megablitz I've gotten some game flow and
unit MTO refinements to the Series 77 standard MTO units
I've been using for many years.

The chief inspiration from Jon Tuffley's of GZG Stargrunt/
Dirtside II,was a very fast and simple set of rules although
placed in a very interesting near future setting, could be easily
used in other time periods.

And lastly we have Marc Miller's Traveller, what can I say for
a set of rules that have provided myself and others many hours
of fun , the inspiration that this system gave me is the lost art of
story telling, anyone can roll dice and push lead across a table
but a good convincing story line gives your games life.

These are the rather raw ideas so far, feed back is welcome
and very much appreciated! Much more to follow......

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Farewell, You'll Be Missed!

It is with great sadness that I learned that due to physical
disability Peter Shulman's War Is Over, the page will stay
up for one more year, and if anyone is interested he is
selling off his vast collection.

http://www.peterswar.com/