Spanish and Portuguese Military History,
Wargaming, and other stuff
I quite like using Engle Matrix Games as the framework for a campaign. The essence of Engle Matrix Games is that they allow you to do whatever you want to, so long as you can make a logical argument. The “Matrix” of the title is really just your mental picture of what the game world is. It is by definition incomplete! We never know much about what is going on around us. Fortunately our brains solve this for us by automatically imposing order on what we see, and potently the players can proactively change the nature of the matrix by offering arguments. I’ve run a few one day campaigns using this system and it works really well. It can also work for more long term campaigns.
One of the conclusions from my last game of the Missing General – An Engle Matrix Game was, for clarities sake, to combine the battle rules and World War Two mods into a single document. So here you go.
The original battle resolution rules were devised by Arthur Harman but have been revised by me (Steven Thomas).
A bloody civil war has waged in Spain for four years. King Ferdinand died and left the crown to his daughter, Isabella, and the power to his wife Cristina. The King’s brother, Don Carlos, has violently contested Isabella’s right to succeed. The main drama to date has unfolded in the north, in the Basque provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, and Alava, plus the adjoining province of Navarra.
It is now early March 1837. In yet another bid to to crush the rebels, the three government generals in the Basque provinces – Esparetero, De Lacy Evans, Saarsfield – are preparing a simultaneous advance on the Carlist heartland. They believe victory is assured as Don Carlos doesn’t have enough men to face all three threats simultaneously. The three Carlist commanders – Don Carlos, Don Sebastián, Brigadier Iturriza – intend to show the Cristinos they are wrong.
This Engle Matrix Game for the First Carlist War has been germinating for a long time. The draft appeared on 2 July 2006. Nearly 10 years later I thought I’d better finish it. Partly because Roland Davis wanted me to run it for him, in PBEM mode.
It is easy to write bad arguments for Engle Matrix Games. I’ve decided to revert to something like the original argument format of “Action + Result + Reasons” to help the players get their arguments into the right shape. But those terms are ambiguous so I came up with my own format.
I ran a session of A General is Missing for Chris Harrod (Germans) and Nuno Pereira (Russians). Chris has played Engle Matrix Games before and also this scenario a few years back. It was Nuno’s first experience of this style of game. Chris played well so not too surprisingly he won. I learnt a couple of things about matrix games which I’ll share at the end.
There are lots of wargaming rules for World War 2. These are the ones I play: Crossfire, Megablitz, Rapier Offensive and Engle Matrix Games. One day I might write up my thoughts on the competitors, of which there are many.
This campaign idea is based on “The Never Ending Story! One of our Generals is missing” an article by Alan Phillips in the SOTCW Journal. Alan uses his own tactical rules but I’m interested in seeing how the campaign can work using a Engle Matrix Game as the structure and, hopefully, Crossfire for the tactical elements.
My first ventures in campaigns were two large, 12-14 player, Ancient/Medieval DBM Campaigns. One was called Europe 1100 AD and the other Europe 1455 AD. The mechanics were fairly simple being based on DBA campaigns but I quickly found problems and the campaigns petered out when people lost interest. I now favour even snappier campaign rules and less people.
“Tarnopol Matrix” uses Engle Matrix Games mechanisms for a wargaming campaign within the historical context of siege of Tarnopol in Mar-Apr 1944.
‘A Load of Gauls’ is a Engle Matrix Game campaign based on the Gallic invasion of Italy in 225-224 BC. Battles are fought using DBA. The game was devised by Colin Tothill although I’ve made minor tweaks to it.
An annotated bibliography for Engle Matrix Games.
Chris Engle of Hamster Press is the creator of Engle Matrix Games. He has used them for murder mysteries, spy games, fantasy quests, intrigues, military campaigns and political games. He has also – as a Psychotherapist – used them to treat violent children and alcoholics!
In the absence of other ways of resolving battles within an Campaign using the approach of Engle Matrix Games try these simple rules. They were devised by Arthur Harman but revised by me (Steven Thomas).
The essence of Engle Matrix Games is that they allow you to do whatever you want to, so long as you can make a logical argument. You play a leading general of the period. Each turn you get to make one argument/order about what you want to happen that turn. You can make arguments for your side, to cause problems for the other side, or to change the rules! (No more than one level of rule change.)
The Austerlitz Matrix Game was devised by Chris Engle but the version here is revised by me (Steven Thomas)