Tutorial
In this tutorial I will show you how to set up a campaign in Berthier. Berthier is a generic campaign engine so many different styles of campaigns can be set up within it. In this tutorial we will be setting up a campaign that is mainly based on a road network.
The tutorial is based on a campaign scenario from Charles S. Grant’s wonderful book Programmed Wargame Scenarios (Wargames Research Group, First Edition, October 1983). If you don’t already have a copy of this book I highly recommend it to you. In keeping with the Grant theme I decided to set the campaign in the 18th century between those long time imaginary foes who first appeared in C.S. Grant father’s book The War Game - The Grand Duchy of Lorraine and the Vereinigte Freie Stadte.
The scenario involves the invasion of a peninsula by a larger force and its defence by a weaker force.
Each of the squares on the map is the size of a wargames table. For the purposes of this tutorial I’ll be calling them “Grant squares”.
The map was scanned as a BMP file. I then used the Berthier utility program GridMap to create the campaign outline. GridMap allows a map image to be overlayed with a Berthier’s reference grid and marked up with different terrain types. With a bit of trial and error it was found that 8x8 Berthier squares would roughly cover cover 1 Grant square. The small size for Berthier squares was chosen because I wanted to be able to mark out the road network in detail as most of the movement in the campaign will be on the road. The whole map went under a grid of 81 rows x 70 columns.
Campaigns don’t have to be based on a road network. You may prefer area movement in which case the size of the Berthier squares would usually be larger. An example of this type of campaign can be found in the Marnon campaign example in the Berthier package. See this example.
Once the Berthier square size was determined the terrain was marked up in GridMap.
The picture above shows the terrain being marked up in GridMap. The water area has been defined and the other terrain types are being added in.
Once this was done the outline of the campaign was saved in GridMap and then opened up in Berthier to be completed.
The next thing to think about was what types of units would be in the campaign and how fast would they move over different types of terrain. After further reading of father and son Grant books, I was able to draw up this table of relative unit speeds in different types of terrain.
Road Tracks Off Road
Infantry 1 0.75 0.5
Light Infantry 1 0.75 0.5
Heavy Cavalry 1.5 1.125 0.75
Medium Cavalry 1.5 1.125 0.75
Light Cavalry 2 1 1
Artillery 1 0.5 0
My next question was how to translate this into campaign move distances? I decided to make the base campaign move of infantry moving on a road for 4 Berthier squares -
= ½ Grant square width
= ½ wargame table width
More to the point the fastest unit - Light Cavalry - would move 1 Grant square's width (wargames table width) each move. So I would scale the relative move distances above to produce this campaign move table.
Road Tracks Open Hills Forest Towns
Infantry 4 3 2 2 1 2
Light Infantry 4 4 2 3 2 2
Heavy Cavalry 6 3 2 2 0 2
Medium Cavalry 6 3 2 2 0 2
Light Cavalry 8 3 2 4 0 2
Artillery 4 2 0 0 0 2
This table was entered into Berthier (Edit>Campaign>Terrain Effects Table menu). Notice that the fastest movement takes place on roads. Since Berthier determines routes, most units will tend to follow roads when ordered to go somewhere as it is usually the fastest route.
In Berthier contact takes place when units enter the same Berthier square. With the campaign scale we are using in this scenario, a Berthier square is just a small portion of a wargames table. So when there is contact between enemy units we want to be able to include nearby units into the battle. We can do this using Berthier’s Sound of the Guns function. This is set in the Campaign Options (Edit>Campaign>Campaign Options). A “Sound of the Guns” radius of 4 was chosen which meant any unit within 4 Berthier squares can be pulled into a battle. A radius of 4 basically centres the contact within 1 Grant square (= a wargames table). Contacts would be gamed out before the next campaign move would be made.
Other than the Sound of the Guns no other option was set. The campaign uses Berthier default values that give a basic simple campaign. There is nothing fancy in this campaign such as using supply.
The Programmed Wargame Scenario gives the orders of battle for both sides so the next thing to do was to set these up in Berthier (Edit>Order of Battle menu). The Duchy of Lorraine is the attacker. I decided that Lorraine would split their force and advance down both sides of the peninsula with a slightly stronger thrust down west coast road. (The west coast road starts at Berthier square 3 and the east coast road starts at square 39.) Lorraine’s Order of Battle looks like this -
I decided to record unit size is in terms of number of wargame figures or gun models.
All units can scout nearby squares. Scouting range was set to 4 meaning any unit could see a 1/2 Grant square width (or 1/2 wargames table width) all around them. Scouting for light cavalry however was increased to 8 to best represent their reconnaissance role.
The Vereinigte Freie Stadte had the job of defending the peninsula. With smaller forces available to them, they deicided to concentrate their main forces at the bottom of the peninsula (square 5024) and use light forces to determine where the enemy thrusts would be. So they deployed their light cavalry forward and behind them their light infantry.
Once the enemy were discovered their main force would move to attack whilst the light forces fell back upon them. In the picture below the Vereinigte Freie Stadte has turned on their scouting range marker so you can see what squares are under observation. They have positioned their light units so the major road junctions are under observation. If any Lorraine forces enters one of these observed squares they will show up on Vereinigte Freie Stadte intelligence reports.
Well that’s the campaign set up. I will leave you with Lorraine issuing its very first move order to the Lanciers de Saxe who are being ordered down the western road to the first town (square 1549).
The order is issued to the Lanciers de Saxe. You can see how far they have actually moved (solid line) and the proposed path (dotted line) they will take in subsequent moves provided their order remains unchanged.
