The combat system for my campaign tactical rules has gone through a great many changes over the years of working on the project. Originally, I modified the Hail Caesar and Black Powder rules from Warlord games, but as I worked towards creating an economic model that worked across all ages of conflict, things fell apart when I got to the end of the 19th Century.

There was just no simple mechanism for converting the combined rules to serve for a period of industrialized warfare, including air and armor. At least, not one that I wanted to spend any further time on.

I have also looked at using other published rules, but was not satisfied with any of them. Where things looked a little more bright was when I re-examined Bob Cordery’s The Portable Wargame. I like what Bob has done, over the years of publishing variations of his original design. The game is simple and fast. However, I have some needs for my campaign that I felt his rules just did not meet. That being said, I highly recommend picking up all of his books available on Amazon, as I have done. They provided me with much-needed and desired inspiration and were critical to the development of my own rules, especially with the use of Strength Points and some other elements found in his rules.

Another source of inspiration, as previously mentioned, is Altar of Freedom. The combat mechanics of that game allowed me to have a sliding scale for my own, from battalion to brigade maneuver elements. This is essential for my purpose, as I wish to fight small battles with a dozen units to large, army-size battles of several dozen or more units per side.

The basics of my combat system are that each maneuver element has its combat value, at the brigade level this is called the BCV or Brigade Combat Value. Depending upon the structuring of a nation’s army, this BCV can range from -11 (five battalions of raw troops and a poor commander) to +12 (five battalions of elite troops and a gifted commander), although national characteristics and traits can alter this range slightly.

When resolving combat, each player rolls 2d6 and adds the BCV of the brigade leading the attack, with further modifiers due to circumstances such as being supported or out of command, fatigued, or disordered, etc. The sum of the modified die rolls are then compared to determine the combat ratio of attacker to defender. This is very likely to matter during the resolution step.

The attacking player will then draw a number of chits or counters from a bag (or cup) equal to the number of battalions in the defending unit, plus or minus a number of chits depending upon circumstances (defender is unsupported, for example) and the tactics cards chosen by both sides when the combat was declared, such as “all-out assault” or “aggressive defense.”

Each chit will have a circumstance and an outcome, for example “in woods: D-1,” meaning if defender is in woods, they suffer one less hit. The combat ratio (CR) is a circumstance utilized by a large number of the combat chits, of which I am looking at having between 60 and 70.

Yes, this was the result of inspiration, too.

In this case, I was taken by the combat mechanisms utilized by John Butterfield in two of his most excellent boardgames, Enemy Action: Ardennes and Enemy Action: Kharkov. This dice-less system just works. I highly recommend both games and it is to my infinite sadness that John has reportedly declined to do further games in this series. At least that is what the folks at Compass Games have told me, being the publisher of the EA: titles.

This boardgame combat mechanic is beautiful, as it allows me to create chits that apply to different periods of time and different types of warfare. Yes, it is a bit of upfront work to create them, but once done…it is done.

As many of the chits will have “saves” built into them, the combat system has a mechanism for alleviating combat losses. Yet, I am adding further to this with the concept of “bonus saves.” A bonus save allows for a player to roll an additional d6, with a score of 4+ “saving” a hit from that combat. This gives me further leeway to add tactics cards, for both attacker and defender, which then have effects on the combat resolution, mercenaries, and leaders.

This is the subject of my next post.