I was looking at the tokens I designed in for Using Political Tokens for Military-Political Climate in an Insurgency Campaign and realised they weren’t very easy to make. They are round and double sided. Doh! So I decided to redesign them as square. And that led to doing the entire Campaign on an A4 sheet of paper. This campaign can be for any insurgency but I have the Portuguese Colonial War in mind. This is the third iteration on Simulating Politics in a Wargaming Campaign with Political Tokens – an idea I borrowed from Kapitan Kobold
Playing pieces
The system needs an A4 board and 12 tokens.
The board has the map of the Military-Political Climate at the top, the instructions in the middle and the tokens at the bottom.
The Government, the Insurgency and the Uncommitted each have a section of the map of the Military-Political Climate. The idea is to place the 12 tokens of the game in the appropriate area.
This time I designed easy to cut out single sided tokens. 11 Political Tokens and a single Popular Support token. Their location on the map shows which constituency they belong to.
Campaign Rules
The campaign rules are on the A4 board but I’ve reproduced them here.
Political Tokens: There are two factions (Government, Insurgents) competing for 11 Political Tokens. Each Political Token is controlled by one of the factions or is Uncommitted. The number of Political Tokens a side has are its Constituency. The Government starts with three Political Tokens (Government Constituency = 3), the Insurgents with three (Insurgent Constituency = 3), and the remaining five are uncommitted (Uncommitted Constituency = 5). Having more tokens is good; less is bad.
Popular Support: A faction gains and retains Popular Support when its Constituency exceeds the opponent’s Constituency by two or more – move the Popular Support token to the faction’s constituency . But if neither faction has Popular Support then the population is Uncommitted.
Political Impact of a Wargame: Play a series of wargames between the Government and Insurgents. The victor of a particular wargame can choose to do only one of the following political actions, but success is not guaranteed and you often have to roll 1d6 to see what happens. The options are:
- Gain uncommitted support – move a single uncommitted Political Token, if any left, to their own constituency (no roll required)
- Agitate amongst enemy waverers – move one of their opponent’s Political Tokens to Uncommitted (3+ on 1d6)
- Convert opponents – move one of their opponent’s Political Tokens to their own constituency (5+ on 1d6)
Military Activity: Military Activity is calculated as the size of the faction’s Constituency, with a +1 modifier if the faction has Popular Support. Military Activity for a faction impacts the number / quality of friendly forces in the next wargame and/or the mission to play next.
Victory: A faction wins the campaign immediately when that side’s Constituency is both:
more than twice that of the opponent’s Constituency
equal to or more than Uncommitted Constituency
Examples of Military-Political Climate
I think it is helpful to do give some examples.
Example 1 (Starting): The starting conditions: Government Constituency = 3, Insurgent Constituency = 3, and Uncommitted Constituency = 5. Obviously there is no victory.
Example 2 (Pro-Government): The Government is getting stronger in the population but still needs to improve compared to the Insurgents. There is a Pro-government Population and so the Government gets a bonus to Government Activity. But they still do not have double the Constituency of the Insurgents.
Example 3 (Pro-Insurgent): The Insurgents are strong compared to the Government but Uncommitted Constituency is high, so they have to combat indifference in the general population.
Example 4 (Victory): The Insurgents gain a victory. They have larger Constituency than the Uncommitted and more than twice that of the Government.
Download, print and play
This campaign is designed as a print and play system. You can download the A4 template. I put the entire A4 sheet on some cardboard as the board. Then I printed it again for the tokens.
So print this A4 sheet twice. Glue one sheet to cardboard as the playing board with instructions. Cut the tokens from the second sheet (and discard the rest), then glue the tokens to cardboard, and cut out when dry.
Thanks, cool idea 🙂
This is a great campaign system. I’m thinking about adapting it for a DBA campaign over trade routes, and possibly a C5th Roman campaign between rival generals. Many thanks for the idea.
I use something similar in my wargame (I call it a “Moral Victory” to borrow from Clausewitz) but I think that both sides starting at 3 is a bit too game-y. Most insurgencies start with the government having almost every advantage, and only with time (and foreign support and government incompetence or overly violent retribution in a modern game) does the government lose. It is rare for an insurgency to win, but rather for the government to lose.
Balance is appropriate for my interest, the Portuguese Colonial War. Ultimately the Portuguese lost in all three theatres.
I wasn’t saying the 3 on each side is incorrect, especially with regard to the Portuguese Colonial War (where Portugal seemed to draw the ire of the US and Communist nations) and that Portugal still lost with a homeland revolution even after “winning” on the battlefield two of the three conflicts(?)
Prior to the Carnation Revolution, I’d say the Portuguese were winning in Angola, drawing in Mozambique, and losing in Guinea.
My mate Chris is convinced all insurgencies succeed and I foolishly used Angola as an example where the Government succeeded in suppressing the revolution. He simply said, “but the Portuguese lost, right, and are no longer in control of Angola. It doesn’t matter how they lost.”