Lesson 5: Of diluvians, plebs, opiates and collateral damage

Four disparate lessons.  Suffering an insurgency myself at the moment, damn viruses.  And bombing them with ineffective cold tablets seems to only annoy them.  Looks like the fighting season just started, it is hot and shaky.  Seeing a documentary on SBS where they said your cells are bacteria and the DNA that glues them together appears to be from viruses does not make me feel like I am welcoming home the prodigal virusson.  Enough of that, off to the campaign rules...

The campaigns motive is to enable the creation of Force on Force missions to be played within a framework of an insurgency.  There are no rules to stop you bombing the living crap out of an insurgent hiding in the house, there is no morals check you need to make, there is merely the risk of causing long-term harm in the campaign.  The campaign will hopefully give you pause when you are suffering casualties.  One of the original reasons for the campaign was also to get players to use an assortment of their miniatures.  As the GM I will modify as we go, as no playtesting is done, if it is a two-legged dog then welcome to the insurgency.  Should be hellish fun.

These lessons are more to the core of the campaign.  Players can learn the details if they want (and are wise or have read COIN history) or they can intuitively play the game.  Hopefully these rules will become intuitive during the campaign.

The first lesson is about Floods OR "How mother nature loves to screw you over".  With steep and narrow valleys leading onto wide and populated flood plains the risk of flooding is ever present.  Though if you are lucky this may never happen.  The first effect of a flood is to disrupt or hinder movement (during and directly after).  It also has the potential effect of destroying your public works.  Floods are restricted, and mostly affect the southern edge of the campaign area.

The level of flood is selected with a D10, this determines the dice type to use for the flood damage, a score of 1 to 6 is a D6, a score of 7 to 8 is a D8, a score of a 9-10 is a D10.  You then roll this dice for each campaign coin vs. 4+ and each base affected by the flood. You may also have to mount rescue missions, so say good-bye to those choppers just when you need them!  Flood Refugees are created by rolling a D4-D4, if that district is flooded then roll a D6, if the rolled area is flooded then place a refugee counter.

Lesson 2 - Opium.  The UN, Rialian and Russian strategic bombing campaign disrupted officialdom in Western Malikastan.  With alarming rapidity the corn fields across the southern areas turned red with poppies.  The Russians are determined to smash the druglords and farmers.  The UN is more circumspect, not wanting to piss off the dirt poor farmers.  Unfortunately, the farmers sell to druglords, and druglords are massive spoilers (i.e. do not want the return of the rule of law).  What is the solution?  I doubt there is one, mother nature has found another way to screw you with pretty flowers.  On each turn select one random poppy field and place a druglord using the district dice vs. district difficulty.  Any insurgent spoiler on a poppy field also can improve (+2 to +1 to 0 to -1 to -2) on a District Dice vs. District Difficulty.  During Poppy harvests the insurgents all become -3 to fight (so more difficult to bring to the fight).  Each time you attempt an operation in a poppy field you roll a TQ on a 4+ you destroy the field.  You then roll District Dice vs. District Difficulty to spawn an insurgent.  No one cares about druglords, so attacking druglords is one of the few things you can do without repercussions (unless the druglord happens to be the local governor...police chief or militia leader...or indeed a UN Commander!)

Lesson 3- The People - The reason you are here, or at least that is what you have been told.  You are here to save the people from a medieval existence.  You can toggle on a layer on the map to view the population and the population of each sect in an area.  For a variety of reasons these people can become refugees.

Lesson 4 - Collateral Damage and Refugees
Dropping large bombs or artillery strikes in a populated area may go wrong and kill innocents.  This damages you goodwill in the field and at home.

Well, that is some of the core inside the campaign.

Disclaimer: Any spelling or grammatical errors are there to annoy Mark, and therefore are on purpose.