Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

We’ve recently concluded the first Round of the War of 1812 Tournament and while the scenarios were not balanced as I would have liked (the British had the advantage), the experience did provide some insights on the topic of scenario balance that I thought I would share my vies and hopefully stimulate some other ideas.

By the way, understanding scenario balance factors also let’s you exploit the factors in the tactics you use in games you play!

First, my goal was to basically use historical situations that are tweaked to provide balance. What this means is that the scenarios would basically use the historical OOBs with there inherent differences in unit size, types, quality, leader ratings, weapons, etc.

Size: British units are bigger, American units more numerous. While you probably want the total number of men on both sides about the same, the overall situation of the scenario influences which way you would want the design to go. If the British are the obvious attackers, then you can probably give them some more troops in total (if other factors – quality, leadership don’t already effectively increase the manpower). If the Americans are the obvious attacker you have to watch the number of units they have, because our modern CinC’s are more adept at executing envelopment attacks and zoc kills.

Quality: Advantage British. Need to think before using the optional quality modifier rules for both fire and melee. Effectively adds about 10-15% to the British force and if you think about how this also effects routing/disruption/rallying the cumulative effect is even greater. If a large number of American units are poor quality, you want the rout limiting rule in effect.

Leadership: Advantage British. Other then “fixingâ€