Campaign Maps for Upcoming Wargames Campaigns Series and the Beginning of the Solo Wargaming Guide Campaign Creation System.

Here's the maps I put together for a series of upcoming wargames campaigns I am planning.  I hope to document both the planning and development phase, and the actual campaign as it plays out.  As this is my first time doing this, I'll be using William Silvester's Solo Wargaming Guide for guidance.  The first thing necessary is to get a good map of your campaign area.  I found moderate success online looking for good maps for the different historical periods I want to set my campaigns in.  Mind you these are entirely fantastical campaigns, I'm just using historical information as inspiration, at no time am I trying to recreate any historical period or battle.  So the Battles/ Periods I'm using to inspire and base my campaigns on are- 

Napoleonics- Using the Battle of Austerlitz for inspiration.  I have recently put together a 6mm French and Austrian army, and have an order in to Irregular Minis for another mixed Division of Russians, so having 3 armies loosely inspired by French, Austria, and Russia, Battle of Austerlitz seemed a perfect fit.  I found a cool old looking map, plus printing them out on hex paper already makes them pop and much more usable for campaigning.

World War I-  again with a recently painted up WWI 2mm German and French armies, and with a fresh order of more Germans and British coming in the mail very soon, I figured the Battle of the Somme, early war western front would be a good place to set a WW1 campaign.  Again I know very little about WW1 or this particular battle, it's just a jumping off point.  I was able to find some OK maps, but my Google Fu is lacking.

Strange Aeons (Call of Cthulhu-like supernatural skirmish minis game)- Springfield MA circa 1926.  This game I got into a few years ago, it's an indie game sort of a skirmish game/rpg hybrid.  I plan to get back into it and run a 1920's supernatural horror campaign set in 1920's Springfield MA, located near me in western MA.  There are a few cool things I hope to include into the campaign that are native to Springfield from that time-  The Springfield Armory, Smith and Wesson, Milton Bradley Games, plus I'm doing a little research into paranormal history of Springfield, so That will be the inspiration for this campaign.

Vietnam War-  Not sure what system I'll settle on I'm investigating a few.  I chose the A Shau Valley circa 1968.  I do know a little about the Vietnam War, no expert by any means, but it's something I have read/watched a bit about.  Anyway I found a few maps, and again they just look so much cooler when printed out on hex paper.  Systems I'm considering are FUBAR Vietnam, BOHICA, and Hell in Microcosm.  

I was able to take some time today and yesterday to get into The Solo Wargaming Guide, and it seems the first 40 pages are the most important for my purposes- setting up the campaign.  The book broke down setting up a campaign into several sections.

-  Get the Map-  see above, check.  I do need to make sure each map has an appropriate scale.

-  Rate the cities/towns-  not every map has towns per se, for example the Battle of the Somme maps  are focused on the trenches and their movement, but I can still establish places on the map where resources/troops can be refreshed. Similar situation with the Vietnam maps, I'll have to figure out some way to provide U.S. resources via air support, and NVA/VC support via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  

-  Establish terrain-  Go through the maps and be specific on terrain, spell out light wood, heavy wood, hill, mountain, river etc.

-  Roads/movement-  establish what roads are complete and which are damaged and establish movement rates for different unit types.

-  SCMR (Solo Campaign Mobilization Rules)-  need to establish a system for forming and mobilizing troops.  This is more spelled out in terms of a campaign that starts in peacetime, then a war breaks out and the campaign begins.  However, my campaigns mostly imply a war already in progress, and the campaign is just about some aspect of the bigger war, so it's going to work a little different for campaigns where the war has already begun.  This is where I'll stop, I just began reading this section, but have plenty of work on the first 4 sections before I need to fully get into SCMR.  

So that's my start to the documentation of trying to develop/ write several fantastical historically based wargames campaigns.  It's a big part of why I started this blog to begin with, and I'm interested to see if I can do this, and how it pans out.  Maybe not all of these campaign ideas will come to fruition, but based on my new collection of historical small scale minis from Irregular Minis, I'm game to aim high and try to get a bunch of campaigns off the ground kind of simultaneously.