Quote Originally Posted by Broadsword56 View Post
I've been making great strides lately in designing my solitaire card-assisted game, A Glorious Chance: Fighting Sail on the Great Lakes.

The game will be a Cyberboard module, so even though it's a boardgame, you play it on the PC

Initially there will be one campaign scenario: "Mr. Madison Swore (Summer 1813)" Human US player vs. AI British, six turns (2 per month).

It's got two levels, Strategic and Maneuver. These set up tactical scenarios that you resolve in SGN, or with the tactical minis or boardgame of your choice.

Strategic Level:
You assign your ships missions and lake zones. AI British assignments are controlled by a system of chit-pulls.
There's a Turn card that sets certain parameters for each turn, with possible events and changes in AI target priorities.
Draws from a 48-card Target deck and an Events deck can trigger enemy encounters. (These mechanics may seem familiar to fans of John Butterfield's game, RAF). Once your ships sight the enemy and establish the number of AI ships, you can order your force to withdraw and break contact -- or order it to approach, and risk an engagement to discover the actual identities of the AI ships. Once encounters between the initial forces are resolved, you and the AI may try to send additional ships to the area in an attempt to Intercept and join the fight.
Convoys and supply are represented, and control whether/when certain ships can be built or events can happen.
Events on land, and the need to support land operations, also shape the decisions and priorities in the naval campaign.

Maneuver Level:
This is where encounters play out, from the moment the enemy is in sight (19 km, under ideal conditions) until they are within 1-2km. An innovative system lets you set up the starting parameters of any encounter with a draw of three cards from a single 64-card Encounter Deck. Once all the essential parameters are established, the ship counters deploy on a 1km grid. The Maneuver Level, inspired by Jon Southard's mechanics for Tokyo Express, uses six interwoven movement pulses per 30-minute turn and a reactive movement/orders template for the AI ships (this will be an amalgam of the Tokyo Express Battle Map concept and the solo AI movement charts that folks have been making for SGN)

Once a Maneuver Level battle gets into a range that fits your tabletop, you can set it up in SGN (or the miniatures game) of your choice, and play it out from there. You can use any scale you prefer. And it can work as a scenario generator for tactical age of sail boardgames, like Serpents of the Seas. The results of completed battles get applied back to the campaign in an administrative phase.
I hope, of course, that having a good campaign game for the War of 1812 on the Great Lakes will stimulate interest in the period and those ships. And, not coincidentally, the principal ships will eventually be available as 1:1000 scale miniature kits on the Swash & Buckle site (there are two already).
I really like the idea of a system that can be used to generate Sails of Glory tactical battles. "A Glorious Chance: Fighting Sail on the Great Lakes", certainly sounds like it will fit the bill. I still want to devote some effort to Fred's campaign rules as well, but I've just not had the time to sit down and do it. The fact that it's also freezing in the basement where I have the gaming stuff set up doesn't help. Based on the extended forecast it may not be until March before I can get back to gaming, etc.

Keep us informed of your progress and thanks for this update!