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Scottish Rebellion Beta

UK x Scotland
Complexity: 503.29 Map: 85x107
Dates: 10/7/2025-2/3/2026
Scottish Rebellion 2026

Scottish PO only. Multiple events can cause the scenario to end early.

Credits: The map is largely taken from the Jacobite rebellion scenario by Tony Velasquez. Could not have done something that great myself.

I am not British or Scottish and I don't intend political comment.
The goal of this exercise is 1st to explore how a Middle Eastern style insurgency would play out in Western Europe and 2nd to create a modern day version of the war of the three kingdoms (with this beeing the Bishops War equivalent).
Some aspects are overemphasied, such as the importance of the radical left or the highland clans and the ability to refit WW2 tanks from collections for active service. This is intentional as I prefer to have the "Clan Campell Milita" over "generic insurgents 32". However I have aimed for general realism. The UK army is superior in size, equipment and professionalism to anything the Scots can raise, but political considerations prevent its full deployment at the begining of the conflict.

Over the past months the nationalist controlled Scottish governement has been pushing for independence with increasing aggresiveness. The UK government, busy with an economic crisis and rising crime, has so far tried to compromise. The nationalists have used the time to expand Police Scottland into a paramilitary National Guard and import large quantiies of light weapons. Now they are transforming this force into a regular military armed with heavy equipment. This crosses a line and the UK Cabinet decides into intervene and remove the treacherous Scottish Goverment.

The UK intention is to conduct a quick and low intensity police operation, using police units and special foreces, with only limited support from regular infantry units and no tanks or warplanes involved. However this is to some degree wishful thinking, as it might need more to overcome the well prepared defenders.

The Scottish National Guard is envisioned to consist of one mechanized brigarde to defend the land border to England, supported by a weaker formation of two specialized battalions to defend the coastline against seaborne attacks as well as a strong network of volunteer reserve local defense units. (Roughly following the Norwegian Armys model.) In addtion there are a guard battalion in Edinburgh and a Special Forces unit. Air and Sea forces are also planned but not yet implemented, due to the assumption that anything that could be raised short time would still be easy targets for the superior UK airforce.
Priority has been given to anti-tank capabilities and the mech brigade, although most of the desired Leopard tanks are held back, as the German goverment is reluctant to antagonize the UK. However Scotland might succeed to obtain them from other operators shortly before the outbreak of the conflict.

About a month before the conflict the Scottish parliament has authorized the creation of two "emergency" brigades to fend of a possible UK invasion. They are staffed by volunteers as well as foreign mercenaries, mostly veterans of the recently concluded war in Ukraine, but not yet fully assembled at the begining of the conflict.

Due to concerns the regular force might not be ready in time, the Scottish goverment has also supported the formation of avrious irregular forces. This has resulted in the creation of the irregular "Army of Defense" ready to protect Edinburgh against an English attack, but has also enabled political factions to create their own forces.

Hard left factions control the "Glasgow Operations Room". While supportive of independence in principle they do not agree with the nationalist goverments approach to negotiations and military strategy. They are ready to defend the Glasgow area, but refuse taking orders from Scottish high command at the onset of the conflict. Full beyond central control are various gangs and viligante groups raised in the poorer parts of Glasgow.

In the highlands clan chiefs and local politicans have created the "Northern Shield Force". The Northern Shield aims to deter UK units from adavncing into the highlands, but its leaders are not yet sold on independence and would rather prefer a compromise with the British government, which might try to take advantage of this split.

A key concept of the scenario is escalation: Escalation rises due to the deployment of reenforcements (especially heavy ones), civilian causalities, spectacular UK losses, failure to achieve results on time and other, sometimes random events.
The higher escalation is the more the conflict is regared as a war instead of a "police action" leading to improved cooperation between Scottish factions, more troops for the UK player (yes, this can become a self reenforecing escalation spiral), an additional conflict in Northern Ireland with its own dynamics, more international attention to the conflict (support for the Scottish or pressure to resolve the conflict diplomatically). Most notably at multiple times during the conflict ceasefires might take place, accompanied by negotiations on a political level. These negotiations are either succesful, leading to a normal victory calculation or fighting resumes after a couple of day.

The UK field commander (= the player) might suffer from addtional political meddling throughout the campaign, especially early on.


Still a work in progress. Open to do's:
- refine inital unit readiness and equipment
- add heavy brigades
- add a event chain, where the UK government collapses and is replace by a new one which relies more on irregular and volunteer formations
- add events for the UK to tkae out Scottish leaders
- add supply units?
- penalties for the UK losing units and installations
- add PMC forces guarding the oil industry
- playtest for balancing
- create a "realistic" variant with less Scottish NG units
- add pro-british administrative personnel for the UK to protect
- add shock events for both sides
- make the scenario playable against UK AI
- finetune force settings
- spellchecking ;-)
- add weather effects
- expand event and forces descriptions