Promotions and Medals

In our ACW games - our latest game can be seen here - we try to keep some continuity. Not in the form of a grandiose campaign (they have a tendency to fizzle out rather quickly), but simply by keeping track of units and officers, and giving them some additional abilities. Then, in a next game, these units and officers will appear again, and they build up their own history.

This is a very old school mechanism. The use of the "wargaming journal" in which one records the adventures of various units over a series of battle was already described by founding fathers such as Featherstone and Grant. It is also a system I have succesfully used before in other games, such as our Special Operations Scifi Antares 2401 campaign.

For our ACW games, after each battle, each player can nominate 1 unit that did something remarkable. I then have a little table outlining various possibilities, I roll a die, and the unit can get some additional benefit. I keep track of what a unit can do by using playing cards from an old Columbia cardgame, and I add little post-it notes. Such cards are a useful reference during the game. I of course also keep track all units in an Excel sheet but I'm a big fan of NOT using any digital tools during the game itself. Miniature wargaming should be an analogue and tactile hobby (call me old-school), hence the cards.

A selection of 4 units, with their earned abilities.

I do the same for the Officers. I have a stack of 12 different Officer cards for each side. At the start of the game, a player is given 3 random cards, and those are the Officers he has for that scenario (sometimes we deal 1 card more, and you can select 3 out of 4 or similar). Afer the battle, I put a little sticker (card suits) on the Officer's card, to indicate he has fought in a battle, and I also roll on a table. The table can gave the Officer extra abilities, but it could also indicate wounds, retirement, or even death!

A selection of 4 officers, with their characteristics, and card suit symbols to show how many battles they have fought in.

A last "campaign" mechanic is to add a numerical indication to units that have been routed. In our last game, the "Cornhusker Cavalry" fled the battlefield, and hence, the unit now becomes the "2nd Cornhusker Cavalry" (and loses all abilities). The use of such numbers also adds to the period flavour of ACW units.