Generally speaking, we will follow the guidance given to us in William Sylvester's
Solo Wargaming Guide. That means weather, movement rates, casualty tracking and so on. We are using a real world map, so marching distances should be calculated as road movement rather than "as the crow flies", with all roads on an atlas or online map counting as poor roads except the interstates which count as 'good roads'. Smaller road will allow for movement cross-country and off-road rates, but will allow movement through terrain that normally blocks movement. Streams and rivers are judgement calls on the part of the individual table, but lakes and such should block all movement.
You can assume any bridge shown on your present-day maps exists, but no tunnels or railroads or ferries are available. The time sink required to load and unload boats probably means that any time saving for moving your armies via water are eaten up by the logistics. Any crossing that might have been covered by a ferry is likely bridged. If somebody wants to blow a bridge, we can allow for that, with resulting ferries allowing for a crossing at a much reduced rate.
Since we're tracking horse, foot, and guns, the tabletop battles should consist of some vaguely black-powdery ruleset. That's not a requirement, however. Players can run individual battles using whatever ruleset they prefer, including theater of the mind or hex-and-counter. All that's necessary is to run the fight and report the results including general movements, casualties and whatever else the wargamer thinks is relevant.
In some instances we will defer to Henry Hyde and his guidance in
Wargaming Campaigns. For example, I've used this book to fully stat out the generals for both sides. Henry suggests six stats rolled using percentile dice.
The six stats Henry Hyde uses for commanders are INTelligence, INITiative, COUrage, CHArisma, STRength, HEAlth.
This gives each commander a total score between zero and 600. To convert to Sylvester's Commander Competency Rating (CCR), we just divided by 100 and rounded up to get a CCR between 1 and 6.
The last thing we need to talk about is victory conditions. Here it gets a little complicated. The Kingsportians have launched an attack on the Knoxvillians and are looking to take control of Sneedville. They have to do so before the weather turns too miserable to fight. Fortunately for them, they caught Knoxville unprepared, and the armies of Knoxville won't mobilize until the day the Kingsportian forces cross the frontier. Fortunately for us, we can leave the end date vague and random.
The introductory video says ninety-days, but we can fudge that based on ground conditions. If the outcome is in doubt, we can extend it. If the weather turns nasty, we can shorten it. But plan on Old Man Winter terminating hostilities at some point. Instead of a cut-and-dried end date, we'll use our best judgement on the weather. Obviously, one snowstorm won't do it, and just as obviously a full week of heavy snow will call an end. Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes is our end date.
We should also allow for the secondary tactic of bringing your enemy to heel by seizing his capitol. To that end, let's say an army manages to get into the enemy backfield and lay siege to the enemy's home base. At that point we'll run a simplified siege by simply rolled 2d6 at the end of each day. If the number is less than the number of days of the siege, the besieged city loses hope and surrenders. That means that a siege can last anywhere from three to thirteen days, giving the defenders time to get an army back to break the siege. What this really does is force both sides to do more than just throw bodies at Sneedville. It opens up the full map to tactical movement, and allows for smaller forces to pin larger forces in place. It allows a small spoiler force to make a risky end-run and draw larger forces away from Sneedville. In short, it makes this much more of a strategic exercise, and that's what we really want.
