The War of the Rhabarberian Succession - A PBEM Campaign

One of my aims this year was to get more campaign games in as I find them far more rewarding than one off games. The latter naturally have their place, but a narrative campaign I find hard to beat. A good start was made with Dave and I playing some ACW games and my solo efforts during the Covid-19 lockdown. However I fancied seeing if I could run a PBEM campaign with my friends.

Fortune smiled on me when a fellow gamer kindly sent me some maps that I could use for this and other campaigns. The maps are a joy to behold and also come with detailed information as to what the terrain is like in each square. Dave and Keith my regular gaming chums were up for the challenge and so it was up to me to come up with the detail to get things going.

First off was to sort out a map to play over. This was easier said than done as there are some many possible combinations, but after an hour or so on the lounge floor laying possible options out, I settled on the following:

The map of Rhabarbernland.

The background fluff was fairly easy as Dave and I had started painting up 10mm forces to fight a campaign between the forces of Prusskia (Dave) and the Grand Duchy of Ruthenia (me). Now I love rhubarb and Dave hates it, so this was the tag upon which our campaign would be based (more of which in future posts once the campaign has been completed). The setting is broadly mid-19thC Europe, around the time of the Austro-Prussian War.

Rules wise I wanted to keep things simple as I will be playing the actions solo, with Dave and Keith deciding upon map moves and deployment for each battle. As such I decided to use Black Powder II with the Glory Hallelujah! supplement that has given us great games of late. Sometimes there might be mid-battle decisions that they need to make, but I would make the call as to whether to contact them or not. Hopefully there pre-battle orders would be enough to guide my hand.

Each side would have 3 Division at their disposal, with each Division having 3 Brigades, with each Brigade having 3 Battalions and 1 battery of artillery. Each Division would have 1 Light Infantry unit and 1 Cavalry unit. At Divisional level there would be a Regiment of Cavalry to act as the eyes and ears of the Division, operating forward of the main body (for anyone interested in how cavalry were used around this time, I highly recommend the following book ).

Map moves would be simple too, with Infantry moving two squares per campaign Turn, cavalry four squares, as long as unit remained upon a road. There are opportunities to move cross country as well as forced marches, but with penalties, which I have broadly worked out but will wait and see until they are used and what the terrain is.

Dave and Keith were happy with my humble efforts and orders have already been placed and the respective armies are on the march. Having a God like view of the movements is fascinating and currently both commanders are in a fog of war situation. Some intelligence has been passed on to them as befits the situation and will continue to do so. Hopefully they are enjoying the challenge and will still talk to me when everything is over! 

A full review of the campaign and actions fought will be published once hostilites are finished. I imagine this will take a week or so to conclude, depending upon how many battles I have to fight and how long it takes me to write up. So until next time...