Approaching Battle through the Fog of War Machine

 

In recent months I have been working on an intermediate level between the table-top battle and a high level campaign system, to give players a chance to manoeuvre before battle is joined, to chose position, obscure their intentions and sow doubt in the mind of the enemy.  I am calling this, rather cumbersomely, 'Approaching Battle through the Fog of War Machine', shortened to FoWM until I can come up with a better acronym.  This post will outline the first trial of the system and changes I intend to make.  

The trial did not begin from a campaign but from a scenario involving Celtic invaders into Greece in the early 3rd Century BC, being opposed by a coalition of minor Greek city states.  The two armies were roughly equal in strength. 

The general terrain for the area was rolled for and set as a transition from lowland to hills.  From this setting, the more detailed terrain for each of the 9 squares on the map was rolled for.  This produced lightly wooded lowland in the 3 squares along side A of the map and extending into the central square. Four of the remaining squares were hills, three with woodland on them.  The last square, in the bottom left on the picture above, was an area of high hills.  These terrain settings affect the probability of succesful scouting attempts and determine the terrain cards that will be used when drawing for setting up the table-top battle.

While the map has only 9 squares, each square is divided across the diagonals into 4 quadrants.  Markers are placed in the quadrant through which they enter the square.  This information is needed since it affects where men are to be moved if forced out of the square or how far they have to move to be able to join an engagement - which translates into when in battle turns they might turn up on the table if they march to the sound of the guns (or Carnyx in our case).  No diagonal movement is allowed, only moves through a full face of a square.

Three copies of the map are printed, one for each side to mark the position of forces not yet revealed to the enemy, one a public map on which scouting groups have to be marked from the start and revealed forces marked up as that occurs - think 'Battleships' but sharing a common map to mark the fall of shot! 

 The second picture shows the map before play began.  The Celtic player secured first choice of entry side and opted to come in around the corner where the high hills were placed - indicated by the red edge added to the board.  The Greeks had to choose a side or corner that did not abut the Celtic one and went for side B, marked in Blue.  We then drew cards for whether we would start already in position on the board - in one of the squares along our edge - or would have to march in.  Both of us drew 'In Position' cards.  The probability of this was low.

Before beginning, we then each drew 5 Fortune of War Cards.  The next picture shows the ones that I got.

The only bright spots for me were the Good Fortune card that gave me good supplies and added ardour for my troops when we got to battle and the fact that the Attrition card applied only to Elephants, Camels and Chariots, of which I had none.  Of the two Bad Fortune Cards, one required that 15% of of my main combat forces would be sick and out of action for three turns, the other that my first six scouting tests would be rolling at -1.  On top of that, the Fail to Move card meant that only scouting parties could move in the first turn.  At least my opponent did not know this - and I didn't know what he had drawn.

 Then we were off, placing scout markers in any square we could move into from our starting squares.    This put a line of Greek scouts (yellow magnets with red spots) across the centre of the board, massing at the top end, while Celtic scouts (yellow magnets with light blue spots) moved onto the centre square and bottom right, while keeping one back in the bottom centre to be able to check whether an enemy combat group moved in there.  We all rolled for scouting and none of us found anything.

The second turn opened with the Greeks declaring raids against my lines of supply!  These can be made by cavalry detached from the main forces (so not available in battle unless able to get back and rejoin before an engagement begins).  As I had not contemplated the Greeks doing anything so underhand, I had not assigned any manpower to guard duties, which led to the Greeks drawing two cards from the 'Raiding' deck and destroying two supply trains.  This more than offset my Good Fortune card and meant I would go into battle hungry and with lower ardour than normal unless I could capture some supplies from the Greeks with a raid of my own.  As I had already set my actions for Turn 2, this would have to wait.  I moved my main army from the high hills into the adjacent hilly square in the centre bottom row, while sending my scouts on to try to find the enemy main force.

The turn saw the Greek scouts continue to clear the top row of the board, finding nothing, while from the centre I sent scouts into the top centre square and brought others from the bottom right up to the centre right .  My scouts at the top struck lucky, despite the -1 on their roll.  They uncovered 2 groups of Greek combat forces (red magnets with red labels), one of which they were able to get detailed information about.  This entailed the Greeks giving me three reports to choose from, one of which would be accurate, the other two out by a certain percentage up or down.  Again, I did not know the range of variation the Greeks could make in giving reports and they did not know what range I could use.  The spare reports were discarded so that the Greeks would not know what information I had received.  The report I drew showed 2,800 infantry, half of them hoplites, and a massive 1,500 cavalry, hardly any of them light (presumably those were all off raiding my supply lines).  My other scouts found nothing.  Since the Greeks had not moved scouts from the centre square into the bottom centre, they had no chance to find my main force.

 

Turn 3 saw the Greeks increase the number of scouts they had in the top left square.  Clearly they feared/assumed I would be trying to get round this flank when in fact my army moved into the opposite corner, again undetected as there were no enemy scouts there.  I moved scouts into the top right square and then took my tests.  Again, despite having to use the last of my bad luck on the test, my scouts were successful, finding more enemy forces in the right centre square.  As I also drew a Good Fortune card in this turn and it allowed me to capture and interrogate enemy prisoners, I obtained two reports, showing me 2,000 infantry in one group and another 2,500 in the other.  I decided to strike swiftly since my men would be over their sickness disadvantage in the coming turn, hoping that the exposed Greeks would not fall back.

They didn't, so my army, formed into two groups, was revealed in the right centre square (red magnets with light blue labels) and an engagement declared.  We will transfer this to the table-top at a later date.  There is a possibility that the forces I found in the top centre square may have moved closer to the engagement square and will be able to march to join the action, but my men should have a chance to over-run the Greek force they have found in the hills before their friends can join them.

Reviewing the way play went, we agreed that compiling the three scouting reports after each successful scouting test was too time consuming.  I will simplify that.  We each took different approaches to scouting, me using a few quite large scouting groups, the Greeks having more numerous but smaller groups.  We will probably standardize scouting group sizes in future trials.  Apart from that, the mechanics seemed to work well.  Next time we will try with both sides marching in to see how that changes the balance of play.