Thanks so much for featuring my book-it's always interesting to see the different ways in which people make use of it!

Watching this series has been immensely instructive for crafting a sandbox campaign. So many of the abstractions are obviously useful. Even the conflicts between authors provide a cafeteria selection for world building.

Webster is choke-full of ideas, toolbox style, like Hyde

I like the idea of these nations being colonies on alien planets. The colonists were abandoned there and have regressed technologically into something similar to the 1940's tech on earth

How about a SciFi colony on an alien Post-Apocalyptic planet, with local factions having some “modern” weapons and tactics, alongside cavalry and other “medieval” elements? So a starport next to the colony, surrounded by lots of farms, palisaded villages/towns and some irradiated zones.

If you want to do Modern without all the bells and whistles, just do something set in the 1960s forward. You get to use all the cool Soviet gear without having to worry about drones and such. I've been trying to do Cold War stuff for ages, but I've mostly contained it to PC wargames (WARNO and Armored Brigade to be specific). Also AK47 Republic is a great tabletop game for "modern" but not too modern. For Modern tabletop games I'll suggest Fistful of Tows 3 (if you want to concentrate mostly on armor) or Fireteam Modern if you want to do skirmishy-squad stuff. I would suggest Force on Force, but it's hard to make a force for that game since it's all scenario based, so no point buy system or anything.

Are we going to see Mr Wargaming bust out the 2mm Spanish Civil War minis for this campaign?

The Starfire Campaign system uses a d100 roll for any new race encountered, it is an Aggression rating, how militaristic they are, you could also use this method for a Diplomatic rating, and a Rating of how aggressive any commander is. As for how things start, as with anything real or made up, Greed is always a good base. The South wants the Silver or the ability to look for more silver in the Mountains in the North, the North wants Lumber, or to survey the mountains in the south for Silver. Possibly as simple and one side just wants to subjugate the other, depends on how intricate you want to get.

Fantastic commentary on your thought process and the fleshing out of these nations. I loved your narrative on scaling, very similar to your tabletop vid on scaling and how long it took to cross a tabletop battlefield. It is great to see how someone approaches these issues and the solutions and compromises you deploy to solve them for this campaign. I wonder if a different solution to the potential scale issue is to think of maps at 2 levels Continental maps and then regional conflict maps. Think of WW2 and the stages of the conflict and how the conflict moved from region to region throughout the 6 years of the conflict. Each of those stages remind me of your small map but fit a much larger continental conflict. Warfare doesn't tend to be (Ukraine excepted) to be fighting on a broad front for every inch, they tend to be conflicts around strategic points that have importance or defendable terrain. You could also look at the Gulf Wars or Falkland Islands conflict where the battles tended to be in specific locations and winning those allowed rapid advancement. You get the delays of moving strategic reserves to points of conflict or deploying troops early and redeploying troops if needed, with a fog of war type element. It then divorces the whole unit scale issue to the population size. Just a thought. Great series and looking forward to the politics and seeing how the conflict starts.

I was so bad at colouring in primary school. I hot sent to the principal and my parents called in because I wouldn't colour inside the lines haha

Just stumbled across your channel & glad that I have! This series is a great introduction. BTW, Gendarmes are part of a Gendarmerie, which Wikipedia defines as "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population", so exactly what you thought

You don't have to get too fancy with the support options like air and artillery. Roll a dice, and do the 3 part decision option. A fail means the support fire missed - roll again if it hit their own. A partial is a partial hit. A success is a direct hit.

Interesting discussion regarding a modern/post-modern campaign. Using a different world approach is great idea too. Looking forward to seeing how it runs.

My money's on the Aussies winning. Unless the north has emus.

It’s really interesting seeing all this come together. I don’t need a map like this for any games I’m playing these days, but watching makes me want to make one anyway!

60 miles is 1 million kms. This checks out. Haha.

It’s very ambitious. This scenario may be better run as a hex and chit style game. You’d have to think more about front lines than individual armies moving around and should there be motorways on the map?

This reminds me of the system Mike Demana uses in his game ‘Wars of Insurgency’. He really does a good job of creating factions in a less developed world like this. Big fan, brings a pretty space 1889/VSF feel to more modern settings. Also unbelievably excited for navies to be involved!

Wow. We are going in deep. Sounds fun. Nukes?? 👍

(Apparently yootoob ate my earlier comment) This is a new era to me also. It will be interesting to see how this one develops. I think a good strategy will be to cut the rail lines. Incidentally, I was just looking at the population density numbers in ACKS, and it's lowest-density comparison points are 20 ppl/sqmi (Medieval Scotland) and 30 ppl/sqmi (Roman Imperial-era Germany).

I wonder how high those mountains are, will the thinner air cause problems for rotary winged craft or air breathing engines? Can the air cav get over them OK or will they run the risk of casualties from aircraft crashing…