BCW Campaign Ideas

The Jolly Broom Man asked in a comment if I had any plans for running a BCW campaign.  A county level campaign set in Lancashire is an idea I have been playing with ever since I read Ernest Broxup's The Great Civil War in Lancashire for the first time over 30 years ago.  Two things came to mind, firstly I'm from Lancashire and secondly the war in Lancashire was reasonably free of outside influences.  There are only really two interventions that had any impact.  The first being when Prince Rupert marched through the county on his way to York in 1644 and the second being the Preston Campaign in 1648.  Other than that external events only really acted to draw Royalist forces away from the county or provided peripheral support in the southern part of the county.  Stephen Bull's excellent work on the war in Lancashire 'A General Plague of Madness - The Civil Wars in Lancashire' rekindled the idea recently.

Having seen both JBM's campaign and also JWH's (on his blog Heretical Wargaming) I started to think about how it might be done.  Both of these fine campaigns use pre-existing board games to provide the campaign maps.  I wouldn't have that luxury but fortunately I do have access some maps which are close in time to the 1640's on the Lancashire C. C.archives site.  I can see the advantage of point to point movement rather than than areas or free movement and think I can knock something up (er...I mean lovingly craft, honest).  I'm thinking of the locations being of three types Fortified houses like Latham House or Houghton Tower, large towns and other fortified locations (or sites where fortifications could be built such as the Pennine passes.  I'm also thinking of having some form of recruitment option based upon the location and the side doing the recruiting so Parliament would have lower chance of recruits in Wigan than in Bolton for example.    Some sites would also have magazines or arsenals as sites of initial supply of arms and ammunition or storage at a latter stage of the game.

Forces will be derived from the known numbers of combatants detailed in the sources.  I would probably have some events cards or tables to show the limited influence of outside events.  Mainly to pull forces out of the county or to introduce reenforcements and supplies.

Last but not least I may break the playing period up into 1642 -43, only or let the clock run right the way through the First Civil War.  Historically after The Battle of Whalley in April 1643 it was all over bar the mopping up until Rupert overthrew everything again in 1644, after which it was simply a case of Parliament consolidating again.  The jury is out on that point for the moment.