Saturday 6 April 2019

"To the Viktor Line" - Work in Progress

or A Draft Chain of Command Campaign


I've been working for some time now on designing some campaigns for Sharp Practice 2 and Chain of Command, and I've finally completed one. The campaign is called "To the Viktor Line" and follows the attack of the 1st Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, on the town of Larino, Italy on 3-4 October 1943. The German defenders were the II. Battalion, 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment. It is a mostly infantry affair, with the heavy armour active about 15 miles from Larino at the larger and better known battle of Termoli.

I say "completed", but in truth it is only completed on paper; I am yet to try it out on the table. Actually, that's not 100% correct - my last game was a trial run for a scenario that was the start of a campaign that was intended to cover more ground (from before the village of Ururi through to the attack on Larino). I lost that game hands down, which may have played a part here, though I think it was more that I was having difficulty effectively linking what I had as scenarios, and so I went back to the drawing board and the campaign has become a much more contained affair.

In the absence of more of my own play-testing, I am sharing the draft document here (and also on the Too Fat Lardies forum), hoping that others may have a chance to read, play test and provide comments and feedback for corrections,  improvements, and refinements. I am more than happy to receive feedback in comments below.

As I play-test, I will provide AARs and any updates to the document as we go. If I can't muster up my usual gaming suspects, I will probably try some solo plays through to see what works and what needs changing, which I will also post here.

I've posted some extracts below as a taster!









Again, the draft campaign guide is available here and I would welcome comments on this blog or on the shared file.