Warring States: Rally Round the King Refrigerator Campaign Basics

Here's where I last left my Warring States Project:

• I'm using Rally Round the King for the combat system.
• I'm playing on my refrigerator.
• I tried to emulate legendary troop formations of the period.

It was the last step above that slowed me down. My interpretations of these formations had turned out to be way too literal, as I had feared. The results made for battles that "felt" really wrong. I never finished a single game using any of them.

See this? Don't do this.

One other issue that came up as I started to finally organize a campaign was that I realized that the National Campaign system included with the Rally Round the King rules wasn't going to work for what I was hoping to experience. The problems did not rest with the system itself; rather, they rested with my particular desires, which included:

1. one nation's states at war with one another, rather than several nations at war; the use of the Merchen/Chinese list for all states at war would make for predictable battle outcomes given the rules for recruitment rolls by wins and province numbers in the National system;
2. the need for more uncertainty in my solo play which required new elements of surprise not afforded by the system's rules of war declaration;
3. AI Generals with more "character," and the inclusion of those mythical wandering military advisers.

The first fix - which immediately addressed desire #1 and some elements of desire #2, above - was to utilize the "Local Campaign" system included in THW's Rally Round the King Historical Sampler. It's a brilliant abstraction of time and place that will not appeal to war-game purists, but is very attractive to the soloist who welcomes surprises.

(If you haven't gotten the Historical Sampler yet, the Local Campaign system is definitely worth a read. And, it's a free download. Check it out.)

Thanks to the Local Campaign system, I'm aiming to formally begin my Warring States campaign in July. I'll take my time during June to set up the "flavor" elements. This week, I'll outline the mechanics of the campaign itself. 

To be clear, I've not altered the Local Campaign system at all - it's terrifically perfect for addressing desire #1 and some aspects of desire #2: the armies get divided into 4-6 "groups" which may then be spread out over different parts of the theater of war and, thus, instant variety ensues despite using the same army lists for opposing forces. However, I still needed to address other aspects of desire #2 as well as desire #3, and both required some extras of my own design to be added to the system.

More on how I solved those problems in the next posts...