Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

The goal of this thread is to:

A. Define this rule.

B. Initiate discussion for those officers that would like to help us define this informal rule and...

C. Create several levels of realism for this rule so that players that like extreme realism will have the opportunity to enact it. For those commanders that want a less complex version to increase playability and reduce complexity they would be able to select a lower level of realism.

D. I suggest that we attemp to define 3 levels of realism. Level I would be the least realsitic and least complex, Level II would be a bit more realistic, and Level III would be the most reasitic and complex.

Let's hear everyone's comments and ideas and questions.

But first... We need to provide you with a simplified definition. Then we'll look at some of the comments and questions that we have identified.

CURRENT DEFINITION (A Starting Point):
The Pony Express Communication rule is an informal club rule that we have tried in the past to varying degrees of success. The rule allows for communication between commanders in the same army or between allies. Communication can take place (by e-mail)unrestricted PRIOR to game start, and after that a player needs to send any horse-mounted unit to within a 10 hex radius of the receiving party. If that can be accomplished within one turn then the party sending the communique can fire off an e-mail. The party sending a message back to the original party can do so on the next turn. Of course we need to use the honor system on this and figure out any anomolies together.

Comments:

1.) The issues of playability, complexity, and not having to keep any off-line notes, or other data has already come up. We have tended to compromise and keep the guidelines simple, but still make the rule fun to use.

2.) The objective of this rule is that we're trying to limit the strategic and tactical banter between commanders to give them a feel for the problems of communicating orders across time and geographical distance.

3.) Wouldn't it be important that orders get written when the courier is dispatched, not when he arrives? That’s the point isn’t it? If it takes 4 turns for a courier to travel between commanders, you don’t want the order he’s carrying to magically change to reflect battlefield developments during that intervening time. If the first message says “attackâ€