A Great Crusade!

For many wargamers, the idea of a campaign is exciting, if daunting. While the act of tabletop gaming itself brings joy, the ability to forge disparate engagements into something enduring and meaningful has always been on the periphery. Being able to bring meaning and narrative to otherwise unrelated games, creating heroes, villains, and shared memories really drives to the core of what makes miniature gaming a rewarding hobby. It is difficult to pull off though.

The problem, in my opinion, is that most campaigns demand a significant investment in time and effort from all players to really carry on. Players must keep their armies organized, are responsible for making sure games happen in an appropriate time frame, and must be committed to seeing the campaign through regardless of the potential outcomes. Like some of our favourite computer wargames, sometimes the writing is on the wall by the mid-game, and we are just as inclined to mash the ‘next turn’ button in real life as we are there.

So how do we get around that? Can we address the major problems above? Well it looks like someone sorted that for me…mostly.

Combined Arms

I picked up the Warlord combined arms boardgame from a flea market for quite cheap. It was entirely untouched, and I always find that tragic, not least of all because I can commiserate with not getting boxed wargames to the table.

But this one was different. It promised not just a board wargame, but the ability to use the boardgame to run campaigns of Warlord’s other Second World War game systems: Bolt Action, Blood Red Skies, Cruel Seas, and Victory at Sea. I had played a good deal of Bolt Action about a decade prior, (and bought and sold armies a few times over the years) and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I hadn’t played their other systems. Yet the idea that Combined Arms could be used to run multi-system campaigns was just too interesting to pass up. But when will I have the time?

Making the Time

Well, talking with my FLGS it came up that Warlord Games was hoping to get more interest in Bolt Action in our store, and they wanted to support tournaments of Bolt Action with prizing. Great stuff. I love when a miniature company wants to invest in the local scene. But, hearing this got my rusty gears turning.

Hadn’t I recently come into possession of their combined arms box? Hadn’t I also found some boxes of Blood Red Skies that I picked up for an unrelated project? That was technically one of the four supported game systems. This of course, meant that I was called, by a higher purpose I am forced to assume, to spearhead a massive multiplayer campaign involving four game systems…and to do it in less than a full month.

I really am that easy,

So I rushed to acquire boats, soldiers, and any information I could about the Bolt Action and the rest, and dragged stuff in to the store to put the owner, Tristan, through the paces.

Despite only having some unpainted starter sets to go along with the Combined Arms box, we had a great time fighting it out as the Allies landed troops in Normandy and drove towards Paris. We had air battles, some clashes along the coast, and even some street fighting outside of Paris.

Combined Arms really lends itself well to a more freeform campaign structure. If I and Tristan play the board game, battles, which are resolved at the end of the turn, can be posted to allow people to play as they wish. If any are not resolved, they can be resolved via Combined Arms internal resolutions.

I’m looking forward to diving into army construction and getting the campaign off the ground. The next updates will be focused on preparations of all stripes, so stick around!