Wargaming Campaigns

by Henry Hyde

Most miniature wargames take the form of simulating a single battle with the opponents either winning or losing and that's that until the next game. Such games can be a fun test of tactical skill but it can be even more rewarding if they form part of a wider campaign. In a campaign, the players commanding the forces have to make the decisions at the strategic level that determine the context of any battles that occur. The outcome of these battles will, in turn, have strategic consequences for the ongoing campaign.

Although campaigns can be very rewarding, many wargamers are deterred by the need to produce maps and devise mechanisms for strategic movement, Intelligence, logistics, recruiting reinforcements, keeping track of casualties etc. Henry Hyde's excellent book greatly eases this task with masses of sound advice, concrete suggestions and even a full set of campaign rules useful for any period up to AD 1900. Whatever historical or fantasy setting you prefer, Henry shows that even simple campaigns can add extra fun to your gaming.

528 pages, Hardcover

Published July 29, 2022

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a fantastic book. If you're familiar with Tony Bath or Donald Featherstone, you'll find the overall campaign rules familiar, but with a modern gaming context and better presented in a way you can digest and reference.

The rest of the book contains a huge wealth of other ideas and alternatives to those ideas that will further add options to the way you run a campaign. However my only criticism is that all of these ideas are interleaved with the many anecdotes and musings of the author, which mean you'll have to mark the margins, or flag pages, or take notes, or some other means of organizing these ideas yourself in order to reference them easily.

That's not to say the "fluff" isn't unwanted. The war stories and experiences are a pleasure for more casual reading, and would help give the novice a good sense of how these games tend to play out. In fact, this is a great book for the novice: Hyde goes into much detail on many of the concepts that doesn't assume you know anything about anything. For example, if you've never used the Internet before, he's going to walk you through the process of googling for images in painstaking detail— a detail that might reveal some techniques you hadn't thought of, even if you're an old hand at it.

It's worth the price, I'd say. It's a thick book, but not too dense. The prose is easy to read and keeps you engaged.

[Joe Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a person new to war gaming or just new to trying to create a campaign for war gaming beyond simple war bands upgrading or the best out of “x” number of games, this book is very useful resource, maybe even invaluable. But for the old grizzled Grognard with campaigning experiences most of it is not too new, but there is still useful information on setting up a campaign plus some different rules that might be useful. Even after several war game campaigns played, and more read, I still found a few things quite new and possibly useful in the future.

[Rory Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally useful and though provoking read for wargaming buffs. Henry adds significant bulk to the fairly limited resource for running wargames Campaigns with this weighty tome.