The next step...

Now that we have a fully stable couriers-capable game and we are attracting more players and also now that Stefan has shown that designed Kriegspiel-style scenarios are possible and with Hays' campaign casualty carry-over tool, I was thinking we could try the next step. Micro-campaigns.

Each of the games and add-ons makes up a connected series of maps: The three Antietam maps, the three Pipe Creek maps and the five Gettysburg maps can each be joined together (East Cavalry Field joins to the east of the Culps Hill map). This gives us some very big areas to play on and if we can design scenarios with widely spaced forces or with some separated forces that have subtle orders we could maneuver over these maps in a micro-campaign or kreigspiel PBEM phase and then fight the battles that result as SoW MP games. For managing map movement we just need to accurately scale troop march speed to the time scale and be alert to where there is good and limited visibility so that battles can be set up to still give players some maneuver room.

This would be unlike the campaign I'm proposing as each brigade or division in this game would have its specific commanding player and he would be responsible for sending in timely PBEM orders to an umpire and responding via couriers sent between players. The micro-campaign might well be decided by a single battle or it could generate two or three but these micro-campaigns would be quite short term affairs and need not take much effort.

With Stefan's scenario tutorial anyone can now make up a scenario and if we can take some time to get familiar with Niall's carry-over tool (which we owe to him to test properly as a group) we could find such micro-games very easy to create and play.

Sounds interesting! Tell me if you need any help.
I will continue to create some more fictional standalone scenarios. My next project is the prelude to the Attack on Iuka