Brave But Futile

[Matt W]

After completing War on the Equator and Indian Unity, Daniel and I decided that we would return to some of the more well known parts of WW II era combat for our next venture. Feeling a bit more sure of ourselves we took on something a bit more demanding in Panzer Lehr with its plethora of hidden units and nasty AFVs.

We were certainly enjoying the scenarios but wondered about that "thing" in the back of the book called a "campaign". As we played we became more interested in the process and decided to give it a go. We figure that the total play time may be as long as five months (perhaps done by the new year?), if we don't hit any significant stretches of lost time. This may indeed be a brave but futile attempt, raising the question as to whether the name of the campaign is more a description of the player's attempt rather than the effort of the Lehr troopers.

With a couple of weeks to review rules and consider first movement and CP usage we met last weekend for our first session. Since Daniel had been playing the German in the scenarios we had played to date we decided to switch roles and I would play the Germans, and he the Allies. The first scenario we played was more a skirmish than a battle. I had four German battalions and a support unit on delayed activations (maening only a 12 turn battle) attacking two unactivated battalions and a support unit (meaning Daniel's force had some restrictions on movement and the ability to react to my forces. I could have avoided contact altogether and taken the location but the opportunity to cause some losses was too great. The resulting lack of a chance for Daniel's troops, especially given a four board surface left us both a little underwhelmed by the play, however the work that went into the scenario setup was very interesting and led to some considered discussion.

It is our intent to put in some detailed discussion of each turn, its battles and the results in this forum. Daniel is taking pictures and I have developed some schematics of the campaign mapboard which will help to summarize a turn's action. A discussion of each battle scenario, its setup (boards and forces) and the progression of the battle will follow the turn

It is my hope that the combination of this campaign playback with Alan's solo effort on the Ivy Division campaign will spark some discussion of the campaign style shown in Steadfast and Loyal (4th US ID, contained with Winter Soldiers), Brave But Futile (Panzer Lehr, contained in the scenario set of the same name), Patton's Nightmare (2nd US Armored Division against the Soviets, contained in Patton's Nightmare) and Hammer & Sickle (11th Tank Corps, against the Americans, contained in Hammer & Sickle).

Campaigns in PG

For a quick run down of how these types of campaigns work, the region (in Brave but Futile (BBF) the region is Normandy) is broken into a number of locations (19 in BBF ) which will correspond at least loosely to the area fought over. The locations will include two suggested map types (e.g. town, river, open or village, etc.) and the players will pick the mapboards and then array the forces that they have moved into the regions for a standard PG scenario battle. Based on the results of the battle the location will be granted to the attacker or defender and play will move on to the next battle locations. Each campaign turn can have several battles depending on the players aggressive tendencies and/or their available logistics (which are captured by the abstraction of "campaign points", which are used to activate your forces, augment artillery, air support, initiative or to purchase replacements. Special circumstances (e.g. Cobra, Wacht Am Rhein, Cold War airbases, West Wall, etc.) all play a role in the scenario structures. Victory is different in each campaign but requires the use of bold tactics from time to time and the ability to have fresh units at that crucial moment.

There are two other types of campaigns in the PG world. The first, the Campaigns and Commanders series is based on a series of typical prestructured scenarios however, certain leaders are actually pregenerated characters who can evolve in their capabilities and skill sets as the campaign progresses. The second, (seen in Cassino and in The King's Officers using Beyond Normandy as a base, has more of the flavor of those like the Ivy and Lehr campaigns but are confined to the "historical" style maps and are focused on capturing territory on those maps. While I enjoy each of these types of campaigns, the leader focused one relies on either existing scenarios or a new scenario pack. Indeed, the "force" search function on PG-HQ, which lists scenarios in which a force or its components participate can form the basis for a leader based campaign without resorting to any new scenario development. The territory based campaigns rely on large historical mapboards which are relatively rare in the PG universe.

The idea of managing a larger force (in Brave but Futile that Allied player will ultimately have 19 line battalions and the Germans will have 15 and both sides have a swarm of supporting units such as engineer or tank companies which will augment their fighting strength) over an extended period, managing losses and maintaining fighting capabilities despite attrition is a challenge that we don't see often in a PG scenario. By adding this quasi-operational level of force management an additional challenge is brought to the table. One I am interested to test out.

I expect that we will post results of our battles and the basis of our thought processes as we continue through each turn of the campaign. Since we are playing at the same time I wouldn't doubt that some of our longer range goals will only be discussed at a future date or at the end of the campaign but I am curious to see how this campaign style works. Here's hoping that it is interesting to you all and that those of you who may have played these campaigns will stop by for a chat. Please feel free to offer comments or suggestions. Make sure that they are particularly useless or inept if they are for the Allies and insightful and stunningly strategic if for the Germans!