Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

What follows are some observations and thoughts on the topic of game balance. I know its lengthy and somewhat "academic", and will not appeal to many. But feel free to comment. I may not respond to every comment, but I will think about them. It might improve my game play! I also think many of the observations apply to other game periods - ACW, Napoleonic.

We’ve recently concluded the sixth game of the War of 1812 Tournament and while the scenarios have not been as balanced as I would have liked, the experience has provided some insights on the topic of scenario balance that I thought I would share and hopefully stimulate some other ideas. By the way, understanding scenario balance factors also let’s you exploit the factors in games you play!

First, my goal in the Tournament is 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, 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 effective 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.

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€