As a Prussian by heart – and a generation old family tradition as Prussian Cavalry officers – I declared that I will dare the unthinkable: that I will attempt a solo Kriegsspiel and (try to) do the whole Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871.
I’ve been an “agressively passive” member of the International Kriegsspiel Society for years now and never really got my ass up to play myself. This… changed now! At least I played by myself. So… how did I do it you ask? The whole idea sat in my head for months now.
All nations are braver when they fight for their hearth than when they attack their neighbors; should this not have a natural reason in man that it is right to defend oneself and not attack one’s neighbor? – Frederick II the Great
A while ago, I listened to an interview on Solo Roleplayers Podcast with Tana Pigeon, the author of Mythic GME, where she said that the GME really kicked off in the wargaming scene to emulate opponents. Great! My wife is totally into wargames like Infinity, Malifaux and Freebooter’s Fate… aaaaaand not so much into historical stuff.
One day!!! One day – I said to myself – I will go ahead and try to use Mythic GME as an opponent in a wargame… and completely forgot about that for many many months. Then there was an article in issue #53 of the Mythic Magazine, where Tana presented a system to use Mythic as a boardgame opponent. Now or never!
I rewatched some episodes on Little Wars TV and I welcomed back the megalomaniac in me: what if I try something similar and play the whole Franco-Prussian War as a mix of operational wargame and Kriegsspiel for the battles?! Easy… I thought!
First of all, I created my opponents for the operational part and the wargaming part according to the article in the Mythic Magazine. I chose Napoleon III and Otto von Bismarck as the main characters for the whole game by large. I used the Vassal module of “The Franco-Prussian War” published in issue #149 of the Strategy & Tactics magazine from 1992. I played it before and all I had to do was to push around the chits.
There is never so much lying as before the election, during the war and after the hunt. – Otto von Bismarck
For the conflict resolution I was undecided what to use. I was thinking about using one of the rulesets from the International Kriegsspiel Society but the fog of war (essential for a Kriegsspiel) was not that easy to implement when playing solo.
I ended up using the Polemos rules Kommandant der Armee from Baccus 6mm to play the battles. I really like the system because it is fast, easy to learn and play. But hey… let’s do something crazy: spend years of collecting and painting clumps of pewter and resin, and a small fortune on miniatures of all kind, just to play using the Virtual Tabletop Simulator. Ok!
Creating the Mythic opponents for the battles was easy, because Polemos also uses a similar type of skill-level system for the commanders, just like Mythic does. From here on it went like clockwork. I emulated the tempo bidding of the Polemos rulesystem with a roll on a d6 for the French and restricted myself never to bet more than 6 tempo points for the initiative phase. The allocation of tempo points on commanders and units was simply done using the system described in the Mythic Magazine.
Woe to the prince, woe to the people who start an unlawful war out of mere ambition. – Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher
It was a fantastic experience, even though I have to admit, that it might have been a mistake to go big for the first time. Playing a whole campaign and each battle was quite overwhelming but nevertheless feasible. What’s up next?! I am already reading the book for the next project: the Italian Wars 1494-1559… ALL of them! lol
