Welcome

Hello, and welcome to something of an experiment for me. I’m a long-term wargames player and, when left idle for a few minutes, I will regularly cover bits of paper with scribbled ideas for rules, campaign systems, scenarios, etc. I’ve a persistent desire to see a campaign run with whole countries being fashioned, to give armies an excuse to battle it out.

Following on from my recent discovery of several highly entertaining blogs on just this sort of process, including all the ins and outs of organising the details and preparing the figures for their fights, I’ve decided to have a bash myself.

So, I suppose I should really set out my intentions. The aim is to have a fun, readable record of some fictional Germanic 18th Century states, and their constant fighting across their provinces. As the whole purpose is to give me tabletop games to play the battle reports will be the ‘icing on the cake’ but, as demonstrated by others, the journey can be as rewarding as arriving. I will also be posting details of the states and armies as they are developed, with photos, etc. I also expect the game rules for battles, campaigns, etc. to be pretty freely discussed and detailed, to give others an insight and hopefully some inspiration.

What resources can I bring to this project? Well, at it’s heart, and dictating so much of the rest, are the available miniatures. I have SYW figures for Prussia and Austria, mostly painted but with a couple of ‘uncommitted’ neutrals that can be used to bulk out one side or another. The system I initially used for them was a DBA variant, so the size of armies was correspondingly small and numbers are relatively thin on the ground. This’ll be changing for a start, as I want my regiments to look like they have a little ‘bulk’ to them. So, I’ve the nucleus of two armies for rival Germanic states. My interest was initially drawn to the period by Frederick the Great, so I’ll be creating something along the lines of the continental Seven Years’ War. No naval fighting, colonies, or similar clutter will be included to avoid clouding the issue.

For source material, I have various books but would be ungrateful if I didn’t at least acknowledge three: for practical advice, ‘Wargame Campaigns’ and ‘The War Game,’ both by CS Grant; and for the inspiration, ‘The Army of Frederick the Great’ by Christopher Duffy.

More tweaks to the site and posts will follow, with some pics and general info on how I’m developing things. Comments are welcome, as long as they're polite!

C