Hi all,

I continue to think about campaigns. I liked the Med campaign that won the contest, as well as To Glory We Steer. But I also have some issues with them.

As a result, I've been working on a new approach, which is card-driven. In addition to the standard things one normally wants from campaigns (variability of scenarios, victory conditions and force preservation driven by strategic needs, etc.) there are a few other goals in this project. One goal is to include some of the Aubrey/Hornblower sizzle that doesn't make it into normal SGN battles (chases, raids, and such). Another thing is to have a design that is quick to set up, physically appealing, light on written recordkeeping, and can be maintained over an extended period of time without the cat demolishing it. A third thing is to encourage battles of manageable size for SGN.

Unlike the other campaigns designs referenced, in this proposal complex strategic movements are deemphasized, and the map is therefore very simple and abstract.

I've still had only minimal time to do any playtesting, so it's not really fair to ask for others to look at it. But on the other hand, it's also hard to work in a vacuum.

So, I am posting it here as a PDF file, to see if anyone is interested and willing to spend some time picking it apart:
sgn_card_campaign_rev3.pdf (and here's the optional map: sgn_card_campaign_map.pdf)

I'm open to good ideas of all kinds, but the need right now isn't so much "coming up with neat cards," etc. At this stage I'm mostly interested in the core mechanics.

Some questions I have are:
- does the encounter mechanism work well, and get the kind of flavor desired while leading to appropriate battles, etc.?
- is the action deck makeup good? In particular, the little I've played the "fair wind" cards always seem in short supply. Maybe this is ok though...
- is the general layout of the map good? Is there enough scope for some (very) simple strategy or strategic decision making?
- do raids work? Can they be made better?

Anyway, I'll be interested in any feedback people might have...