I’ve been thinking a lot of an idea, which I have had for a very long time. It dates back to the early days of SteelPanthers 1. I have always wanted to have more than just SteelPanthers, sure the battling and scale are great but you always win because it is mostly worth sacrificing large parts of your force just for a quick victory. In some OPART scenarios this can be seen again. That is why I like these really long scenarios or more like campaign games. Like Barbarossa, campaign in Africa etc.

Furthermore even if you have a scenario like Barbarossa you still don’t get this thing with competitive commanders, problems with co-operation and several other problems. To some decree you can build it in to the scenarios in OPART but in real operations most of the plans are made up first and are then executed and normally the commander don’t say how things should be done. That is why you have a hierarchic organisation in the army.

What I have been thinking of is to create a campaign for SteelPanthers. The general idea is to assign a number of people to different commands. Se below for a fast description.

Each field commander controls a number of units and the field commanders within the same division share a number of division support units. Only the support units maybe transferred to another commander within the same division. The Supreme Axis/Allied commander is handing out all front assets to the field commanders, he furthermore should handle the communication between all field commanders so that the axis side performs as one army. Another function, as field commander is to distribute the replacements (new units at SteelPanthers level).

What happens then is that two teams are formed along these lines, the field commanders choose to make a certain combination of units (say the 6^th Field commander chooses a fighting unit to consist of one PzG Bn and one AA Bn). Each Bn constitutes of a specific number of squads, tanks and guns and etc. So then it is easy to calculate the total number of units that should be included in the scenario in SteelPanthers. All the units formed by the Field commanders will be made in OPART just to provide a means of looking at an overall map. Each unit has a number of movement points etc. The Units then move on the OPART map and when they clash together they fight it off in a SteelPanthers scenario/battle with the units involved.

The move and fighting will then take place in sequences. For instance, the first week of the month the commanders plan their moves and mail every orders of movement to me and all information from the two sides are processed to see what units that will clash and which that will not. I make the map in OPART to provide an overview of the battlefield but all the battles are then carried out in SteelPanthers. During the fighting a given number of squads, tanks, guns etc are sent to the supreme commander as replacements. These are distributed then before the next moves.

I don’t know if this makes any sense to you and I don’t know how good it would work but it sure would add some excitement to wargaming. But the question is if there are people interested in something like this. It would probably consume a lots of time from all participating. If you have any comments please mail me everything is interesting.

/B