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Frank Hunter games: Campaigns of La Grande Armee / on the Danube

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Frank Hunter games: Campaigns of La Grande Armee / on the Danube

How I got introduced to these games

  1. I first heard about Campaigns on the Danube on Reddit here:

    • “Campaigns on the Danube is one of my favourites, easily. The manual is small so you can jump in within 20 minutes, it's a WEGO game where the FOW and order delay times weigh heavily on your success. The UI works well and the graphics are palatable, the AI is fantastic and every game feels quite different. I recommend this game all the time, it's incredibly enjoyable.”

  2. I then watched this video in which the guy basically says the creator of the game is awesome and has a bunch of great games:

    1. “Frank Hunter makes games that are very different from what we can normally find in the wargaming world.”

    2. He basically says that most wargames involve micromanaging all of the many subunits under your command rather than delegating to your immediate subordinates, but Frank Hunter’s games don’t work like that.

About Frank Hunter / Adanac Games

Interviews

  • Interview by Oberst Gary McClellan

    • “My first computer game was Napoleon's Campaigns by Paul Murray from SSI. Would have to say its my all-time favourite in terms of how many hours I played it.”

    • “I wanted to write a game like this for myself because I'm interested in the operational level and especially the AI problems that have to be tackled.”

    • “[La Grande Armee] really focuses on the command and supply limitations of the period, they were much different than a general of 1940 would have faced. If you're going to detach a corps and send it around the enemy flank you have to be aware of the difficulties that unit will face in terms of command and supply.”

    • “The first Napoleonic game I played that felt right was from Kevin Zucker. Napoleon at Bay and Struggle of Nations were great games that I played over and over. Mr Zucker had a big influence on my thinking and I think that shows through in the design.”

The Campaigns of La Grande Armee

Volume 1: 1806

Reviews

ADvice for playing

  • Interview by Oberst Gary McClellan

    • GWM: How are the differences between the Prussian and French Armies reflected in the game?

    • FH: The Prussians don't carry 4 days of rations with them so they're tied to their supply depots more. Also, the French have a big advantage by being able to forage towns even if those towns have no supplies. You can't support a whole army that way but a couple of corps can "live off the land" which gives the French a big advantage. The Prussians are also hampered by command problems that are coded as a special rule which delays their starting out in the morning (straight from Petre) which means they either don't march as far in the day or they get less chance to rest from the day's fatigue. I didn't make the Prussian quality worse than the French, so in a stand up battle with everything else being equal the Prussians will give as good as they get, perhaps even moreso. Unfortunately, everything probably won't be equal. The Prussians are saddled with lousy generals for a start although a variant allows that to be changed. Speaking of variants, the Prussians can not only have their generals' command ratings increased, they can also have L'Estocq and his troops show up early, and the big one is the Russians under Bennigsen arriving through Silesia.

Volume 2: 1805 and 1809

Reviews

The American Civil War: From Sumter to Appomattox

Campaigns on the Danube

  • Where to get it: Matrix Games - Campaigns on the Danube

    • After installing it you need to install the 3.05 patch, and then you’ll also probably want to install the ChemKid map mod (link below).

Reviews

  • https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-flare-path-danube-speedboats

    • Hex centres are nine kilometres apart. Turns are day-long. Most unit counters represent divisions or brigades and can be controlled indirectly through powerful corps commander orders.

    • When I grumbled about the lack of formation movement and delegation options in Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa, what I was picturing was an approach very like CotD's. Here there's no need to laboriously manoeuvre every counter every turn. Because you're a military commander not a chess player, a few clicks in a bigwig's order menu suffice. Davout, attack Augsburg; fall back to Ulm if things go awry. Ney, cross the Danube at Gunzburg and move towards Munich, engaging any enemies you spot en-route. Murat, scout the road to Regensburg; if you hear guns, head for the hubbub. With half-a-dozen carefully modulated high-level orders, an entire army can be roused and directed.

    • Often, by the time an instruction reaches a distant corps and that corps has got its arse in gear, the circumstances that prompted the instruction have changed dramatically. To enjoy CotD – to fully appreciate it – you must think several turns ahead and be willing to accept a generous dash of chaos with your combat choreography.

    • foes invariably put up a good fight and re-think and experiment when situations demand it. The unpredictability is important bearing in mind CotD's disappointingly slim scenario selection. Of the game's seven scenarios three are variants and none run for longer than three months (90 turns).

  • https://panzerde.blogspot.com/2015/12/campaigns-on-danube.html

    • if I had to pick a single computer wargame to have with me on my island, it would be Frank Hunter's Campaigns on the Danube.

    • The easiest way for me to describe the game is to say it's Command Ops or Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm for the Napoleonic era. The game is not your traditional chit shuffler. Rather, as the overall commander you issue orders to subordinates, in the form of an objective, a stance (defend, engage, withdraw) and an urgency (from cautious to forced). These orders are then carried to the appropriate commands via messengers, and can take many hours to reach their destination - if they make it at all.

    • The corps commanders are actually very competent at deploying their troops to get their jobs done. I generally only issue commands to individual units if I want to detach some cavalry to scout or an infantry division to garrison an important location.

    • Campaigns on the Danube does for 18th century army command at the operational level what the Scourge of War games do for command at the tactical level.

    • Orders move at the speed of a man on horseback, and by the time your orders reach your subordinate the situation may have changed so dramatically that they no longer make sense. Travel slows in bad weather and difficult terrain, making it difficult to coordinate the actions of two or more corps. Subordinates, closer to the actual situation, may not do what you ordered them to do.

    • you must determine the placement of your hospital and center of operations. Place them too close to the front lines and you run the risk of them being overrun, too far and your units will have too wait too long for supplies and can't fallback safely if retreating.

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