Sunday, August 18, 2013

The Solo Wargaming Guide

It has been almost one month without updates around here!

I have been reading The Solo Wargaming Guide, by William Silvester (Precis Intermedia). This book, which was released in June, brings advice about planning and running solo wargaming campaigns. It also discusses naval and air campaigns and the effects of weather and attrition, including sieges. The ideas are independent of period, although many examples use horse and musket forces.

In my opinion it complements Featherstone's Solo Wargaming, dealing with some similar topics (e.g. war diaries, concealment) but with an emphasis in campaign play and transitioning between strategic and tactical scales for maps, distances and time. I suppose long-time solo veterans might have figured their own systems for these but I have picked up some interesting ideas from the book.

More importantly, reading again about solo campaigns has made me want to try something. I want to start with some small games of Rally Round the King (or maybe Gentlemen Generals) to remember the rules and then create a small conflict between fictional countries to see how it plays out.

In other news I also have been taking some interest in the relatively brief Empire of Brazil (1822-1889) as inspiration for both RPGs and wargaming. It was a time of political instability and social, economic and technological change with lasting consequences. Since I am not much of a historical player, this will probably get mixed with fictional elements but for now I am looking for some history books on the subject...


1 comment:

Sean said...

I too picked up this title, but as usual have yet to read it. Your projects sound interesting, I would love to read about them as they evolve.