Monday 9 May 2011

Campaigning Across the Board

Back on the topic of boardgames, I have managed to find one that I can tie into my interest in fictional wargames. I spent a few months searching on eBay until I found one that I thought would suit.

The game, which I had previously owned (but never played) many years ago and had long sold on, was Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg. It's a fictional wargame between two nations. Great Blue and Big Red. It's fought over a large mapboard and is based on WWII and modern era conflicts. I thought it would be ideal for generating campaign clashes between the Vulgarian and Moldovian forces, as well as possibly allowing for the inclusion of neutrals and allies.



So next month I shall start work on some campaign rules to make it work. Basically the core of the game's rules are fine, and it should be possible to just leave out the combat results for those clashes one wishes to play on the table top. The only real work will be to convert the counters' unit strengths into OOB's for the table top forces.

Another recent acquisition, this time purchased on a whim, was Iron and Fire. It's a cross between a boardgame and a tabletop game, which includes unit counters and card terrain to get one started, somewhat akin to the old Avalon Hill Napoleon's Battles system. The game dates from the mid-'eighties and covers the ACW, specifically the Shenandoah battles of 1862. It was going cheap on eBay and as I have an abiding interest in the ACW, and had some recall of seeing the game advertised way back then, I thought I'd get it.

The game itself is strange. It uses dice-less combat resolution, based on a comparison between opposing units' command, skirmish "superiority", and moral at the time of combat. It's a very odd and not at all intuitive rule system, which I suspect is the reason the games (there were two of them) sank without trace quite quickly. Nevertheless, with my devotion to all things ACW, it was worth a fiver. It should not be too hard to think up some decent rules for it.

3 comments:

Ed said...

Are you aware of the various "histories" of the small Blitzkrieg countries? There is also an online map of the entire Blitzkrieg world. I'll have to look for that link.

Ed

Anonymous said...

If you are interested in selling the 40mm molds, please let me know. I might be interested in them. jstribl-jackson(at)yahoo.com

Poacher said...

I wasn't aware of those, Ed, and would welcome any inks if you have them. Thanks..

@Anonymous. Ideally I'd like to get rid of the whole project, which consists of the moulds, a couple of hundred cast figures and a few dozen painted ones, the various boards and ladles, and about 100lbs of metal...

You can email me via this blog (see About Me profile link) if you are interested...

regards
chrissie
xxx