Kavkaz Campaign - Explanation of Map Moves.

 About a fortnight back, I was asked to explain how I was using a card system for generating the campaign moves. To begin with I'll refer you to the second article - Opening Moves - for this campaign.

From a well-shuffled deck, the cards are drawn one at a time, each allowing one side or the other to perform some action - usually a move, but perhaps a reconnaissance or to fight a battle. Now, 'per spec' one side is given the BLACK cards, the other the RED.  However, for this campaign I elected to subdivide further: 

CLUB: Izumrud-Zeleniya - Coastal Column
SPADE: Izumrud-Zeleniya - Kavkaz (Inland) Column
HEART: Turcowaz - Trebizond Command
DIAMOND: Turcowaz - Kars Command

I started out by including the naval elements within the respective Coastal Column and Trebizond commands.  But as sea travel is apt to be speedier than the land, I allowed them an automatic activation when the colour and denomination turned up, irrespective of the specific suit, and irrespective of whether or not the land formation also was activated.  It seemed to me the naval units would get about a deal faster, without having to mess about with added move distances.  Aces were also a special case, as depending on colour,  both commands and naval elements could move.

I also developed a practice for solo campaigns (such as this) of drawing cards in a string until a suit gets repeated, after an interval.  Strings of a single suit are continued.  When a repetition appears, it is returned to the top of the unused card deck where it will be drawn first next time. 

The first campaign draw went 
2♥, K♣, 2♣, 10♣, 10♠, K♠, K♥

The K♥ was returned to the main deck. Note that otherwise the card draws are without replacement.
Note too that the strings of clubs and spades are continued, and it was not until the reappearance of a ♥ that the draw was stopped and the map moves made. Instead, a diamond would have continued the draw, but another club would have ended it.
 

The K♥ kicks off the second campaign turn:
K♥, K♦, Q♦, 3♣, 3♠, 2♦ 

The Q♦ didn't trigger the end of this draw; the 2♦ did.

Now, the cards themselves permit certain actions. These are taken from Bob Cordery's Portable Colonial Wargames book:

A numbered card allowed one unit to move one space.

A court card allowed movement of more than one space (the number depends upon the card's rank), which might be carried out by one formation, or be shared among more than one.  So far in this campaign the formations have tended to stay in one piece, but one is about to be split in two.  The consequences I will discuss in due course.

An Ace permitted all formations to move one space.

Instead of moving, a formation could instead 
- Carry out a reconnaissance (mandatory if one wanted to bring on a battle)
- Bring on a battle (after a reconnaissance has been carried out)

Finally, each card drawn represents one day.



Now, this being a solo campaign, one might enquire into the value of reconnaissance, since what may be discovered is already known to the soloist player. I use it to confer certain advantages upon one side or the other.  The recon is by die roll, and is directed against an enemy one is considering attacking.

1 - Attack regardless.  The action happens instead of the recon.  For solo play, the defence gets to set up some kind of ambush.
2 - Ineffective recon.  No information obtained.  Formation stays where it is pending an improved recon.  Before this late battle at Zugdidi, the Izumrud-Zelenian recon was 'very poor' in this way, and that justified my deciding that there was a river ford they didn't find.
3 - Mediocre recon - finds how many units, but not in what strength.  I'd probably use this to confer some similar disadvantage to the side reconnoitering.
4-5 - Reasonably informative recon - you know what strength the enemy has, but not how distributed among its units. Before the late battle the Turcowaz recom rolled a 5, which was good enough to my mind to know about the ford the enemy overlooked.  But it was not so good as to pull off a complete surprise.
6 - Very good recon: you know what units the enemy has and in what strength.  For solo play, I would use this roll to pull off a real surprise attack.  This would have had the Turcowaz columns much further advanced at dawn of 6 June, and possibly the off table Zeleniyan units being harder to activate.

Much of this, as you might appreciate, is pretty ad hoc.  But it makes the thing interesting!