WAS Italian Campaign Ideas

A couple of fairly inactive days have given me some time to come up with a map and some variations to the rules I used for the general War of the Austrian Succession campaign last year. The map took most of the time as there was quite a lot of trial and error superimposing a map of Italy onto a hex grid that has the same number of hexes as my cloth for a 4 foot x 8 foot table.

Anyone who knows anything about the map of Italy, will have immediately spotted the fallacy in my statement that Italy, being long and thin, was better suited to my table than the map of Europe. Ignoring the toe and heel, Italy is more of a T-shape with a sloping stem. Especially as for this campaign I wanted to include Nice (then part of Piedmont) and Toulon (a key strategic node in any Western Mediterranean campaign). As I wanted to focus more on the northern provinces, I chopped of the foot and completely ignored Sardinia and Sicily. Also, I honed in more on the north western sector, as this contained key battlegrounds for Piedmont. Here is the resulting mess (I drew it in Preview so the coast is a bit wonky). Given I've straightened up the stem of the country, North is actually more in a NNE direction. As the overall map is quite congested, I chose not to represent rivers other than the Po. Others are theoretically 'factored in' (i.e. ignored!).

The grey pentagons represent mountain hexes. Hexes are something like 25 miles across. The 2 mountain hexes in the sea represent Corsica (a Genoese possession at the time).

POST SCRIPT

They say you should always sleep on things. Having re-examined a satellite map, I will move Turin higher up (and remove that mountain symbol) giving a plane below the city. This might become another city hex. Cuneo or Alessandria. This creates an extra objective as well as a better representation of the physical geography.

Quite a lot of changes were necessary to the rules. First, a turn was reduced from 1 month to 1 week. Ground scale is also increased. Obviously the factions are different to the last campaign. Out go Prussia, the Pragmatic Army, Saxony and Bavaria. In come Naples and Genoa. The list of cities that must be held by each faction obviously also differs. This last element took quite a lot of thought, and probably could still be improved. I haven't tested if this is balanced. Rules for crossing mountains were tweaked. In the old rules the Alps were impassable. In these, all mountains can be crossed, but with the size of forces in each hex severely limited to represent them having to be strung out. At this time, the movement of armies along the Ligurian coast was extremely difficult with mountains close to the sea and only small tracks to follow, plus the risk of being bombarded by the Royal Navy whilst doing so.

The biggest difference comes with the addition of naval rules. This is the danger of making up rules - you start with one thing, then they can just grow and grow. I might end up ditching them completely (and cutting out Britain to simplify things. My rationale for including Britain, was that the RN really did offer another dimension to this theatre. It stopped the easy transportation of Bourbon armies and supplies across the sea, levelling the playing field somewhat for Austria and Piedmont. And it allowed for the Austrians to transport troops by sea occasionally. It will make the Neapolitan 'player' think hard before sending large forces up north, and makes the French cautious about the Riviera. In terms of size of naval forces, Britain will have 3 'flotillas' and Spain and France will have 1 each. The idea is to make it possible for the Gallispans to win control of the sea, but make it very, very difficult.

My next task is to find some suitable models to represent the naval forces, and a way to temporarily turn the relevant part of my green baize into a marine hue.