The Barolo Campaign

I recently found Bluebear Jeff’s page about ladder-style mini-campaigns submitted by various wargamers. It’s a collection of interesting ideas on linking different scenarios in order to generate a campaign narrative where each battle result determines the next scenario to be played (and sometimes affects its conditions). One of the most interesting ones is the Barolo Campaign by Peter Douglas.

I was attracted to it at first due to its name (“Barolo” is an Italian high-quality red wine) and because most of the locations in the campaign have Italian-styled names (the only exception is Montferrat, which in Italian should be Monferrato and is a region, not a city as in the campaign description). What’s it about? In short, two countries in mid-XVIII century are at war. Their border is marked by a river, the Barolo, and country B (Electorate) has a fortress city, Montferrat, that lies on one side of it. Country A (Empire) wants to besiege and take control of Montferrat, but has to cross the river first in order to lay effective siege lines. Country B of course tries to stop it from happening.

The campaign ladder is an example of the creativity you can use in designing such campaigns: A tries to cross the river at two different locations  (one with main army, one with a secondary force), and what happens at both locations contributes to the final outcome. Such ladder is a bit convoluted, and the campaign flow is not so easy to follow just by reading the instructions. Therefore I’ve drawn a flowchart that should make it easier to grasp it while reading and playing. It really shows the campaign creator’s sklls at designing it.

Barolo Campaign flowchart

There are a couple of instances where the text isn’t completely clear and I had to use my own judgement to interpret it: 

1. If A has lost scenario 1 and then has to fight scenario 4 and wins, what happens next? I assumed A would then go on as if he won scenario 1, meaning he presses on the attack. It makes sense, but a line at scenario 2 hints that it may not be necessarily so and that if A wins scenario 4 you get the same result as having won scenario 5 regarding what happens at La Morra.
2. If A loses scenario 2 but has won scenario 4 or 5 (this is the line that I refer to above), it says the main army regroups and continues the attack south, joining forces with the southern thrust at scenario 9. But what happens next? If A then wins, it says winning troops reinforce at either scenario 7 or 8 (the two possible versions of the final battle), but because of the above conditions, there’s no force at either 7 or 8 anymore! So which one is to be played? I’m still unsure about this and leave it to individual players to decide. Personally I’d play scenario 7 (and not scenario 8) because that’s a worse final scenario for A (after all, he got there in this way exactly because he previously lost!). Still, alternative interpretations would be good!

I’ll try to reach to the author about these 2 points in order to get what he meant.

Anyway, regardless of the above interpretations, the campaign sees a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 8 scenarios to be played – enough for an engaging and fun experience no matter the results. It can easily fit Napoleonics and/or XIX century narratives (possibly also XVII century). Being centered on operations across/near a river, I realized it could be a good basis for a 1848 1^st Italian War of Independence campaign across the river Mincio, or a 1849 campaign across the Ticino. I’ll talk about it in a future post.