Brigadine (of Brigadungeon fame) has spent the last month running a Braunstein-esque, asymmetrical wargame in the background of his BrOSR ACKS game in the Barony of Oberholt. Armies moved each morning, and new intelligence was reported in time for a submission of orders each night. He wrote up his exceptionally detailed AAR here. I was one of the competitors, had a really fun time with it, learned some things from how it ran, and thus it seems only right to share those thoughts (especially since Brigstein participation delayed my posting of other things).
The rules were somewhat simplified from what they could have been, both to make it manageable for one Judge to run the whole thing - not a small thing even so, with the vast number of independent armies and the factorial-scaling complexity of recon rolls - and to streamline things for those BrOSR AD&Ders who stepped up to join us. Supply costs would be neglected, supply lines would be tracked concretely (and if blocked would require a force to clear the obstruction), and armies of less than three companies would be ignored for purposes of this scenario. All battles would be resolved as per Campaigns, and strategic stance was replaced with a simplified system of strategic ability rolloffs. Everyone had 60,000 gp in monthly wages to allocate as desired among units and officers.
The Brigstein
Eight players ran eight factions: Baron Heinrik of Bellport, Marshal Hummel of Loch Lucerne, Lord Valestrian, Lord Tyring of Blackhold, Lord Deinwick, Lord Talston, and Lord Issac of Riverstride, as well as the fire giant Volrag the Unhinged of the northern wilds. The Baron was formally the ruler of the entire region, though in practice it was noted to be more a “first among equals” situation. Issac was a personal vassal of his, and Tyring a vassal of Valestrian. I myself ran Tyring, a Paladin of Hextor whose distant backers had stealthily poured in sufficient funds for him to muster a proper army, peer of any on the field.
Scoring was as follows: 10 points for each battle won, 10 points for each town captured (notably, seized but not necessarily retained), 20 points for each capital captured, 50 points for accomplishing a secret and individual primary objective. My primary objective was to kill Issac, a Paladin of Heironeous and arrogant foe.
Just looking over the starting map, much was swiftly apparent. Talston was clearly going to be in a tough spot, beset on all sides as the sole central possession, but I needed him to hold out as long as possible - if Talston town fell, Blackhold would be the next point many would look to, and my allegiance to Hextor no help in that regard. Likewise, Marshal Hummel of Loch Lucerne was a considerable threat to myself and my liege, if simply because the geography of the field left him little else within easy striking distance. My own depredations could successfully fall on Deinwick, while Deinwick was likely to occupy himself more substantially with Talston. Issac in Riverstride would be split between helping his liege the Baron attack Talston from the north, and with holding off Volrag to his own north.
I was swiftly contacted by Valestrian by liege, who instructed that a large coalition was in fact forming to dismantle Talston, and that Blackhold would need to be strongly fortified for when that alliance broke. I gave him my assurances and ensured my citadel would be untakable, but also reached out to Lord Talston himself to ensure he had a ready defense against those who would march swiftly in. Valestrian kindly offered me half of whatever we collectively took, but with his orders focused on keeping me at home I didn’t trust that very far (though ultimately, and surprisingly, our alliance worked out quite firmly).
For my army, I focused on an offensive strike force of light cavalry to scout and win field battles, backed up by divisions of conscripts each stiffened by a core of heavy infantry to garrison captured towns. I also invested in a division of heavy trebuchets - slow, ponderous, and absolutely brutal for taking enemy towns or resisting siege. This setup worked well for me, though in retrospect I think the speed differential between heavy infantry and conscripts hurt and could’ve been avoided. Those garrison divisions ended up overly exposed and a fair few of them got picked off over the course of the game, and perhaps swifter movement could’ve helped that.
I also think that having a single cavalry force with each army would have been wise; it didn’t end up mattering here, but having any cavalry at all to cover the retreat makes it substantially harder for an enemy army to pursue if my force broke and fled the field.
On the eve of the opening of hostilities, a second map was distributed, marking the initial locations of each faction:
This revealed a further piece of critical intelligence, namely, that some towns had no initial garrisons. And if they had no initial garrisons, they were unlikely to acquire them later, and thus remained prime targets of opportunity. Surprisingly, I appear to have been the only competitor to put this together. It underwrote my entire late game strategy, which largely amounted to riding around and claiming the various towns that had been left undefended.
With the opening of hostilities, the very first day disrupted my plans significantly, with an unforeseen downpour that slowed offroad movement and hampered my scouts. My cavalry rode halfway to the woods, where they’d hoped to shelter and remain out of sight while they could scout the many armies around them, hopefully identifying Issac’s location to take him by surprise. My trebuchets and an advance force of conscripts marched on Sheafwick, with the advance force blundering into a Deinwick army and being almost entirely eliminated. After that disaster I withdrew the trebuchets to Blackhold to wait upon better intelligence.
By the time my cavalry reached the shelter of the woods the next day, Deinwick had deployed light cavalry to cut my supply lines. Thus was the first real test of my then-tenuous alliance with Talston: I began using his towns for supply, and we exchanged extensive intelligence and together had a fairly solid picture of what was going on in the central lands of the Barony. With five of the eight factions moving to eliminate him, this proved important to helping him hold out and occasionally pull off field maneuvers.
As my cavalry scouted out the north, they did find Issac, but apparently the Baron had floated him a few units and they were holed up pretty solidly behind field fortifications (apparently he’d constructed them in advance in anticipation of coming conflict, a really solid move on his part that caused us no end of trouble). I put together a coalition of mine and Talston’s forces, along with some of Volrag’s cavalry seeking revenge on Issac that were in no way affiliated with us but happened to be heading the same direction.
Issac was wily though, and sent Volrag’s cavalry fleeing with a vanguard he did not accompany, and my force instead retreated to avoid further battle. This did seem to intensify Issac’s perception of the threat Volrag posed, and his forces that had been besieging Talston promptly departed. My own army was underhandedly assaulted by Teutch, who gassed them and caused the only cavalry casualties I took in the war.
Meanwhile, my artillery had rallied and set out again towards Sheafwick, forcing a march to arrive suddenly and take the walls by heavy bombardment. A substantial defending force was taken captive, and the town of Sheafwick was mine!
With this taste of victory, I aimed to strike Deinwick’s undefended rear. My light cavalry swept down the road from Southbridge to Rushford in a single day, taking the undefended city and beginning to pillage the domain. They later swept up to Teutch’s lands and inflicted light casualties and plundering upon his peasantry in vengeance for his earlier cloudkill, with the proceeds sent to the families of those he had slain.
Teutch returned with Issac’s own cavalry outside the walls after that, but I had intermixed captive citizens of Rushford into my forces and he was deterred from attempting another gassing. Rather, he sheltered outside and offered fireball bombardment, which didn’t bother me overmuch considering it would have taken weeks yet to have any significant effect.
Issac’s force I sized up, and considered engaging, but he fled from my walls before my plans bore fruit and I let it be. Instead, my cavalry looped around into the far southern reaches of the map, in hopes of sweeping around towards the similarly undefended heartlands of Loch Lucerne. I knew by this point that Lucerne’s forces had yet to arrive at the siege of Talston, so I spoke with Hummel behind the scenes in the role of one of Valestrian’s vassals (Valestrian being a major besieger himself) to figure out where his men were. He revealed that he had a slow, infantry-heavy force, but they had nearly made it - exactly as I had hoped, in fact. From the beginning, his undefended eastern frontier was incredibly tempting, so giving him over two weeks to march away from it with what seemed to be his main army had been a cornerstone of my plans in preparation for the late game.
And indeed, I proved successful and swiftly took Lochwen. Valestrian had by this point brought Issac to my fort at Blackhold for me, but I sadly lacked the forces to best him there. With this show of trust and true alliance, I offered Valestrian Lochwen since apparently his primary objective was to take two of Hummel’s towns; if he did take it, it would be a further proof of our alliance (alienating the still-strong Issac-Heinrik-Hummel triumvirate), and a show of good faith on my own part. And indeed, he arrived to take it just after Hummel’s garrison from Loch Lucerne arrived to besiege me, and Valestrian swept Hummel’s last force in the region into the lake. I ceded him the town, then split my forces to loop around both sides of the lake and round up the remaining towns.
This resulted in the rather embarrassing mistake of seizing Lochern, which I had thought a part of Hummel’s domain but actually belonged to Valestrian himself. This shame is mitigated somewhat by the fact that I spoke about it with Valestrian, and he had made the same mistake; I blame a quirk of how the map was drawn. He ultimately retained the town, so it appears that with no harm done all is well.
My strong garrison at Sheafwick had sent off one division to scout out Deinwick town and see if it might too have had its garrison stripped, but no such luck. Instead, their boldness was met with an overwhelming force as they returned along the road, and they were defeated entirely. Sheafwick held off that force and another of Deinwick’s that secured the two roads leading out from a couple of hexes away for the remainder of the Brigstein.
Talston meanwhile had been the subject of adventurers, his stronghold breached by their shenanigans and the armies of his foes let in to slay him without trial or mercy.
On the very last day of the event, despite my cavalry being overtaxed, we forced a march into the heart of the Baron’s own domain to seize Headford, which was again undefended. It was a last minute ploy to win an extra 10 points just before final scores were tallied, but had an unintended and yet very notable side effect: Baron Heinrik’s primary objective had secretly been to retain his hold on all of his starting towns. My last second maneuver thus denied him a massive 50 points, with no time for him to make any response, entirely by fortuitous accident.
At the games conclusion, scores were tallied as follows:
I won, by a not-inconsiderable margin. I look forward to everyone teaming up to eliminate me first in Brigstein 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Retrospective
1:1 time with daily orders worked really well. At the size of the map, daily orders were functionally necessary; already light cavalry could force a march and traverse most of the map in a single day if there was a road to follow. It was also big enough that the fog of war got quite intense; even my light cavalry could only reliably spot an army within 24 miles or so, which forced a lot of cooperation and intelligence sharing (and sifting of intelligence to confirm its veracity from potentially unreliable sources).
Neglecting supply costs made cavalry and conscripts more appealing than usual, and many players appeared to recognize this and fielded forces accordingly. Siege equipment was likewise very cheap for its BR, but was less employed for whatever reason. Certainly no other player had heavy trebuchets, or the ability to assault a fortress without devastating losses. For my part, I needed a better screening force to protect the trebuchets on the march to allow me to employ them more extensively.
In terms of changes I might suggest, the chief one is some sort of penalty for shortsightedness, e.g. losing troops and losing towns. As it was, if two players had voluntarily traded domains they’d have each had 50-60 points, despite having made no real gains. This led to a perverse incentive towards offense - which I massively exploited, to be true, but mostly because no one else got in my way in doing so. Likewise, a ruinous assault on an enemy fortress at the end of the game might have netted a few extra points, even if it slew so many of my own men as to make holding it impossible. No one did that, but it’d be a good tweak to shore up the rules in any case.
Overall my concerns with it are quite a small thing, compared to how well and smoothly it generally proceeded. There were only a couple rules clarifications that came up at all, quite impressive for a first foray into something this complicated; Brigadine notes in his AAR that he learned from a pair of similar scenarios others ran last year, and I believe him. It was a really fun time, and a good way to settle into my evening before bed. I of course look forward to a second iteration, and in the meanwhile will continue to play Tyring as a patron in Oberholt and see how that goes.