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  • The Lay of the Land – InsideGMT


    We have introduced in the precedent entry of these Histories the main players and movers of things in Hubris – Twilight of the Hellenistic World: the Kings and their Friends. Now we are going to examine what they were fighting over, i.e. as in most of history, land and the resources that could be obtained from it.

    Introduction

    In Hubris, the key geographical element is the Satrapy, an old Persian word for province that was for the most part retained by Alexander and his successors. In the game, Satrapies are defined by their borders, their possible value in terms of Victory Points and/or Tax Revenues, their Supply Costs to undertake military campaigns, and the Places that they comprise. Some Satrapies include additional features such as Rough Terrain, Shipyards, Military Colonists or are a recruitment market for Mercenaries.

    Each Satrapy contains a number of Places, from one to a maximum of six, whose alignment determine who Controls the Satrapy, and to what extent. These Places can be either walled Cities or wild Tribes, implying various means of controlling them.

    There is also a number of Sea Areas that touch a number of coastal Satrapies, which allow wide movements of diplomats and mercenaries and, under some constraints, armies. Naval Squadrons based in friendly Port Cities will vie for dominance of these Sea Areas, from where friendly ports can be supported, straits crossings denied, or enemy coastlines plundered.

    Most Actions in the game, whether military Campaigns, Envoy (diplomatic) missions or attempts to raise additional taxes target Satrapies or Sea Areas as a whole, rather than individual Places.

    Description of a Satrapy

    Every Satrapy on the board is shown by a banner which lists:

    • its name;
    • its value in Victory Points (VPs), if any, for the various Kingdoms (between laurels, in the appropriate color);
    • its Tax Value, if any (gold coins icon);
    • its Supply Cost value (loaded mule icon);
    • if the Satrapy has a Shipyard, an icon of a warship in construction is also shown on the banner.

     To the side of the banner are shown a number of small square or circular weights, representing the number of, respectively, Cities and Tribes included in the Satrapy.

    Every Satrapy has a corresponding half-size Satrapy Card with the same information, plus a general indication of its location on the map and attached Units (if any). The use of the Satrapy Cards is optional but is quite handy to easily track what Satrapies you control and compute VP totals and Tax revenues when needed.

    Pontos Satrapy and Pontos Satrapy Card

    We see here the Satrapy of Pontos, on the north coast of Anatolia. It has VP values of 0|½ for both Macedon (purple) and the Seleucids (yellow), but none for the Ptolemies (blue). Its Tax values are 0|1 Talents (Ts), and its Supply Costs a forbidding 8 (meaning that every Unit Campaigning in Pontos will have to pay 8 Ts each! Not a very enticing area, though it does have a Shipyard. One can understand how it remained essentially a backwater for centuries…

    Note that various Satrapies often offer different VP values for different Kingdoms, showing their relative strategic importance to these. Some Satrapies also have no Tax value, one (Parapotamia) even has neither VP nor Tax value, being on the map only to allow (at the prohibitive Supply Cost of 8…) to bypass the heavily fortified coastal regions of northern Syria…

    Pontos borders four adjacent Satrapies (namely Bithynia, Galatia, Kappadokia and Armenia) and one Sea Area (Pontos Euxinos). It presents a textured background evocative of its mountainous character, indicating that, in game terms, it is considered to be Rough Terrain, favoring the defender in battle.

    It includes three Places: two Cities (Sinope and Amaseia) and one Tribe (Paphlagones). Let us now look at these in detail.

    Places: Cities and Tribes

    There are two types of Places in Hubris: Cities and Tribes. Cities are represented by square frames, and Tribes by circular ones. Cities on the map are walled, which means they may only be captured by Siege but can received a garrison (though it may create resentment, especially among Greeks). Tribes represent a number of small villages and hilltop fortresses, typically located in difficult hilly or mountainous areas, which must be subjugated and cannot be garrisoned.

    Types and Categories of Places

    Places are further categorized as being either Subject, Free or Greek:

    • Subject Places (shown by a plain unadorned frame and a white name background) have no meaningful civic constituency (or none that Hellenistic kings would accept to deal with) and cannot be the target of diplomatic Actions: one may only bring them to one’s alignment by force, and one may not place Alliances on them;
    • Free Places (shown by a flowery frame and a yellowish name background) do have a civic body and can be the target of diplomatic Actions;
    • Greek Places (shown by a Greek frieze frame and a blue name background) are essentially a subset of Free Places, with the added characteristic of being Greek communities, which means that they are subject to a number of specific game effects and events, nearly all of them meaning trouble for the players…

    Every Place on the map shows an illustration within its frame: these are purely to give you a feel for the type and predominant culture of the communities represented, and have no gameplay signification. Note that they are typically hidden by the Alignment marker when there is one, leaving only the frame to show.

    Going back to our example of Pontos, we see that Sinope if a Greek City, Amaseia a Free City and Paphlagones a Subject Tribe.

    You will also notice that each of them presents additional icons along its frame:

    • Sinope displays an icon including a small anchor and five ship sheds, denoting that it is a Port City which can serve as a naval base, making its bordering Sea Area (Pontos Euxinos) a “Friendly Sea” where friendly Squadrons may operate;
    • Amaseia displays at its top right corner the icon of a siege tower with two red pennants flying in the wind, showing it is a particularly formidable stronghold which will impose a To Hit Modifier (THM) of -2 to any would-be besieger;
    • Paphlagones also displays a similar icon (this time an armored soldier, showing that, as a Tribe, it must be subjugated rather than besieged like a city such as Amaseia) with one orange pennant, indicating a -1 THM to an attacker.

    Alignment: Garrisons and Alliances

    In game terms, Places are not “Controlled” (this term applies only to Satrapies), but “Aligned”. Alignment can be achieved by placing either a Garrison or an Alliance (which are, in Hubris, literally the two sides of Alignment markers!).

    Alignment Markers

    Garrisons are full square markers in the color of their Kingdom, with its symbol and the black silhouette of a soldier. The shape is a reminder that they can only be placed in Cities (square frames).

    Conversely, Alliances are full disks in the color and with the the symbol of their Kingdom, with two white interlinked rings. Again, the shape intends to remind players that only they can be placed on Tribes (circular frames).

    Garrisons are typically placed as a result of a successful Siege, while Alliances can be placed either through a successful Envoy diplomatic Action, or (for a City) a successful Siege or (for a Tribe) Subjugation, both as part of a Land Campaign Action. Note that garrisons are not military units and cannot be moved, nor do they cost any maintenance. You may wonder how an Alliance may be placed as the result of a violent capture (Siege or Subjugation), but it was always possible, and often advisable, to simply eliminate or exile opponents and install sympathizers in power in their stead rather than needlessly antagonize such touchy communities as Greeks or tribal groups, not to mention (later in the game) the Romans who can proclaim themselves as the guarantors of the freedom of the Greek cities…

    Existing Alignment markers make eligible Places more resilient to adverse Envoy Actions, especially Garrisons, where only the most gifted diplomats (or those with the deepest coffers!) can hope to sway such Cities from their current master. However, a number of game events may play havoc with Alignment markers, especially among the Greeks. I told you Greeks were trouble… 😉 In general, where possible, Envoy Actions are the cheapest way to extend one’s control, and are not considered acts of war, but they place only Alliances which are more fragile than Garrisons. On the other hand, Garrisons are typically the surest way to maintain control, but require very costly military campaigns to impose, and may generate considerable ill will.

    A few Places are also marked by a banner icon in specific colors and sporting assorted symbols. These mark either the Capital Cities of the three Kingdoms or Heartland Places of Minor Powers, which, when holding an Alliance, allow usage of their associated Minor Units. We will discuss these more in detail in a subsequent entry on military campaigns.

    Alexandreia and Rhodos Places

    Degrees of Control

    You may remember that the VP and Tax values of Pontos are actually showing two numbers, separated by a vertical dash: this is because two different degrees of Control can be achieved, and most Satrapies grant different values according to the degree of Control achieved.

    Simple Control is achieved by having more than half the Places in a given Satrapy Aligned with one’s Kingdom: in the case of Pontos, this means at least two of them (out of the three in the Satrapy).

    Full Control is achieved by having all Places in a given Satrapy Aligned. Note that, in Satrapies with only one or two Places, Simple and Full Control are the same, since the only way to have more than half of them is to have them all.

    When only a single number is shown for a given value, that value is granted as soon as any degree of Control (Simple or Full) is achieved.

    Obviously, only one Power may achieve any degree of Control over a given Satrapy, since no Powers may simultaneously have more than half of its Places Aligned with themselves.

    Going back to our example of Pontos, this means that Macedon or the Seleucids need Full Control (all three Places Aligned) to be granted the ½ VP available to them, and so does any Power (including the Ptolemies) to get the 1 T in Tax. Luckily, not all Satrapies are so poor in VPs or Tax revenues: see the Delta in Egypt, which is the richest on the whole map, for contrast!

    Delta Satrapy

    Note that Tax values may be reduced in three cases:

    • Should a Satrapy be Controlled through an absolute majority of Alliances, its Tax value is halved;
    • Should a Satrapy be Ravaged as a result of military Campaigns or Events, its Tax value is halved;
    • Even worse, should a Kingdom be At War during the Revenue Phase (i.e. at the beginning of a turn), its total Tax revenue is halved: bear in mind that game turns are 5-years long, so this represents the economic disruption resulting from colonist-soldiers being called to war and trade patterns being disrupted over a long period.

    All these are cumulative…

    Military Colonists and Mercenaries

    As mentioned in the introduction, some Satrapies are home to Military Colonists, typically veterans installed by Alexander’s successors in their new kingdoms to provide them with a local and ready source of Greeks and Macedonians for their armies, though it may also include some local peoples with a strong military tradition such as Medes in the Upper Satrapies.

    Whoever Controls such a Satrapy may Muster this Military Colonist when needed, for the duration of the turn. For instance, the Cleruchs Unit is a Military Colonist Unit attached to the Satrapy of Delta.

    Cleruchs Unit

    Other Units that can join a Kingdom’s armies are Mercenaries. Similarly to Military Colonists, Mercenaries have one or several Home Satrapies. Unlike them however, Control of these is not mandatory to add them to one’s forces, but simple presence through possession of an Alignment marker in any of these Home Satrapies. Such presence allows a Kingdom to bid for the services of the attached Mercenary Unit during the Mercenary Phase preceding the Action Phase, or to Muster them if left unhired during the Action Phase.

    For example, the Mysians Mercenary Unit may be Hired by any Kingdom with an Alignment marker in either Mysia, Lydia-Phrygia or Ionia, as shown on the map.

    Mysians Mercenaries & Home Satrapies

    It should be noted that Kingdoms cannot create new Units (except through some very few Events), and so are limited to those few Royal, Military Colonist, Mercenary and Minor Units that exist to wage war. Control or presence of the Satrapies providing access to these Units is hence a critical dimension of the game.

    Geographical Continuity: Land and Sea Paths

    It is useful to bear in mind the time scale of Hubris: every game turn represents a period of five years. In game terms, this means that, barring any kind of opposition, any person or force could traverse the map from one end to the other within any given turn. As a result, there is no concept of movement allowance or movement points in the game.

    Instead, one should think of one’s Kingdom as a coherent core, provided that all its Controlled Satrapies are Adjacent by land: we talk of a “Land Path”. Accordingly, leaders, forces and individual units can freely be moved or mustered from one Satrapy to another as long as a Land Path exists between them. However, as soon as one leaves that core to enter its uncontrolled periphery, or meet an enemy Force, movement halts and war ensues.

    A similar concept exists for naval operations, involving chains of Friendly Sea Areas, i.e. Sea Areas bordered by at least one Aligned Port City. Here, the restriction is even stronger as, lacking the support provided by friendly naval bases, Squadrons cannot even enter a non-Friendly Sea Area, meaning that control of a adequate Port City, either through diplomacy or land action must always precede the extension of naval power. Note that, unlike a Satrapy which can only be Controlled by at most a single Kingdom at a time, a given Sea Area may be Friendly to several Powers at the same time, as long as each of them holds an Aligned Port City bordering that particular Sea Area, making contestation of sea power possible…

    Diplomatic Actions, called “Envoy”, are the least limited of all, being essentially allowed to target any Coastal Satrapy as long as one owns an Aligned Port City somewhere. Landlocked Satrapies must be targeted from adjacent Satrapies. Similarly, freshly Hired Mercenaries may be freely repositioned during the Mercenary Phase along Land Paths or any chain of Sea Areas (Friendly or not).

    Now that we have looked at the leaders and the map, I will cover in the next installment of these Histories the particulars of War and Peace in the game…

    Previous Articles: 

    The Hubris Histories – Book 1: Historical Overview

    The Hubris Histories – Book 2: The Kings and their Courts



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  • The Kings and their Courts – InsideGMT


    As we have seen in the general historical overview in Book 1, individual leaders, first and foremost, but not exclusively, kings, drove the historical narrative in Ancient times. Accordingly, Hubris – Twilight of the Hellenistic World has been built around these leaders, their strengths and weaknesses, unique abilities and relationships. Who can you trust to get the job done? Who can you trust with an army? These will be essential questions when you play Hubris…

    Introduction

    Unlike modern states, Hellenistic kingdoms did not feature extensive administrations and bureaucracies: in many ways, the king was the state. But, no matter how talented he could be, he could not do everything on his own. To govern, he relied on a circle of people close to him, who were traditionally known as his Friends (in Greek: Philoi), though over time the term lost its original meaning to become more of an official title. Whenever a king needed a task to be taken care of, whether leading a diplomatic mission, overseeing a construction project or leading an army, he would appoint one of his Friends, usually selected because of their particular skills or connections, and also with an eye on their loyalty. Indeed, the model of heroic kingship epitomized by Alexander, and through which the original Successors built their kingdoms, was still very much present in the minds of Macedonian officers, leading to a number of rebellions by royal family members or prestigious generals…

    In Hubris, whenever you want to do something in the game, whether undertaking an action or triggering a pending event, you will have to activate an available leader, and test their appropriate rating to determine whether you are successful, and to what extent.

    Every leader is typically able to be activated twice per turn, and each activation takes up one activation opportunity, of which there will be at least four, but never more than six, for every kingdom each turn.  Since all leaders have different abilities, which leader to activate, to what end, and when, forms the core of player decisions…

    Anatomy of a Leader Card

    Every leader in the game is represented by a Leader Card. Let us look in some detail at one of these.

    This leader is Perseus, the eldest son of king Philippos V of Macedon. You can see that he is affiliated at start with Macedon, and tagged as a member of the Royal Family, with the succession rank of #2. If he is in play (alive) when his father is removed from play (dies), he will automatically succeed as king of Macedon.

    He enters play at the start of Turn 6 (195-191 BCE). This means that he is of age to play an active role in politics, war and administration from that turn onward. His has no end turn, which means that, barring other circumstances, he would live beyond the scope of the game.

    If he had an end turn within the time frame of the scenario being played, he would be removed from play when the recurrent game mechanism “Ferryman of Souls” pops up if his end turn matches the current turn, or a previous turn – since recurrent events do not necessarily occur every turn. However, irrespective of their printed end turn, every leader must roll 2d6 when “Ferryman of Souls” is resolved, and is removed from play on a roll of 12, representing early death occurrences, such as from a battle wound, a riding incident, disease, or random assassination…

    Finally, Perseus’s Leader Card is illustrated, like every other leader’s in the game by a specially commissioned hand-drawn portrait.

    Leader Capabilities and Ratings

    Perseus has all three Capability icons existing in the game: the Military icon, the Diplomacy icon, and the Admin icon, which means that he is able to undertake all possible Actions and Reactions:

    • With the Military Capability, he is able to undertake Campaign Actions and all kinds of military Reactions, including Naval Interceptions, Strengthening Defenses and Emergency Muster;
    • With the Diplomacy Capability, he is able to undertake diplomatic Envoy Actions toward autonomous cities and tribes, try to increase his kingdom’s influence in the Roman Senate or to forestall war with the Republic (though his Special Ability diminishes his effectiveness in this regard, see below);
    • With the Admin Capability, he is able to attempt to Raise Additional Taxes, Build new naval Squadrons, and undertake Evergetism Actions, various actions to increase the standing of the dynasty through public buildings programs or other benefaction initiatives;
    • Various events may require a leader with a specific Capability icon to be Activated in order to trigger them.

    He is rated for each of these Capabilities, with actually two ratings associated with Military: a Battle Rating and a Siege Rating:

    • As indicated by its name, the Battle Rating is primarily used in battle, with each Unit under his command rolling once and generating hits if they roll equal or less to his Battle Rating;
    • The Battle Rating is also used when rolling for Subjugation of Tribes during Campaigns;
    • The Siege Rating, on the other hand, is used when rolling for Sieges of Cities during Campaigns.

    In all cases, the highest the rating, the more effective the leader is, as successes are gained by rolling equal or less to the appropriate rating. Various To Hit Modifiers (THMs) may apply, for instance:

    • Elite Units get a +1 THM in battle;
    • A Siege Train grants a +1 THM on Siege rolls;
    • A number of Cities and Tribes are deemed Strongholds and impose a -1 or -2 THM to Siege or Subjugation attempts against them;
    • An Envoy attempt against a Place already Aligned with another Power suffers a -1 THM; if it has a Garrison, that THM is -3 instead;
    • An Raise Additional Taxes attempt gets a +1 THM if friendly troops are in the targeted Satrapy…

    Perseus’s Battle Rating of 4 makes him one of the best field commanders in the game, with only the famed Hannibal, who can come in play as an exile from Carthage, having a better rating with 5. His Siege Rating of 2 is average. Diplomatically, with a Rating of 3, he is good though not great. Same thing with his Admin Rating of 3. Overall, Perseus is a very capable leader, though with some flaws as we are going to see now.

    Special Abilities

    Most leaders have Special Abilities. Perseus is afflicted with a negative Special Ability: as he was strongly disliked in Rome (which preferred his younger brother Demetrios, who had been a hostage there for a number of years), he suffers a -1 THM on every Diplomacy Check involving Rome, whether trying to increase influence in the senate or to forestall war. This brings an interesting choice for the Macedon player in the late stages of the game, as an event may force them to pick an heir to Philippos V: Perseus is the most capable, but Demetrios may be better able to avoid a confrontation with Rome. However, his ties there prevent him from undertaking anything against Rome and its allies, including the Greek cities…

    Other Special Abilities found in the game include military or diplomatic bonuses in certain circumstances, or powerful actions unique to this leader, such as the ability to suborn enemy leaders, train troops or improve the ratings of one’s king…

    Loyalty and Intrigue

    While not every leader has all three Capability Icons nor Special Abilities, they all have Loyalty and Intrigue Ratings, which define how reliable and potentially troublesome they are.

    Loyalty in Hubris represents both how personally ambitious and how faithful to their king leaders are. This is especially critical for leaders entrusted with military commands, though some events will check the loyalty of leaders at court. Should a leader fail a Loyalty Check, typically during a recurrent “Ambitious Generals” game mechanism, he will rebel, setting himself up as an independent power, controlling troops and places, and will usually have to be eliminated by military force.

    Intrigue on the other hand represents both the ability of a leader for shady undertakings and the likelihood that they will create trouble at court. Some events will require Intrigue checks, making high Intrigue leaders desirable. But the most common use of Intrigue ratings is when the recurrent game mechanism “Intrigues At Court” is resolved: then, the Intrigue Ratings of all Friends at court – i.e. not in the field with a military command – are totaled and compared to the Intrigue Rating of the king or of his Chief Minister. If this total exceeds various multiples, a growing number of plots will oppose various Friends who are at court, possibly targeting the king himself if things really get out of hand, and often resulting in the elimination of courtiers, fallen victims to deadly court intrigue! Some other events, such as the dreaded “Succession Crises” which are put in the Events Deck upon the death of a king, also require testing Intrigue of key leaders.

    It should be noted that Loyalty is most critical for leaders in the field with a military command, while Intrigue typically plays with Friends who are at court. This introduces another balancing act, with Loyalty, Intrigue – and Renown, as discussed below – being key considerations when deciding who to send out with an army and who to keep at court close to the king…

    In the case of Perseus, his Loyalty of 5 is below average, reflecting his ambition, which may make him a liability if he were to accumulate Renown before acceding to the throne. His Intrigue of 4 however is above average, again making him something of a liability when at court, but also positioning him well to handle his court easily once he becomes king – if he survives long enough…

    Renown

    Where all other Capabilities and Ratings are set – though some Ratings may be modified by the Special Abilities of the leader or of another leader in the same court – Renown must be earned, and can be lost, usually on the battlefield, though not exclusively.

    Renown is capped between a maximum value of 4 and a minimum value of -2.

    Renown is intimately linked to Loyalty, in that a leader’s own Renown is directly subtracted from his Loyalty, and his king’s Renown applied as a THM on Loyalty checks. As a result, leaders who have more Renown than their king are at a significantly higher risk of rebelling! This can prove especially problematic under a regency or under a weak king: would you rather risk defeat on the battlefield with an inferior commander, or risk an abler commander develop ambitions of his own?

    Renown may also modify Intrigue Ratings, although only to a reduced extent, for some game mechanisms, including “Intrigue At Court” and “Succession Crisis” checks. Here again, a king with high Renown will more easily be able to keep control of his court, and high Renown Friends will create more trouble, while being less likely to fall victim to court intrigues…

    Another key aspect of Renown is that the Renown of a king is directly added to his kingdom’s Total Victory Points (VPs). This can prove decisive, as 4 VPs exceeds the VP value of most Satrapies in the game, but negative Renown can also offset gains on the map! When a king dies, half of his Renown is converted to Dynastic VPs, a kind of essentially permanent VPs independent of the strategic situation or the current king.

    As you can see, Renown is a very precious commodity, highly desirable on your king, but fraught with risks on other members of his court, even on his heir apparent…

    Courts

    The leaders currently affiliated with a kingdom form that kingdom’s Court. Every kingdom includes two permanent positions: those of the King and his Chief Minister.

    A King must be a member of the Royal Family of that kingdom. When a King dies, he is automatically succeeded by the member of the Royal Family who is next in line as per Succession Rank on their Leader Cards. If there is no member of the Royal Family in play at that time, then there is no King until one enters play, creating a regency situation. Under some circumstances, a member of the Royal Family may be Hostage in Rome, and he is effectively considered to be out of play until freed by an event.

    The King holds a special status in many game functions, and his Renown and Intrigue Ratings in particular are critical. All other leaders in a Court are considered to be Friends of the King, including leaders affiliated with a Minor Power allied with the kingdom.

    The Chief Minister, unlike the King, is freely appointed from among a King’s Friends when a new one needs to be chosen, including from members of the Royal Family or leaders who were originally not affiliated with the kingdom, having joined the Court either after defecting from another Court, or through a bidding process for exiles or mercenary leaders. Only Allied Minor Leaders – leaders affiliated with a Minor Power allied with the kingdom – are not eligible to be Chief Minister.

    A Chief Minister, once appointed, remains in office until he either is removed from play, defects or becomes king himself. Like the King, a number of game functions require the Chief Minister’s ratings to be checked, so choosing the right person for this office can be critical, in particular to offset some weaknesses of one’s King.

    Both the King and the Chief Minister may be sent out to Campaign on the map, as long as they have a Campaign Capability Icon. When it is needed or desired to send another leader to lead a Campaign or undertake a military Reaction, another available Friend may be appointed as Strategos – a Greek term meaning both general and governor – and possibly entrusted with units to undertake this campaign. Up to three Friends besides the King and Chief Minister may be appointed Strategos, but such a position is only temporary and cannot last beyond the end of the current turn.

    Any leader on the map, either the King, the Chief Minister or a Strategos, is not considered to be At Court. This is a critical distinction when resolving “Intrigue At Court” or, conversely, “Ambitious Generals”.

    Leaders with full Leader Cards only represent the most noteworthy leaders who were active during the period of the game. Should a given Court fall below three members (including the King), an appropriate number of generic Replacement Leaders are randomly drawn from a pool specific to each kingdom to make up the numbers until new leaders join the depleted Court. While better than nothing, these generic leaders are obviously much less talented than the named leaders…

    Example of a Court

    You can see below an example of the Seleucid Court at the end of Turn 4:

    The Seleucid king is Antiochos III Megas (‘the Great’), one of the best leaders in the game. At that point, he has wiped the stain of his defeat at the hands of Ptolemaios IV at the battle of Raphia in 217, crushing his cousin Achaios’s rebellion in Asia Minor, then following in the steps of Alexander all the way to the nearest reaches of India, restoring some degree of Seleucid authority over the so-called Upper Satrapies, hence his considerable Renown of 3…He is Spent (his card rotated upside-down) after Campaigning twice with his Royal Army, Siege Train and a Katoikoi (‘military colonists’) unit. He also has a peace marker showing that he has sworn peace with the current Lagid king, Ptolemaios IV Philopator.

    Next to him, his faithful Chief Minister, Zeuxis, is also Spent after Activating twice for Diplomacy and Admin undertakings this turn.

    The Seleucid Court boasts no less than three members of the Royal Family beyond Antiochos III: his sons Antiochos (‘the Younger’) and Seleukos (future Seleukos IV), and his cousin Antipatros. This pretty much guarantees there will be no shortage of heirs, but also presents definite risks since Royal Family members are more liable to being tested for rebellions…

    Here, both Antiochos the Younger and Theodotos, a defector from the Ptolemaic Court, have been appointed as Strategos during the turn, and both have been Activated only once during the turn, leaving them still potentially available for being further Activated.

    Finally, Polyxenidas, despite not having campaigned himself, is Spent also, having been rotated twice to use his “Admiral” Special Ability. Such rotations outside regular Activations explain why the Court shows a total number of leader rotations of 8, even though there is a maximum of 6 Activations per turn.

    Note that despite the Court counting seven members, a quite large number, Antiochos III is able to hold it together easily both because of his high Renown – giving him an adjusted Intrigue Rating of 5 when testing “Intrigue At Court” – and the “Faithful Friend” Special Ability of Zeuxis. King Antiochos should however be cautious about sending his eldest son Antiochos the Younger on campaign again, as his Renown of 1 lowers his Loyalty to a borderline dangerous value of 4…

    Now that we have looked at the leaders and the kingdoms’ courts, I will present in the next installment of these Histories the lay of the land where these leaders practice their skills, the satrapies, cities and tribes, as well as how they come to be aligned with the various kingdoms, and their significance in game terms, from the collection of taxes through the waging of war to the collection of victory points…

    Previous Article: The Hubris Histories – Book 1: Historical Overview



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  • Disease and Other Unexpected Losses in A House Divided – InsideGMT


    Disease killed significantly more soldiers in the Civil War than bullets did. The Union lost 110, 000 killed in action and 225,000 from disease. The South lost 94,000 killed in action and 169,000 from disease. In addition, each side had about 30,000 men die in captivity, and almost all of those would have been die to disease, although in some cases aggravated by exposure and malnutrition. Four major killers were dysentery, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and malaria. The estimated totals from several  diseases were:

    Dysentery: 45,000 Union, 50,000 Confederate deaths

    Typhoid: 35,000 Union, 30,000 Confederate deaths

    Malaria: 30,000 total deaths, mostly Confederate (due to a lack of quinine in the south)

    Pneumonia: 20,000 Union, 17,000 Confederate deaths

    Tuberculosis: 14,000 total deaths

    Measles: 11,000 total deaths

    These estimates are probably low, because a great man men died of unspecified causes, or “a fever.”

    Most disease losses were spread evenly over time and so represented a steady attrition made up for with continuous recruiting. But I thought that some representation of epidemics which could suddenly impact a field army’s fighting strength was in order.

    A House Divided now includes event cards, one of which is drawn each turn, and there are unique decks for each of the years of the war after 1861. Every card is drawn and played once, and so every one of the historic events portrayed by the card occur, but players are unsure in what order within the year they will happen. One of the effects of a number of the cards is to cause an immediate loss of one unit by one or both players at the start of a turn, the sort of disruptive casualties that sometimes occurred with particularly virulent outbreaks of a disease. Over the course of the game five Union units are removed and four Confederate.

    Work in Progress Event Card Samples (not final artwork)

    Some other non-disease losses occur due to events outside the player’s control. Those cards read as follows:

    Trouble on the Frontier

    *Union player removes any one active Union infantry to the Recruiting or Promotion Pool.

    The Dakotah uprising in Minnesota, August 1862, force diversion of Federal troops north.

    Southern Bread Riots

    *Confederate player removes one Confederate infantry in play and place it six months later on the turn track. On that turn place it in the Recruiting or Promotion Pool.

    The Southern Bread Riots were a response to dwindling food supplies in the Confederacy, and took place across the south in March and April of 1863. Militias were called out to restore order, diverting troops from the front.

    New York Draft Riots

    *Union player removes any one New York militia infantry in play and place it six months later on the turn track. On that turn place it in the Recruiting Pool.

    Historic draft riots in New York, July 1863 caused diversion of troops to restore order.

    Midwest Draft Riots

    *Union player removes any 1 Illinois militia infantry in play and place it six months later on the turn track. On that turn place it in the Recruiting Pool.

    In Charleston, Illinois the last pro-Confederate draft riots of the war took place in March 1864

    Three Year Enlistments Expire (Union)

    *Union player removes any two active Union Veteran infantry units to the Promotion Pool.

    The enlistment terms of large numbers of the Union regiments enrolled for three years’ service in the summer of 1861 expired during the summer of 1864, just at the height of the Overland Campaign, which weakened the Army of the Potomac in particular.

    Blockade Tightens

    *Confederate player removes any one active Confederate infantry to the Recruiting or Promotion Pool. (If the Confederacy has been recognized by Europe, this card has no effect.)

    Starvation in the South

    *Confederate player removes any one active Confederate infantry in play and place it in the Recruiting or Promotion Pool.

    As transportation broke down across the South in mid-1865, food often rotted in warehouses and starvation became widespread. Confederate soldiers increasingly left the ranks to look after their families.

    In addition, weather can cause casualties as well as affect movement and game length, but that is the subject of a different article.

    Previous Article: Weather in A House Divided



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  • Ermine Design Process & Historical Look at The Battle of Champtoceux – InsideGMT


    In 2024, my upcoming game Men of Iron Volume VII: Ermine was put onto the GMT P500 list, and reached its number relatively quickly. For those who don’t know, Men of Iron, created by Richard Berg is a hex and counter series of games focussed on medieval battles at the grand tactical scale. 

    Ermine covers a handful of smaller battles from the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War. You’ve probably never heard of most of them – they’re all rather obscure and tend to be overshadowed by the likes of Poitiers, Crécy, and Agincourt. But they’re surprisingly varied and interesting in their own right.

    These battles span the full range of classic Hundred Years’ War encounters: from Morlaix, where a small English force of longbowmen in a defensive position managed to hold off -and arguably defeat – a much larger cavalry army; to a daring night attack at La Roche-Derrien, where a small, plucky group of mounted men-at-arms broke a siege, captured the enemy commander, and snatched victory; to the full-on pitched battle of Auray, which was a close-run thing and could have gone either way.

    It’s been a really interesting process to design these battles as their own, independent scenarios, and I want to write a post detailing each of them individually. In the meantime though, here’s a bit of a historical summary of the period, to give the subsequent posts a bit of context:

    The War of the Breton Succession (1341–1364) was a dynastic conflict rooted in competing claims to the Duchy of Brittany following the death of Duke John III without issue. His half-brother, John de Montfort, asserted his right to the duchy against Joan of Penthièvre, supported by her husband Charles of Blois and the French crown. Hostilities opened with Montfort’s seizure of Champtoceaux in September 1341, but he was soon captured following a siege by royal forces. His wife, Joanna of Flanders, continued the resistance, rallying support from England. The arrival of English reinforcements led to the Battle of Morlaix (30 September 1342), where Anglo-Breton forces successfully repelled a larger Franco-Breton army through the use of field entrenchments and longbow fire, marking the conflict’s transformation into a broader Anglo-French proxy war.

    Throughout the 1340s and 1350s, the war was punctuated by sieges and intermittent field engagements, with no side able to secure a decisive advantage. A turning point came at the Battle of La Roche-Derrien in 1347, where Charles of Blois was captured by English and Montfortist forces during a failed assault on the town, severely weakening his faction until his ransom in 1356. Meanwhile, the Battle of Mauron (14 August 1352) reinforced Montfortist momentum: English-led forces annihilated a larger Franco-Breton army, inflicting heavy casualties on the French nobility. Yet the conflict dragged on, and in 1364 French momentum revived after Bertrand du Guesclin’s victory at the Battle of Cocherel (16 May), where he defeated Navarrese-English forces in Normandy, allowing the French crown to refocus efforts on Brittany and emboldening Charles of Blois for a final push.

    The war culminated in the decisive Battle of Auray on 29 September 1364. John de Montfort, now returned from English exile, laid siege to Auray, prompting Charles of Blois and Du Guesclin to attempt a relief. The Montfortist forces, well-positioned on high ground along the River L’och and reinforced by English contingents under John Chandos, repulsed the Franco-Breton attack. Charles of Blois was killed, and Du Guesclin taken prisoner. The defeat ended the Blois claim to the duchy, and the Treaty of Guérande (April 1365) recognised Montfort’s son as Duke John IV. Though the war resolved the immediate succession, it left Brittany politically fractured and firmly enmeshed in the wider struggles of the Hundred Years War.

    The Battle of Champtoceux

    Champtoceux is also the least well documented battle in the box. We don’t really know where it happened, and we don’t really know the makeup of the forces (outside of the leaders and that 2,000 Genoese crossbowmen were involved; those fellas crop up in quite a few of these battles). Here’s the historical background:

    Charles de Blois

    By September 1341, Charles de Blois had amassed 5,000 French soldiers, 2,000 Genoese mercenaries, and a substantial number of Breton troops in his military ranks. He stationed his forces at Angers in the Loire Valley, on the southern border of Brittany.

    Jean de Monfort
    Jean de Monfort

    As October 1341 dawned, Charles de Blois prepared to advance, only to find that Jean de Montfort had already seized control of and fortified most of the castles and towns along Eastern and Central Brittany. Among Montfort’s stronghold possessions were the key towns of Rennes, Dinan, and the heavily fortified castle at Champtoceux, guarding the Loire Valley. Charles chose this stronghold as the first target for the French army’s march toward their ultimate destination, Nantes. Jean de Valois – France’s future King Jean II – joined Charles on this campaign, as did the Genoese mercenary leader Ottone Doria, who was famously scapegoated for the failure of the French army at Crécy 5 years later.

    Prince Jean of France

    Charles, alongside Prince Jean of France, initiated a siege of Champtoceux, a key stronghold held by Montfortist forces. However, the besieging army faced severe logistical challenges due to Jean de Montfort’s strategic network of defensive outposts in the surrounding countryside, which disrupted supply lines and made sustaining the siege increasingly difficult.

    In response to these disruptions, Charles de Blois took decisive action by leading a detachment of approximately 1,000 men to clear the countryside of Montfortist forces, hoping to reestablish secure supply routes. This maneuver, however, exposed him to counterattack. Jean de Montfort, seizing the opportunity, moved swiftly with his army to intercept Charles. The confrontation forced Charles and his men to retreat to a fortified farmstead, where they prepared to defend themselves under pressure from Montfort’s numerically superior force.

    The situation became critical for Charles de Blois until reinforcements arrived under Prince Jean of France. These fresh troops bolstered the French position and launched a counteroffensive that nearly routed Montfort’s army. Despite the setback, Jean de Montfort managed to execute a disciplined withdrawal, preserving his forces.

    I identified two main challenges in designing this scenario: the map, and how to reflect the flow of the battle. The only concrete detail in the sources is that the fight took place at a farmstead, so I took some creative license and added a few wooded areas to help break up the reinforcement line and create more tactical interest. 

    Capturing the flow of the engagement was equally tricky – it unfolds in two phases: an initial Montfortist attack on the scouting Blois forces, followed by the arrival of Blois reinforcements that turn the tide and force a Montfortist retreat off the map. There are a few ways of doing this in the Men of Iron system. The simplest way would be to simply reflect this through the Flight Point system; for those not familiar – the more units you lose, the more FPs you accrue, and once you hit your side’s FP limit, you lose, with your troops effectively scattering and running away. I didn’t like that though – as I thought that the most interesting part of this battle was the decision of Jean de Montfort to run away. Timing the retreat is key – as Jean has a real chance to kill or capture Charles de Blois and nip this whole succession crisis in the bud pretty early on. Before the reinforcements come to overwhelm him.

    The other method, then, is to emulate the rules found in other Men of Iron entries. The Battle of Fornovo, found in Arquebus – Volume IV in the series – has a nice rule that encourages you to move your units off the map, effectively counting themas having retreated, but not counting towards your FP total. It doesn’t make it easier for de Montfort to win, but it does make it harder for de Blois to.

    I and my developer and playtesters will be testing that for now – to see if it works well mechanically in this context, but also whether it fits narratively in the scenario. Next up, Morlaix.



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  • The Hubris Histories – Book 1: Historical Overview – InsideGMT


    Hubris – Twilight of the Hellenistic World takes one to three players twenty-two centuries back in time to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean. This period is often little known, obscured by the great epopees of Alexander the Great (that preceded it), Hannibal (that took place simultaneously) or Julius Caesar (that followed it). It was nonetheless pivotal to world history.
    Let’s explore it a little bit…

    The situation in 220 BCE

    In 220 BCE, the Greek and Macedonian world forged by Alexander and his Successors is still essentially the predominant region of the Western World, and is dominated by three great dynasties descended from the most successful of the Successors: in Macedon the Antigonids, heirs to Antigonos Monophtalmos (‘the One-Eyed’) and his no less famous son Demetrios Poliorketes (‘the Besieger’); in Egypt the Lagids or Ptolemies, heirs to Ptolemaios (I) Sôter (‘the Saviour’); and in Syria and Babylonia the Seleucids, heirs to Seleukos (I) Nikator (‘the Victorious’). The fortunes of these dynasties have been very contrasted however in recent years.

    Macedon, still barely recovered from the exertions and manpower drain consecutive to the great conquests and establishing of the new Macedonian kingdoms in the East, has been beset by the growing assertiveness of new leagues of Greek cities in Aitolia and Achaia, and the relentless pressure of barbarians on its northern borders. However, under the masterful leadership of Antigonos III Dôsôn (‘the Caretaker’), the kingdom has been able to secure its borders and, leveraging the threat of a resurgent Sparta under king Kleomenes III, build an alliance with the Achaian League in the Peloponnese and reestablish Macedonian hegemony in Greece. Dôsôn however died abruptly shortly after his great victory at Sellasia against Kleomenes, leaving the throne to an untested youth, his nephew Philippos (V).

    In contrast, the power of the Lagids has grown continuously over the past half-century, leveraging the prodigious wealth of Egypt into a far-reaching sea empire, controlling the seas all the way to the straits between Europe and Asia through a network of bases and the largest navy of its day. On land, the approaches to the Delta are secured by a strong glacis in Koile Syria (modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and southern Syria) and the great fortress of Pelousion on the easternmost mouth of the Nile. Through its diplomats and mercenaries, Egyptian gold is everywhere, more powerful than armies. The third king Ptolemaios (Evergetes – ‘the Benefactor’) has recently died though after a long and successful reign, leaving the throne to his young son Ptolemaios IV Philopator (‘who loves his father’), who is reputed to care more about his pleasures and luxuries than military glory…

    Finally, the Seleucids rule theoretically over the largest of the successor kingdoms, from Asia Minor (Western Turkey) to modern Iran, but brutal family rivalries and centrifugal tendencies among subject peoples have been dogging them for decades. Only three years earlier, their young king Seleukos III Keraunos (‘Thunderbolt’) has been assassinated while campaigning in Asia Minor against the upstart king Attalos II of Pergamon, precipitating yet another crisis. The army tried to proclaim his cousin Achaios, who was with him, king, but he preferred to support the younger brother of Seleukos, Antiochos, who was acting as viceroy in Babylonia. Not all major officers agreed with him though, with the governor of the Upper Satrapies (Iran), Molon, proclaiming himself king upon hearing the news. The early years of Antiochos III’s reign were thus dominated by the simultaneous struggles against the usurper Molon, the encroachments of Attalos and, to top things off, a war launched unwisely against Lagid Koile Syria under the dangerous influence of his Chief Minister Hermeias. Three years later, Molon has been eliminated, Asia Minor secured by Achaios, and Hermeias disposed of. However, Antiochos and Achaios have now fallen out, with the latter eventually claiming the royal diadem in Asia Minor. And the war with Egypt is still dragging on with not much to show for it…

    Hubris Map, Year 220 BCE

    The Fourth Syrian War and the battle of Raphia

    In 219, Antiochos manages to pull off a brilliant stunt, subverting several high-ranking Lagid officers, including the disgruntled governor of Koile Syria, Theodotos, who had thwarted his 221 invasion. With several major cities opening their gates to his army, Antiochos quickly ousts the new Ptolemaic commander, Nikolaos, and proceeds to subdue all Ptolemaic territories east of the Sinai, precipitating a major crisis for Ptolemaios IV, who was relying on the strong defenses of the satrapy and is not ready to meet Antiochos’s army in the field.

    However, his canny Chief Minister, Sosibios, achieves marvels. On the one hand, he initiates peace proceedings with Antiochos to gain his king time. On the other, he brings all the mercenary generals and troops that he can find to Egypt and undertakes an unprecedented measure by training a native Egyptian phalanx to supplement the small royal army.

    Thus reinforced, Sosibios abruptly ends the diplomatic talks the next year and Ptolemaios marches across the Sinai with his new army to face Antiochos at Raphia in 217 in what remained the largest battle of the age: 75,000 Ptolemaic troops (with 73 African war elephants) facing 68,000 Seleucid troops (with 102 Indian war elephants). Antiochos’s impetuous cavalry charge on his right wing quickly crushes Ptolemaios’s left wing while the latter’s African elephants prove no match for the larger Indian elephants. However, Antiochos fails to maintain control of the pursuit and Ptolemaios can rally his center and, victorious on his right wing, rout the Seleucid army. Antiochos must concede defeat and give back all his gains in Koile Syria. He will be back…

    Philippos and the Aitolians

    At the same time that Antiochos is trying for Koile Syria, Philippos V finds his rule challenged by these eternal enemies of Macedon, the Aitolian League and Sparta, under their new king Lykourgos. The young king proves equal to the task, demonstrating an untiring activity from Thessaly where Aitolian bands are raiding, down to the Southern Peloponnese, where he crushes Sparta as his uncle had done a few years before. Most of the action however is concentrated in western Greece and the central Peloponnese, where Philippos has to bolster his Achaian and Acarnanian allies against repeated Aitolian inroads.

    Philippos spends most of his time in the Peloponnese, strengthening his relationship with the old Achaian strategos Aratos, long a resolute adversary of Macedon, and his son. This angers a number of senior Macedonian officials, led by his Chief Minister Apelles. Eventually, the tension boils over into open confrontation, when the Macedonian army comes to the edge of mutiny over spoils of war, and is only resolved with Philippos eliminating Apelles and his clique in 218.

    The following year, after a campaign on the northern border of Macedon where Dardanian tribes were threatening, Philippos captures Phtiotic Thebes, the key Aitolian strongpoint in southern Thessaly, empties it and installs a Macedonian colony. He then takes ship again to relieve Aitolian pressure on Achaia, threatening another key Aitolian place in Naupaktos, where a peace conference encouraged by Ptolemaios IV finally succeeds in bringing the war to an end.

    Shortly thereafter, Philippos finds himself at odds with his erstwhile ally the Illyrian warlord Scerdilaidas and builds a fleet to operate in the Adriatic. However this brings him into contact with a newcoming power: the Republic of Rome.

    Rome enters the Scene

    In 229-228, an upsurge of piracy under Queen Teuta led Rome, fresh off its victory over Carthage in the First Punic War, to intervene in Illyria, installing a protectorate around the city of Apollonia. Ten years later, Demetrios of Pharos, an Illyrian Greek whom Rome had placed to control the area, proves too ambitious and Roman forces cross the Adriatic again to oust him. He quickly finds refuge at the court of Philippos, becoming one of his main advisors. For the time being however, Philippos dares not add another enemy to an already long list and stays his hand in Illyria.

    The situation changes dramatically however during the following years when Hannibal Barca, leading a Carthaginian army from Spain, invades Italy from Gaul, igniting the Second Punic War. He then proceeds to win a stunning string of victories against Rome on Italian soil. After his great victory at Cannae, he appears poised to defeat the upstart Latin republic. In 215, Philippos concludes an alliance with Hannibal where both parties agree to work together against Rome. However, before he can strike in Illyria, Philippos is compelled to hasten to the Peloponnese again where the Messenians are challenging Macedonian hegemony.

    In 214, Philippos sails to the Adriatic and moves against Apollonia. The Roman answer, despite the ongoing war with Hannibal, is swift and decisive, defeating Philippos’s army who must burn his ships and withdraw over the mountains into Makedonia. Over the next few years, as Rome is unable to field a significant army across the sea, Philippos establishes his domination over the Illyrian interior but is unable to capture Apollonia.

    The situation changes again though in 211 when Rome makes agreements with the Aitolians, Pergamon, Spartan and Skerdilaidas. Soon, with the support of the Roman navy and limited legionary forces, Philippos and his allies find themselves hard pressed everywhere. He manages still to beat the Aitolians and Attalos of Pergamon so badly that they refuse to face him in the field for the rest of the war, and slowly strengthens his positions before carrying the war to the Aitolian heartland, sacking their federal sanctuary at Thermon, while the new Achaian strategos Philopoemen crushes the Spartans at the battle of Mantinea.

    When Attalos, threatened at home by king Prusias of Bithynia, withdraws from Greece, the Aitolians beg Rome for a more significant involvement but the republic is unable to comply. The Aitolians then elect to make what peace they can with Philippos. The next year, Rome sends Sempronius in Illyria, but this is too little, too late, and as Philippos closes on Apollonia, Rome makes peace in turn, abandoning most of Illyria to Macedon with definite ill grace…

    A new Alexander

    Meanwhile, with his back secured by the peace sworn with Ptolemaios IV, Antiochos III wastes no time ending the uneasy truce which had been prevailing with his rebel cousin Achaios. After an arduous but systematic campaign, he has him penned in the great fortress of Sardeis in Lydia by 214. A lengthy siege begins, from which the ever resourceful Sosibios tries to extract Achaios through the agency of a pair of Cretan agents. However, as the Ancient Greeks were wont to say, one should never trust a Cretan, let alone two, and a double cross results in a hopeful Achaios falling in the hands of his cousin, who has him promptly executed.

    Next, Antiochos, more intent than ever to restore the full extent of the kingdom created by his ancestor Seleukos, campaigns decisively in Armenia, imposing a more compliant satrap, before embarking on extensive preparations for a great expedition in the Upper Satrapies. In 210, he expertly forces the passes of the Elburz mountains into Hyrkania and Parthyene, and quickly forces the submission of the Parthian king Arsakes.

    The following year, he triumphs on the Arios river of the heavy cavalry of king Euthydemos of Bactria, and soon has him besieged in another great fortress, that of Baktra. However, forcing Euthydemos’s surrender proves more difficult than expected, and after more than two years, Antiochos and Euthydemos come to an agreement, recognizing Antiochos’s at least nominal suzerainty, and providing him with cash, elephants and Kataphraktoi (armored cavalry).

    Antiochos then, consciously emulating Alexander’s exploits during his Anabasis (‘Voyage in the high interior’), returns to the West by way of Karmania and the Persian Gulf, claiming for himself the glorious epithet ‘Megas’ (‘the Great’) hitherto only bestowed on Alexander…

    The Lagid Collapse

    Antiochos’s return to the Mediterranean shores may have been prompted by information that Ptolemaios IV’s health was failing, meaning that the peace sworn between the two kings after Raphia was about to expire. Ptolemaios dies in 204, his death kept a secret for several months as his successor is only 6 years old. A ferocious struggle at the Alexandrian court results, with Sosibios and his ally Agathokles eliminating the queen-mother Arsinoe and sending many potential rivals away. Sosibios himself dies shortly therafter, leaving Agathokles sole regent, a responsibility he would soon prove woefully inadequate at…

    While Ptolemaic officials try frantically to forestall war by attempting to seal a marriage alliance with Philippos of Macedon, he and Antiochos ready for war. In desperation, the Ptolemaic court tries an appeal to Rome, denouncing a conspiracy of Macedon and Syria to dismantle the Lagid empire, but Rome is not yet sufficiently interested in the affairs of the East, and too busy anyway with the final stages of the struggle against Hannibal to care.

    In 202, Philippos launches a campaign with a large army and fleet in the region of the Straits between Europe and Asia, capturing many Ptolemaic-held cities, while Antiochos marches along the desert road and captures Damaskos. Soon, the toxic nature of the Lagid court is demonstrated again as another governor of Koile Syria, Ptolemaios son of Thraseas (no known relationship to the ruling dynasty) defects to Antiochos. In 200, after more frantic recruiting of mercenaries and the recalling of overseas garrisons, a Ptolemaic army under the Aitolian condottiere Skopas counterattacks in Koile Syria, but is utterly defeated at the battle of Panion by Antiochos, ably seconded by his grown-up sons.

    In the Aegean, Philippos’s successes alarm Rhodes and Pergamon, who oppose him at sea. In 201, after an indecisive naval battle near Chios, Philippos finds himself stranded in Karia, where his army is supplied by Zeuxis, the Seleucid viceroy in Sardeis. The following year, he threatens Pergamon itself and pursues his seizing of Ptolemaic strongholds on both sides of the Straits.

    The Second Macedonian War and the battle of Kynoskephalai

    However, with Hannibal’s defeat at Zama in 202, and the ensuing surrender of Carthage, Rome’s energies are freed to, at long last, turn East and settle accounts with the king of Macedon. Seizing the pretext of a dispute between Athens and Philippos, Rome declares war in 200, promptly landing a full consular army in Illyria. While the legions probe Macedonian defenses in the interior, the fleet joins with Rhodes’s and Pergamon’s and lays to waste the major Macedonian base of Chalkis on the island of Euboia, one of the so-called ‘Fetters of Greece’. Arriving too late on the scene, Philippos vents his anger on Athens, but is soon compelled to withdraw to Makedonia to prepare it for war, leaving Roman envoys ply the Greek cities and leagues for support.

    The following year, the Roman general Galba tries a decisive thrust from Apollonia up the Aous valley into Upper Makedonia, but is frustrated by Philippos’s skilled defense of the passes. In 198, a new Roman consul, T. Quinctius Flamininus arrives in Greece with veterans and tries another route, this time from Epeiros, with similar results. Flamininus hence shifts his focus to Thessalia through the lands of the Aitolians, whose alliance he renews, making a show of “freeing” Greek cities from Macedonian garrisons.

    In 197, Philippos, feeling the pressure of northern barbarians, and seeing his support among the Greeks become more fragile by the day, tries to force a decision and seeks a decisive battle. He finds it in an unexpected manner at Kynoskephalai in Thessalia, where a meeting skirmish escalates into a full-blown battle. While initially successful, the Macedonian army is ultimately undone by Roman tactical flexibility on the rough terrain of the Kynoskephalai ridge and routs.

    At the ensuing peace negotiations, Rome refuses to destroy Macedon, as urged by the Aitolians, but forces it to relinquish all its garrisons in Greece as well as control of Thessalia, which had been Macedonian for 150 years, since Philippos II’s reign. Philippos must also pay a heavy war indemnity and deliver his second son, Demetrios, as hostage. Flamininus refuses to install Roman garrisons in place of the Macedonian, and within a year all Roman troops are gone from Greece.

    The Syrian War and the battle of Magnesia

    While Philippos was learning to his expense the extent of the new threat coming from the West, Antiochos was leading follow-up campaigns by land and by sea to round up the remaining Ptolemaic possessions along the coast of Asia Minor, up to Ionia. When Philippos, hard pressed by the Romans, withdrew from the Straits, Antiochos moved in and was soon campaigning across the straits in Thrake. Once more, he appeared bent on restoring the full extent of the dominion of his glorious ancestor Seleukos Nikator. Maybe he should have been mindful of Seleukos’s fate once he crossed into Europe…

    As Antiochos is busy campaigning against the wild Thracian tribes and restoring the ruined Greek cities on the European shore, a Roman delegation meets him and delivers an ultimatum, asking him to withdraw from Europe and to free the Greek cities of Asia. Unsurprisingly, the Great King is not ready to listen to such pretentions from Italian barbarians, though he is careful to avoid an immediate clash. Roughly at the same time, envoys of the Aitolians, still resentful of what they see as Roman ingratitude, bring him enticing promises of a warm welcome should he cross to Greece, which the envoys describe as wary of foreign hegemony…

    Eventually, the temptation proves too great and Antiochos, known for his daring ways, rolls the dice in 192, taking ship with a picked contingent to cross the Aegean and land in Central Greece. He soon finds that the Aitolians are not quite able to fulfill all their promises, but he is nonetheless able to establish himself in Euboia, Boiotia and Thessalia before the winter. He even tweaks Philippos’s noise by making a show of giving proper burial to the Macedonian dead at Kynoskephalai which had apparently been laying in the open since the battle. This results in Philippos throwing his lot with the Romans…

    Hubris Map, Year 192 BCE

    The following year, Consul Acilius Glabrio arrives in Thessalia with an army, and is joined by Philippos, who uses this opportunity to retrieve many places in Thessalia. Antiochos, still without his main body of troops delayed by storms in their crossing from Asia, withdraws to the famous pass of the Thermopylai. There, the Aitolians prove unable to protect the flanking routes in the mountain, dooming the Seleucid force to a fate not dissimilar to Leonidas’s three centuries ago. Antiochos is however able to escape and join his main army in Asia.

    While the Romans proceed to punish the Aitolians for what they perceive as treachery, the Roman fleet, reinforced by Rhodian and Pergamene squadrons, faces off against the Seleucid navy to try to gain control of the Straits crossings. The Seleucid admiral Polyxenidas, himself a Rhodian, manages to hold off the coalition’s navies for a number of months, but eventually succumbs to superior numbers. A bizarre episode occurs during that period when the famous Hannibal, who had, after being compelled to flee Carthage, found refuge at Antiochos’s court, is tasked by Antiochos to arm and lead a reinforcing fleet from Phenicia, only to be intercepted and beaten back by the Rhodians, proving less of a genius at sea than on land.

    With the crossings to Asia secured, a reinforced Roman army led nominally by Consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio, brother to Hannibal’s nemesis Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, who accompanies his brother as ‘advisor’, crosses in 190 from Thrake and relieves their ally king Eumenes II of Pergamon who was besieged in his high citadel. The allied army then moves South to Lydia where Antiochos awaits them on a field of his own choosing at Magnesia-near-the-Sipylon with an army drawn from his entire empire, totaling 72,000 men as well as elephants and even scythed chariots to oppose the Scipios’ 25,000 Romans and Pergamenes. Antiochos’s elite phalanx and heavy Kataphraktoi cavalry are initially successful, putting an entire legion to flight, but his unorthodox deployment of his elephants, mixed with the phalanx, eventually backfires, and Eumenes is able to force a decision on his wing, precipitating the rout of the vast Seleucid host. Recognizing his defeat, Antiochos agrees in 188 at the Peace of Apameia to evacuate all Asia Minor West of the Taurus mountains, which is promptly divided by Rome between his Pergamene and Rhodian allies.

    Troubled successions

    The following year, Antiochos is killed in a military adventure in Elymais in western Iran where he was trying to seize the treasures of a local sanctuary, probably to face the crushing war indemnities imposed by Rome. His eldest son, also named Antiochos, having disappeared under foggy circumstances some years before, he is succeeded by his second son Seleukos IV Philopator, while his third son Mithradates, renamed Antiochos after the death of his eldest brother, is hostage in Rome.

    In Macedon, Philippos’s second son Demetrios has been released as a reward to his father’s good behavior during the war with Antiochos, but retains upon his return to the court at Pella strong ties to his new Roman friends. Soon, the Macedonian court splits between followers of Philippos’s eldest son Perseus, who favors confrontation with Rome, and those of the youngest son Demetrios, who preaches amity. The old king is torn but a conspiracy by Demetrios is uncovered and Philippos has his son killed. However, the whole affair is soon revealed to be a plot by Perseus. Heartbroken, Philippos considers disowning Perseus in favour of his cousin Antigonos, a relative of Dôsôn, but he dies before he can make it a reality. Perseus then moves swiftly to secure his hold on the throne, and soon engages into a major diplomatic effort to restore Macedonian standing in Greece.

    In Egypt, the reign of young king Ptolemaios V has been marred by repeated coups to secure the regency and an enduring native rebellion in Upper Egypt, with native pharaohs ruling in Thebes, the old capital, for many years. It is only in 186 that Ankhwennefer, the last of these native pharaohs is captured by Komanos, a Galatian general in Lagid employ, completing the reconquest of Upper Egypt, though sporadic rebellions will keep popping up in the Delta for years.

    In 180, Ptolemaios V is assassinated by courtiers who apparently feared that he was planning to confiscate their properties to finance a new Syrian War to recover Koile Syria. His widow Kleopatra (I) Syra, daughter of Antiochos III, becomes regent for their 6-years old son Ptolemaios VI Philometor (‘who loves his mother’), but dies in 176, prompting a new period of instability at the top of the Lagid kingdom.

    That same year, Antiochos is replaced as hostage in Rome by Demetrios, the oldest son of Seleukos IV. With the support of Eumenes II of Pergamon, Antiochos soon seeks to destabilize the rule of his brother, who is assassinated the following year by his minister Heliodoros. A confused and bloody sequence of events in Antioch sees Antiochos prevailing as Antiochos IV Epiphanes (‘God manifest’).

    Hubris Map, Year 176 BCE

    The Third Macedonian War and the battle of Pydna

    In Greece, the resurgence of Macedon under Perseus raises some disquiet in Rome, fed by the activism of king Eumenes II of Pergamon, who is worried that the young Macedonian king might seek in Asia Minor the aggrandizement denied to him in Greece by Roman guarantee of the Greek cities. Tensions ramp up after Eumenes escapes a possibly criminal rockslide while traveling through Delphi on his way back from Rome. Perseus’s envoys in Rome are unable to get heard, and when Roman troops are freed from an ongoing conflict in Spain, Rome proceeds to isolate Macedon diplomatically before declaring war on a flimsy pretext in 171.

    However, decades of relative peace appear to have blunted the sharp edge of the Roman military machine, and the initial campaign by consul Publius Licinius Crassus in Thessalia meets near disaster at the hands of Perseus’s renewed army at the battle of Kallinikos. Perseus does not press his advantage, hoping for a peaceful settlement, but Rome will have nothing short of complete surrender. In 170, with the southern routes into Makedonia secured by Perseus, the new consul, A. Hostilius Mancinus, tries to force his way up the Aous valley, but is repulsed twice with heavy losses.

    Impatience mounts in Rome, and the consul for 169, Marcus Philippus, takes care to reinforce and train his army before trying the Thessalian passes again, without more success. The following year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the consul killed at Cannae in 216, takes command and finally, through a freakish turn of events, manages to turn Perseus’s positions, leading to a decisive battle at Pydna. Again, initial success of the phalanx proves unsustainable, and Perseus must surrender.

    This time, Rome proves unforgiving and dissolves the centuries-old Macedonian kingdom, breaking it up into four impotent republics. Perseus and his family are brought in chains to Rome to be exhibited at Aemilius’s triumph, and the last Antigonids then disappear from history…

    The Sixth Syrian War and the Day of Eleusis

    Meanwhile, the chronic instability of the Lagid court has reached new heights, with Ptolemaios VI’s younger brother, later known as Ptolemaios (VIII) Physkon (‘the Fat-bellied’) pushing for a share of power, splitting the court into two rival factions. The Ptolemaic court looks to a new war in Syria to restore a sense of unity, but in late 170, Antiochos IV, himself eager for glory to cement his rule, steals a march on the Ptolemaic army and crushes it in the Sinai. He then seizes Pelousion, the key to Egypt by ruse (or treason?), and immediately moves on the Delta.

    A new coup puts Komanos, the victor of Ankhwennefer, and another general, Kineas, in power in Alexandria, while both rival Ptolemies enter negotiations with Antiochos, trying to make their case. Eventually, Ptolemaios VI recognizes Antiochos as his overlord, who grants him control of the territory under his control in Egypt. At the news, the populace in Alexandria rises in anger, proclaiming the younger Ptolemaios as sole king. While Antiochos blockades the city, Ptolemaios sends envoys to Rome pleading for help. Unable to capture the city before the winter, Antiochos returns to Syria to winter, leaving Ptolemaios VI in charge in the old capital of Memphis. However, Philometor promptly negotiates a reconciliation with his brother.

    In the spring of 168, Antiochos sends a naval expedition to attack the Ptolemaic island of Kypros, destroying the Ptolemaic fleet and seizing the island, betrayed – once more – by its Ptolemaic governor. Meanwhile, Antiochos reenters Egypt with fire and sword and soon establishes a tight siege of Alexandria. After the Antigonids, the end of another Successor dynasty appears certain, when a Roman delegation headed by Caius Popilius Laenas, a friend of Antiochos’s from his time as a hostage in Rome, lands to meet the king on the beach of Eleusis, a suburb of Alexandria. As Antiochos walks to greet him, Popilius, reminding him of the recent fate of Perseus’s kingdom, demands he immediately evacuate all of Egypt. Taken aback, Antiochos tries to play for time, but Popilius draws with his stick a circle in the sand around the feet of the king, demanding an answer before he leaves this circle. Aghast, Antiochos submits and agrees to withdraw, putting an end to the war, and, beyond it, to the last hope of a Hellenistic kingdom standing up to Rome…

    The agony of the Seleucid kingdom, fallen prey to unending dynastic struggles and progressively deprived of its rich Iranian and Mesopotamian provinces by the increasingly assertive power of the Parthians under king Mithradates I, would be prolongated until 63 when Pompey the Great deposed the last Seleucid pretenders, now reduced to squabble over Syria itself, as part of his campaign in the East. The kingdom of the Ptolemies would last 33 more years until its last queen, the famous Kleopatra VII Philopator, committed suicide after the failure of her bid to restore the grandeur of her kingdom through her alliance with Marcus Aurelius, but apart for this last flareup, it had become effectively a Roman vassal since this fateful day at Eleusis in 168…

    Now that you have read through this overview of the history of the twilight decades of the Hellenistic kingdoms, you have surely realized that the actions of individual kings, generals and diplomats are driving the narrative of the period. Accordingly, Hubris’s game engine is built around these leaders, as I am going to present in the next installment of these Histories…



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  • Putting the Operation in TacOps – InsideGMT


    In previous installments of this series we spent a lot of time on how the game works on the tactical scale, from the Dynamic Hexes and Counters and the Simple Structure of the action system, to how the opposition bot uses Contact to Contest Control. We began bridging the gap between the tactical and operational scales in our discussion of how Roguelikes and the OODA Loop influenced the campaign model. The game has been designed to provide a unique and challenging experience for players across the individual scenarios, while also modeling the relationship between those tactical engagements and the broader operational picture.

    One of the reasons the Battle of Ortona was a perfect first entry into the system is because it is a fairly isolated battle. A single allied division against two axis divisions (one replacing the other), with clear territorial starting and ending positions and a linear timeline of the progress across the whole operation. There are records from both military and civilian sources that allow for quantitative and qualitative views into the battle, which inform how the dynamics are represented in the game.

    The Canadian First Infantry Division Organizational Sheet with the HQ counters from division down to brigade to regiment. This tracks their casualties to reflect effective strength alongside the estimated casualties inflicted on the Germans.

    At no time during the Battle of Ortona was the whole division engaged with the enemy. Individual engagements only grew larger than company sized with reinforcements.  At the operational scale the game is about managing the logistics so that those company platoons engage and defend with the support and positional advantages needed to take and hold their territorial objectives.

    The logistics are challenging. Getting armor across the Moro River when the Germans have already hit the bridges with artillery fire. Not stretching too far too fast to avoid falling out of range of friendly artillery support. Rotating formations so as not to push any of them past their breaking point. These dynamics are modeled into the mechanics of the operational system, such that the full campaign could be played through. without pulling out an engagement map. and still provide engaging play with a strong level of historical tension. As soon as the campaign rules were in a strong place, I put that theory to the test and was pleased to find that the model held together exceptionally.

    The game comes with two point to point operational maps, one is of the Regional area just outside the town, while the other is the Urban area in the town itself. Many of the point-to-point positions on these maps correspond to the locations on the engagement maps. During the full campaign game players can choose to play a single engagement on each map based on the operational positions of units when they make that decision. Action between those engagements are resolved with a system that compliments the action system of the tactical engagements.

    The operational maps use HQ and Formation counters to represent forces on both sides. The player deploys formations from Regiment HQ’s, deployed from Brigade HQ’s, deployed from the Canadian First Infantry Division HQ. This forms a logistical supply chain as players try to move first across the regional approach, to finally take Ortona proper. It is up to the player to move the formations and their support into positions that provide the advantage needed to complete objectives. Of course the enemy gets a turn as well, and may disrupt those plans.

    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: The point-to-point operational maps. On the left is the regional map showing HQs from the Canadian 1st Infantry Division opposing the unknown forces from the German 90th Panzergrenadierdivision across the Moro river. On the right is the urban map in the town of Ortona where the first Canadian infantry are just entering the town as defended by the German 1st Fallschirmjägerdivision.

    Most of the mechanics for operational play are very similar to those in the tactical engagement. Both sides have activation phases which are played in an order determined by initiative, using the same Resolve Roll of 1d6 and 2d8 from the tactical rules. Where turns for the tactical engagements are measured in minutes of time, turns for the operational campaign cover a half a day of activities across the whole front. Limits on activations will determine how much of that front will be able to use the initiative to act. The player uses those activations to activate locations and take an action that moves formations and/or attacks adjacent enemies. There is also the opportunity to use artillery fire on locations in range. The Germans have their own guns which will target deployed units, as will their formations which use a hidden movement mechanic that does not reveal their strength until the time of engagement.

    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: Division Sheet from mid campaign showing the status of the Regiments. Single slashes represent deployed units, while x’s indicate the casualties suffered. HQ markers on the sheet are considered in the rear while the missing ones are deployed on the map. On the left are tracking of available replacements and approximate German casualties. Filled like this means that the Canadians just pushed the 90th Panzergrenadierdivision to their break point and they are about to be reinforced.

    “I shall always regret deeply, very deeply, there ever had to be casualties. Casualties cannot be separated from battles. A commander at any level cannot shirk unpleasant decisions, whether he be corporal or general or any rank in between. If he does shirk such decisions, he is unfit to command in battle.”

    – Major General Christopher Vokes 1st Canadian Division

    A crucial part of the design for the campaign are casualties. Casualties are tracked across the campaign as a measure of effectiveness for the division and the individual regiments. There is a lot of ground to be covered and sustaining combat effectiveness for the full campaign is necessary to achieve success. German casualties are tracked as well, making it possible to shatter the opposing divisions through attrition. Indeed the Germans will replace their initial division if the allies are able to render them ineffective. If they do the same to the replacement division fast enough they could force a full withdrawal which would represent the highest level victory. The risk in attempting this however is that engaging the enemy too aggressively puts your own units at risk of taking heavy casualties themselves. The player has to be smart about when and how they choose to engage, never losing sight of the big picture.

    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: December 10 and 13 on the regional maps of the campaign as the Canadian 1st Infantry Division first works to secure their positions across the Moro then prepares to face off at The Gully.
    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: December 15-16. Note how far the Canadian HQ’s are from the town (upper right corner) as the German 1st Fallschirmjägerdivision takes over the area, contesting Canadian positions near The Gully. They hold the Canadians off for three days of intense fighting before pulling back to prepare to defend the town.

    A recent play of the campaign highlighted the challenge the campaign presents. While the German resistance on the regional map was strong I was able to coordinate the strength to push them back into the town ahead of the historical date. In the turns leading up to this however, I was so focused on the fighting at the front, I failed to take the time to coordinate the positions of my HQs in reserve and support formations (armor and artillery). It wasn’t until two days after the first infantry arrived in Ortona proper, that the armor support was able to reach the town limits. This slowed the infantry momentum down and allowed the Germans to continue to build defenses. Those defenses were able to delay the Canadians long enough to prevent them from progressing to the north end of the town in the historical timeframe.

    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: It isn’t until Christmas Eve that proper armor support is able to make it into the town proper, and even with that support by December 27th they have not made it to the Cathedral in the north. German armor and anti-tank defenses were able to slow the progress.
    PLAYTEST ART NOT FINAL: The Division Sheet on December 28th, showing the heavy casualties suffered by the Canadians. The 48th Highlander and Carlton & York Regiments have lost over a third of their effective strength each. While the Germans have yet to reach their breaking point.

    The story of this play can be seen in the Division Sheet. Canadians suffered casualties that seriously hampered multiple regiments. The Germans took their share of casualties as well, but critically their defenses held when they needed to. The play was full of drama and tension even without playing out any full engagements. Having tested the range of historical results from individual engagements, combined with what is being reflected at the operational scale, players will be able to play through the complete Battle of Ortona and face both the tactical and operational challenges exhibited by the history.

    More Solitaire TacOps: Ortona InsideGMT Articles



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  • Using “Congress of Vienna” in the Classroom and Reducing Time to Play a CoV “Clash of Armies” Scenario Turn Through a “Warm Start”


    Introduction by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer/Editor, Fred Schachter – The CoV Team is privileged having in its rank’s educator Tyler Brooks, who with his co-teacher adapted Congress of Vienna for the classroom to teach students so they could experience the challenges of being in a coalition or facing one. The class they created was entitled… “Applied Strategy: Wargaming the Great Captains of History”. This involved non-gamer college level students successfully gaining needed appreciation of our wonderful hobby and using CoV’s four turn “Clash of Armies” Scenario in particular.  Quite the achievement!

    If you’re unfamiliar with Congress of Vienna, there’s a host of material regarding it within GMT’s site: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna, 2nd Printing  Yes, the game’s warm enthusiastic hobby reception has it “Out of Stock”: but CoV’s 2nd Printing, which will include all rule clarifications as of the date of printing, can be P-500 ordered.  All this article’s referenced CoV Optional Historical Rules (OHRs 15.1 – 15.17) can be obtained via this GMT site for the game.  But back to Tyler’s remarkable accomplishment.

    A turn of Congress of Vienna, with experienced players, can average 40-60 minutes each and for Tyler, this amount of classroom time was prohibitive.  He therefore cleverly devised a kind of “House Rule” to dramatically shorten a turn’s playing time by pre-disposing results of its Initial and Diplomacy Phases… those are skipped via a “Warm Start”.  A “Warm Start” begins each turn with Issues won and only Military Cards remaining in each Major Power’s hand.  A “Warm Start” turn begins with Government Phase Resource allocations and then it’s off to the drama, conundrums, fun and excitement of Congress of Vienna’s War Phase whose Armies and military units are all prepositioned on the game map!!

    CoV Designer Frank Esparrago and I had a blast assisting Tyler adopt his Congress of Vienna Clash of Armies Scenario Turn “Warm Start” for the InsideGMT audience.  You’ll find it within an Appendix to Tyler’s intriguing Using “Congress of Vienna” in the Classroom article.

    To skip the article and go direct to the CoV “Turn Warm Start” Instructions & Set-Up Illustrations click here.

    The Concept

    Militaries across the world obsess over how to create better strategists.  With the sudden leaps in artificial intelligence, great powers have even begun attempting to train “synthetic strategists” to either augment or replace human ones. [1]  A debate continues among academics and practitioners over whether great military strategists (as well as wargame designers) can be trained or simply discovered and recruited.  In each of the above cases, wargames serve an integral part in either training strategists (both human and machine) or identifying their strengths and weaknesses. 

    As both a professional strategist and wargamer myself, I’ve been deeply involved in both analytical and educational wargaming; but it’s the latter I’d like to focus on here, and how I’ve used GMT’s “Congress of Vienna” game to instruct professional strategists, emerging senior military leaders, and novice professional wargame designers.

    Literature and Theory Background 

    In “On War,” Carl von Clausewitz defines genius as a “highly developed mental aptitude for a particular occupation.”[2]  He goes on and identifies several human characteristics, the harmonious combination of which produces military genius:

    1. Physically & Morally Courageous
    2. Visionary (coup d’œil)[3]
    3. Determined (courage d’esprit)[4]
    4. Mindful[5]
    5. Ambitious for Fame and Honor
    6. Emotionally Disciplined
    7. Charismatic to inspire esprit de corps[6] in others
    8. Map Literate
    9. Creative & Imaginative
    10. Competent in Statesmanship
    11. Competent in Math & Science

    Combining Clausewitz’s “On War” with the principals of war from Antoine-Henri Jomini, most western strategic theory necessary to train military planners in operational art and strategy can be extrapolated, with allowances made for changes to the character of war since their writings.[7]  And yet while military strategy courses teach about both these theorists; they often neglect to spend any time studying the man from whose genius they were both attempting to derive their methods: Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France. 

    In developing a pilot elective course for this academic year, my co-teacher and I chose to focus on Bonaparte for our choice of related wargames but given that he ultimately abdicated (twice!), it does beg the question from an uninitiated student: “Why do I care what a loser thinks about war winning?”  In response, I point to a medium article by Ethan Arsht where he quantified the “Wins Above Replacement” (WAR) sabermetrics on all western[8] generals’ battle records in Wikipedia which determined Napoleon Bonaparte’s measurement was 23 standard deviations from the mean, while second place Julius Caesar was in the “paltry” ballpark of around 7.[9]  To confirm this astonishing statistic, I had a department mathematician run the numbers, and the result was that Bonaparte (relative to his contemporaries during his own time) was so dominant a commander that there would have to be 10 times the current number of humans who have been born before you’d expect him to exist.[10]  This suggests Napoleon was not only the greatest military commander who ever lived, but quite possibly the greatest who will ever live.[11]

    The omission of Bonaparte from the above referenced professional military education occurs partially because Napoleon never made much of an attempt to explain his methods in writing, but he does provide some insight into how he became a “Great Captain of History”.  He names whom he considers great captains, including himself as the greatest (of course) and then explains that the way to become a great captain is to study the great captains.[12]  Napoleon’s argument is essentially a militarized take on Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” which assumes a “Great Man Theory” of history.  While Napoleon didn’t leave us theoretical writings to study; he did leave us his historical battles and campaigns.

    Wargames’ Educational Potential (with Reference to Congress of Vienna in Particular)

    So, this finally brings me to “Congress of Vienna” and the use of historical wargames, such as CoV, in the classroom as a teaching tool.  Training military leaders with wargames gives them the simulated experience of experiencing many of Clausewitz’s traits of military genius.  Wargames also provide a safe laboratory for students to test their own ideas and interact with history in an engaging manner that synthesizes insight out of a historical narrative, insight that should be generalizable to other, more modern, situations.  But especially for our purposes, this medium allows the student to travel back in time to inhabit the mind of Napoleon and his contemporaries during the critical years of 1813 – 1814, as best as Frank Esparrago and other designers/developers can manage.  I became interested in the game “Congress of Vienna” professionally when, like most other games in my collection, I had a professor ask me to recommend a game to help him teach a niche topic.

    Classroom Application of Congress of Vienna (With a 5th Major Power, Prussia, Added) 

    In August of 2022, the training school for all U.S. Army Strategists asked if I could design a bespoke educational wargame to accompany a presentation of Gordon A. Craig’s famous 1965 lecture, “Problems of Coalition Warfare: The Military Alliance Against Napoleon, 1813-1814.”[13] Given that I was not a historian by trade, and in fact deficient in any in depth knowledge of Napoleon at the time, I dug into the Gordon A. Craig reading with a critical eye and imagined a game much like “Churchill” from Mark Herman’s Great Statesman series to model the “frienemy” aspect of the balance of power within a coalition. 

    Yet I didn’t consider myself equal to the task of creating such a game from scratch at the time.  However, upon further rumination, I vaguely remembered seeing there was another P500 game on GMT game’s website for the Great Statesman series and this one was about Napoleon.  That was encouraging, but I doubted I would be so lucky for it to be about the War of the Sixth Coalition.  In any case, modifying a commercial off the shelf solution for the classroom is almost always a better idea than creating a new game from scratch; so, I went to the GMT Games site and looked up that P500 game about Napoleon.  Huzzah!! It turned out, “Congress of Vienna” was exactly the game I wanted!  I immediately rectified my error of not being subscribed to GMT’s monthly newsletter. 

    But the tantalizing “Congress of Vienna” game was still in development during August of 2022, without an online rulebook. Therefore, I looked around the internet as best I could and try to piece something together.  What I found on Board Game Geek (BGG) was a wonderful 4-part video by two CoV Team Members doing a full playthrough demo using the then current Vassal prototype of the game.[14]  So naturally, I watched those YouTube videos 4 or 5 times and from them built a PowerPoint Classroom Presentation explaining how to play “Congress of Vienna”. 

    I thought I had most of it figured out (except maybe for the “Congress of Peace” Issue), but I wanted to confirm my understandings.  So, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to reach out and introduce myself to CoV Designer Frank Esparrago via BGG and explain to him what I was trying to accomplish.  I subsequently emailed Frank my draft PowerPoint for feedback to learn if I got anything wrong and was thrilled when he swiftly responded! He offered me the opportunity to playtest the “Congress of Vienna” prototype with him via Vassal.  I was honored to get a chance to work with the development team. [15]    

    The Congress of Vienna game I wanted for the class would differ from the four-player version the CoV Team was developing.  How?  By adding a fifth Major Power: Prussia into the game!  So, Frank, who became enthused about my idea, spent a couple of weekends or so playing and modeling a prototype with me, since the professor had some specific requests for Prussia being its own 5th Major CoV Power, distinct from Russia. 

    To accomplish this, Frank created prototype Prussian cards and modified the Vassal board’s Diplomacy Section to accommodate a 5th National Negotiation Track.  We found adding a 5th Major Power team increased the length of play substantially, so we sped up the game in other areas to To accomplish this, Frank created prototype Prussian cards and modified the Vassal board’s Diplomacy Section to accommodate a 5th National Negotiation Track.  We found adding a 5th Major Power team increased the length of play substantially, so we sped up the game in other areas to make up for that.  One of the approaches, which Frank did not like, but nevertheless helped me achieve the playing time reduction goal, was getting rid of the card trading mechanic and through creating exclusive to each Major Power four “National Decks” (for France, Britain, Austria, and Russia); as in Mark Herman’s “Churchill” instead of using a single shared deck. 

    In retrospect, doing away with the shared deck removes a significant amount of interesting interplay between the Allies, and potentially upsets the balance of the game, not to mention removing some cards’ historical flavor.  We experimented further by having the Prussian and Russian team play with independent National Tracks, but use a shared hand of cards.[16]  However,  it became difficult to make Prussian strategic decisions distinguishable from Russian ones to be worth the extra complexity and time it was asking of the students.[17]  We cut the idea for a Prussian team, along with eliminating the Pax Britanica and Future Government of France Tracks from the classroom version of the game and sought to make even more cuts to speed things up.  We also reduced the number of Negotiation Rounds from 6 to 4 and reduced the number of cards from each Major Power’s hand by 2 to make up for the fewer card play Rounds.  We also made changes to the National Advantages (especially Russia’s) so we could script the Initiative Order (Wager), Initial Situation Cards, and the Initial Environment Table die rolls.  By scripting these starting conditions, we freed up precious minutes for more playtime.

    Now if readers have their interest piqued by the described Five Major Powers Congress of Vienna Game Variant, be heartened! This may eventually be published as a physical game or an InsideGMT article with a link to its associated Vassal Module. But for now, we shall focus on providing an aspect of the Variant we realized applicable to the current Congress of Vienna game: a “Warm Start” for helping teach the game to new players and adapt it to a classroom’s constraints.   

    Organizing a Congress of Vienna Lesson Plan for the Classroom 

    In consultation with the professor’s learning objectives and with Frank’s advice as CoV’s designer, for the prospective class we chose to play the four turn “Clash of Armies” scenario, which encompasses the Full Campaign Game’s turns 5-8 (per CoV Playbook Section 17.3).   The limiting factor using wargames for educational purposes tends to be fitting the teach and the game into a single class period, 4 hours in this case.  After playtesting the scenario with the professor, the most crucial feedback I received was that the Negotiation Phase of the game, while most interesting, would not make much sense to untrained players until they completed a War Phase.  Therefore, I took the recommendation to create a “Warm Start” for the scenario by starting in medias res of turn 5, scripting the Government Phase in PowerPoint for me to brief to the students and then scripting cards and Issues going into the turn 5 War Phase which allowed them to start the game there.

    Over my years working with educational wargaming, I’ve found that consolidating a scenario and rules brief together into a graphical presentation is often a great multimedia approach to teach a game when combined with a physical copy set up in front of the students.  If comprehensive and tailored to the scenario, such a presentation can serve as a replacement for the rulebook, as well as the short Quick Start Rules Summary, scenario instructions, and Player Aids which CoV provides as references.  Mark Leno, who teaches professional wargame designers and facilitators with me, breaks down a good rules briefing for students into the following format, which I follow for all teaching presentations (and rulebooks)[18]:

    1. Explain the game theme
    2. Explain the game objective (how do you win?)
    3. Briefly explain the game components and key terms
    4. Explain the rules and necessary mechanics in play order
    5. (if needed) Demonstrate any mechanics or special rules
    6. (if needed) Provide additional examples or explanations
    7. Summarize objective, key rules, and common errors
    8. Optional: If time permits, briefly describe common strategies or approaches to play and/or play a practice turn or round

    The above is called the “Full-Teach,” as opposed to a “Partial-Teach” method where we just do steps 1-3, and let the players complain when we reveal new rules as they become relevant.  ‘Partial-Teach” is less boring, but it comes at a price of being blamed for potentially ruining the players’ strategy by not explaining the entire game up front.  “Congress of Vienna” is a complex enough game that with novice gamers, “newbies”, it doesn’t lend itself well to either method; hence the “Warm-Start” approach. 

    You can get away without explaining the Initial Phase, Diplomacy Phase or each of the game’s Issues by starting with the War Phase by explaining to the players “This is what your incompetent ambassadors left you with, now General, go figure out the battles.”   After they see the struggle of operationalizing a policy they were handed by the facilitator, you can then put them in the seat of the ambassador for the Diplomacy Phase of turn 6.  The facilitator then explains the Issues for negotiation and/or debate for the upcoming turn. Then the students can see if they could do better.

    With this variant’s National Decks, the scripted initial situation, only 4 Negotiation Rounds, and the simplified game board eliminating the Pax Britanica and Future Government of France Tracks, I can consistently get a new group of future military strategists through a 30-minute rules teach and 2.5 turns of play in four hours.  During that classroom time, professors leverage the experiential learning from “Congress of Vienna” to discuss not only the friction of coalition warfare, but also the two interpretations of Clausewitz’s Trinity: the people, the government, and the general.  Or respectively: passion, reason, and chance.  “Congress of Vienna” is by far one of the best games (among “Conquest & Consequence” and “Triumph and Tragedy”) at modeling grand strategy. 

    But where “Congress of Vienna” excels is in its exploration of military genius and its effect on the enterprise of statesmanship and warfare.  Over the years, I’ve found that demonstrating an understanding of theoretical concepts, like strategy in complex systems, can only be observed in watching the synthesis through application at a gaming table.  The barrier to entry, however, is teaching students how to play the game.  Game theory and literacy among professional strategists are just as important as reading literacy, because as William North Whitehead put it: “The purpose of thinking is to let the [bad] ideas die instead of you.”

    I still have digital copies of this CoV variant’s “National Deck”, custom cards, and I’ve in fact continued to play the game in the classroom with that mod for years, until I got my official physical copy of the game this year.  Like the 5-player Prussian team variant, the National Decks aren’t fully play tested or balanced for public use, but if there’s interest, there might be a vassal mod made available at some point in the future. 

    Once I got my fresh copy of the published Congress of Vienna game, I couldn’t stand not to play with Terry Leeds’ beautiful cards and game board, so I switched back to the shared deck and card trade mechanics. This included student strategists lacking analysis paralysis by needing to read the extra text on the cards than their professors did during playtesting!  Fred Schachter was kind enough to update my “Warm Start” rules teach to match the full and final rules of the commercially released game and, with Frank’s help, present them here for you to use.  I hope you find these resources helpful in getting this game in front of more students in the classroom, and/or new hobbyists on your local gamers’ table or convention floor.

    Congress of Vienna in the Classroom! The left Photo is of three game participants. The right-side photo is of Dr. Richard Anderson, my co-teacher, facilitating the After-Action Review in class which enlightens students regarding the challenges of Coalition Warfare.

    Turn Warm Starts to Accelerate Game Playing Time of CoV’s “Clash of Armies” Scenario (17.3)

    As indicated above, an aspect of this “Congress of Vienna” game variant, which can be applied to accelerate play of the “Clash of Armies” scenario, is to start a game, or individual turn, with a “Warm Start”.  That is, for this variant, players begin with “Issues Resolution”, Step #2 of the Government Phase (12.0).

    This means skipping a turn’s Initial Phase (10.0) and time-consuming Diplomacy Phase (11.0).  Players begin a turn by determining how to best spend their available Resources to pay for won Issues, gain die roll drm for the Absolutism/Liberalism and/or Pax Britannica Tracks, as well as acquire Military Support markers or VP for Sound Government.  That’s it!  In all other particulars, play the game using Standard Congress of Vienna rules.

    Three Appendixes at this article’s conclusion contain Frank’s design (historical) interpretations of a “Clash of Armies” turn’s Set-Up.  These include, for the Scenario’s Turns 5, 6, 7, and/or 8 each Major Power’s number of available Resources, won Issues (from that turn’s Diplomacy Phase), Victory Point Track marker, Military Map Armies/units placements, and marker locations for the Absolutism/Liberalism, Pax Britannica, and Future Government of France Tracks.  For this scenario’s historical background, please reference: A Historical Introduction to the Congress of Vienna Period (CoV) Part 3 of 4: Europe Aflame (July–December 1813) – InsideGMT

    Author’s Bio

    At the time of this writing, Daniel “Tyler” Brooks is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, serving as an Army Strategist (FA59) and wargame designer in the Department of Strategic Wargaming (DSW) at the United States Army War College (USAWC) in Carlise Barracks, PA,  where he teaches the Army’s “Wargame Designer Course,”  two wargaming electives, and runs bespoke analytical wargames for the Army and Joint Force.  He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Philosophy from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and a Master of Arts in International Security from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies (JKSIS) at the University of Denver.  Like Napoleon, Tyler was a field artillery officer before becoming a strategist.  He graduated from the Basic Strategic Arts Program (BSAP) at USAWC in 2017.  The thoughts, opinions, and techniques presented here are solely the views of Tyler Brooks, and does not represent the thoughts, opinions, or policy of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or any organization in the U.S. Army War College.  This article is meant to be a discussion of pedogeological techniques using wargames under fair use and does not constitute endorsement of the game “Congress of Vienna” by any U.S. Government organization. 

    Endnotes

    [1] https://mwi.westpoint.edu/strategic-centaurs-harnessing-hybrid-intelligence-for-the-speed-of-ai-enabled-war/

    [2] Chapter 3

    [3] Literally “Stroke of the eye,” which can be interpreted as “Commander’s Vision”, but what he’s describing is more akin to system 1 thinking as described in the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.  This is an ability to mentally visualize conceptually complex situations, accurately and instantaneously in the moment with incomplete information. 

    [4] Literally “Courage of the Spirit” or “Courage of the Mind” which can be interpreted as “Moral Courage”. But Clausewitz [re: “Clausewitz’s wife”] uses the term to mean something in addition to Moral Courage, as he already includes it with physical courage.  Here, he means it as an additional trait that also includes a willingness to not give up in the face of overwhelming odds.  It is a willingness and self-confidence to act on the visualization of coup d’œil in an uncertain environment.

    [5] Meaning, to not miss any important details, and to be aware of everything that is in front of you and be able to distinguish signal from noise in order to see through the “Fog of War.”

    [6] Literally “Spirit of the body” meaning the collective morale of a group to achieve a common goal in the face of hardship.

    [7] I’m ignoring the Eastern thought, for the most part, for my purposes here, so apologies to those interested in Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong.

    [8] Again, sorry Genghis Khan, our Western bias left you and your brilliant generals missing from the data set.

    [9] https://medium.com/data-science/napoleon-was-the-best-general-ever-and-the-math-proves-it-86efed303eeb 

    [10] To be more precise, the odds are astronomically worse than that, because the sample number assumes everyone who has ever been born was also a battlefield general.  The calculations broke the computer as is, so we called it “good enough” for the purpose.

    [11] Ok, this bold claim ignores a lot of factors.  But the point remains it is a safe bet that Napoleon is worth looking at as a premier model for a Great Captain of History.

    [12] In “Napoleon on Napoleon,” edited by Somerset de Chair, Bonaparte explicitly states those captains are: Alexander the Great, Hannibal the Great, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus the Great, Turenne, Prince Eugene of Savoy, Fredrick the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte.

    [13] https://www.usafa.edu/app/uploads/Harmon07.pdf This brings you to the entirety of this fascinating piece.

    [14] The Youtube videos have since been removed from BGG, probably because they featured a CoV prototype from before Terry Leeds’ beautiful art was added.

    [15] BTW, game designers and developers, like CoV’s, love it when you ask them about their games.  You’d be surprised how often they will write you back if you are struggling with a problem and need help with a game.

    [16] Taking inspiration from the “Two-Headed Giant” format in “Magic the Gathering”

    [17] We also added a “Deutsche Bund” track and some new Prussian staff cards in the attempt.  I also begged Frank to add “Clausewitz” and “Jomini” cards into the variant, but Frank rightfully pointed out “Clausewitz didn’t play much of a role until Waterloo.  Frank did humor me by making a neutral Jomini card, since his national loyalties caused him to serve multiple roles on different sides in official capacities.  Jomini even played a small role in the Congress itself, and Napoleon identified him by name, declaring Jomini to not be a French spy.  Both the Allies and the French deemed Jomini honorable in his military service throughout the war, despite his changing sides, or recusing himself on occasion throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

    [18] From “How to Teach a Game” by Mark Leno

    APPENDIX 1: “Warm Starts” For CoV Clash of Armies Scenario Turns 5, 6, 7, or 8

    Introduction to “Warm Starts” Appendix by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer/Editor, Fred Schachter: Game designer Frank Esparrago and I enjoyed editing Tyler’s clever concept of shortening a Congress of Vienna “Clash of Armies” (17.3) scenario’s playing time by starting a turn at its Government Phase.  This eliminates time spent resolving a turn’s Initial Phase (10.0) and Diplomacy Phase (11.0).  It lets player(s) proceed immediately to deciding how to best allocate their Major Power’s Resources and then proceed to the exciting, fun, and dramatic action of a War Phase.  

    This can help newbie Congress of Vienna players learn the game system incrementally and avoid a Diplomacy Phase’s perceived complexities.  It also speeds resolving a CoV game turn when players are pressed for time… although at the price of sacrificing the fun challenges of selecting, negotiating, and debating Issues during a Diplomacy Phase. 

    Here are general instructions for a “Warm Start” to a “Clash of Armies” Game Turn:

    For all set-ups: As the French Leader, Napoleon, was not used during a turn’s preceding Diplomacy Phase, a free FR Military Operation marker is placed in Paris.  Prior to commencing a game, it is OK to include any or all CoV Optional Historical Rules (OHRs 15.1 – 15.17).

    A “Warm Start” Turn begins with the following predetermined by Major Power: any Initial Environment Table effect(s), Card Hand Size, VPs, Number of available Resources, Issues won during the turn’s Diplomacy Phase, Military Cards, and Military & Diplomacy Sections’ pieces placements.  There is a Table for each “Warm Start” Turn identifying these for set-up purposes.

    Duration & Options: A “Clash of Armies” Scenario can be for its full four turns or less.  Yes, a single turn game, with a Turn 8 “Warm Start”, could be played!

    When selecting a turn to begin a “Clash of Armies” Scenario which will be more than one turn, that is, starting with turns 5, 6, or 7, participants can agree to play the next turn as a regular Congress of Vienna turn with all Phases.  Example: Play a two-turn game with a Warm Start for Turn 7 and then Turn 8 with its Initial Phase (10.0), Diplomacy Phase (11.0) and so on.

    Alternately, every turn of a “Clash of Armies” Scenario can be played with its “Warm Start”.  Furthermore, readers should feel free to “tinker” with a turn’s “Warm Start” Resources, Issues won, Military Cards and pawn/marker placements if there’s a consensus believed to result in a more balanced, challenging, interesting, and/or better game.  Perhaps there’s an enterprising gamer in the GMT audience who’ll devise and share Tyler’s “Warm Start” approach with another Congress of Vienna Scenario?  The goal is to “tickle your gamer fancy” and have fun!

    APPENDIX 2: Adding to the “Warm Starts” variability and re-playability?

    If you want to add more variability to the game, you can deal each player one or two Handicap cards (players decide at the start of a game). Apply the result of each Handicap card at the beginning of the Government Phase, regardless of what the card says. If a drawn Handicap card cannot possibly affect a “Warm Start” game, set it aside and select another than can be applied.  This will add a touch of uncertainty and stimulating re-playability.

    APPENDIX 3: “Warm Starts” Set-Ups for “Clash of Armies” Scenario Turns 5, 6, 7, & 8

    Turn 5, August 1813

    Marker/Pawn Placements: War of 1812: BR 1, Pax Britannica: Castile & Valencia under Coalition Control, Absolutism: Defense of the Faith, Liberalism: Secularism & Confiscation, Future Government of France: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

    Military Map Piece Placements: See below Turn 5 illustration.

    Government Phase Resource Allocation Reminders: A) Adjust VP markers for the three Peace Congress (12.4.1.1) die rolls. B) If resourcing a won Minor Country and/or Recruitment Issue, add any related Military Unit(s) and adjust the Major Power’s VP Track Marker accordingly. C) Adjust VPs for any Absolutism/Liberalism die roll result.

    IMPORTANT NOTE: If proceeding to a Turn 6 “Warm Start”, carry over this turn 5’s VP’s, Card Hand Size, Pawns (Absolutism, Liberalism, Pax Britannica), War of 1812 Status, and all Military Map positions of Armies on the board (with their units) as well as pieces in each Major Power’s Force Pool.  Otherwise, only use the upcoming turn’s “Warm Start” Table’s indicated Resources, Military Cards available, Won Issues, and drm modifiers to start the next Turn with its Government Phase.

    Turn 6, September 1813

    Marker/Pawn Placements: War of 1812: BR 1, Pax Britannica: Castile & Valencia under Coalition Control, Absolutism: Defense of the Faith, Liberalism: Free Market, Future Government of France: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

    Military Map Piece Placements: See below Turn 6 illustration. Note that Turn 6’s Replacements have been taken and are now upon the map.

    Government Phase Resource Allocation Reminders: A) If resourcing a won Minor Country and/or Recruitment Issue, add any related Military Unit(s) and adjust the Major Power’s VP Track Marker accordingly. B) Adjust VPs for any Absolutism/Liberalism die roll result.

    IMPORTANT NOTE: If proceeding to a Turn 7 “Warm Start”, carry over this turn 6’s VP’s, Pawns (Absolutism, Liberalism, Pax Britannica), War of 1812 Status, and all Military Map positions of Armies on the board (with their units) as well as pieces in each Major Power’s Force Pool.  Otherwise, only use the upcoming turn’s “Warm Start” Table’s indicated Resources, Military Cards available, Won Issues, and drm modifiers to start the next Turn with its Government Phase.

    Turn 7, October 1813

    Marker/Pawn Placements: War of 1812: BR 1, Pax Britannica: Castile & Valencia under Coalition Control, Absolutism: Monarchies Alliance, Liberalism: Free Market, Future Government of France: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.  Appropriately place reminder markers for: Track C- Heavy Rains, -2DRM to BR for Gascony + Toulouse & Track A- The Grande Armée is not allowed to Withdraw.

    Military Map Piece Placements: See below Turn 6 illustration. Note that Turn 6’s Replacements have been taken and are now upon the map.

    Government Phase Resource Allocation Reminders: A) If resourcing a won Minor Country and/or Recruitment Issue, add any related Military Unit(s) and adjust the Major Power’s VP Track Marker accordingly. B) Adjust VPs for any Absolutism/Liberalism die roll result.

    IMPORTANT NOTE: If proceeding to a Turn 8 “Warm Start”, carry over this turn 7’s VP’s, Pawns (Absolutism, Liberalism, Pax Britannica), War of 1812 Status, and all Military Map positions of Armies on the board (with their units) as well as pieces in each Major Power’s Force Pool.  Otherwise, only use the upcoming turn’s “Warm Start” Table’s indicated Resources, Military Cards available, Won Issues, and drm modifiers to start the next Turn with its Government Phase.

    Turn 8, November-December 1813

    Marker/Pawn Placements: War of 1812: BR 1, Pax Britannica: Castile & Valencia under Coalition Control, Absolutism: Defense of the Faith, Liberalism: Democracy, Future Government of France: Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

    Military Map Piece Placements: See below Turn 8 illustration. Note that Turn 8’s Replacements have been taken and are now upon the map.

    Government Phase Resource Allocation Reminders: A) If resourcing a won Minor Country Issue add any related Military Unit(s) and adjust the Major Power’s VP Track Marker accordingly. B) Adjust VPs for any Absolutism/Liberalism and/or Peace Congress die roll result. C) If Resourced, adjust VP for the Future Government of France result.

    CONTINUE THE GAME TO TURN 10 (OR TO THE OPTIONAL TURN 11 PER OHR 15.4)?

    If player(s) agree to proceed to a Turn 9 and possibly beyond:

    1. To satisfy curiosity, as of the end of Turn 8, determine a Major Power winner of the “Clash of Armies” (17.3) Scenario.
    2. Then, carry over this turn 8’s VP’s, Pawns (Absolutism, Liberalism, Pax Britannica), War of 1812 Status, and all Military Map positions of Armies on the board (with their units) as well as pieces in each Major Power’s Force Pool.
    3. Start Turn 9 as any regular CoV Game Turn with its Initial Phase (10.0).
    4. YOU ARE NOW PLAYING A CONGRESS OF VIENNA GAME VICTORY DETERMINATION AS PRESENTED BY RULEBOOK SECTION 14.2.

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  • Factions and Scoring in Tsar – InsideGMT


    This is the fourth in a series of InsideGMT articles from Paul Hellyer about his board game Tsar, currently on GMT’s P500. You can view the previous article here.

    Tsarist Russia was supposedly ruled by one person, but this didn’t keep Nicholas II’s subjects from debating the faults and merits of their government and hatching ideas for the future of their country. Rivals jockeyed for official appointments and access to the Tsar, and they often grouped themselves into parties, unions, and informal networks to press for their policy preferences.

    In Tsar, each player plays one of four Factions based on these historical rivalries: the Dynasty, Autocracy, Pragmatism, and Reform Factions. Each comes with its own set of Characters and scoring objectives. In this article, we’ll look at these Factions, their objectives, and how scoring works in the game.

    The Dynasty Faction advances the interests of the Romanov Dynasty and favors conservatism. Most of its Characters are members of the Romanov family, for whom the title “Grand Duke” was reserved. In addition to its other scoring goals, this Faction scores an extra 1 VP per round when at least two Grand Dukes are on the game board. The Autocracy Faction seeks to preserve autocratic principles and favors governance through force and intimidation; it partners with the Dynasty Faction on political questions. The Pragmatism Faction features the game’s most capable Characters and aligns politically with the Reform Faction. The Reform Faction seeks to gradually transform Russia into a democracy, beginning with the Zemstvos movement in Era I and concluding with constitutional monarchy in Era IV. It favors a strategy of governance through popular consent. Aside from politics, all the Factions are interested in different aspects of economic development and all seek credit for military success. You might notice that revolutionary factions are missing from the list. That’s because Tsar is a simulation of government and includes only those factions that had a historical role in the Tsar’s government.

    Each Faction’s scoring objectives are conveyed through Scoring Cards, with two examples shown above. You’ll have a different Scoring Card for each Era. Each card sets forth your Primary VP Goal, Secondary VP Goal, and Action Phase Bonus; for the Dynasty Faction, you also get a reminder about the Grand Dukes Bonus. Anyone may view any of these cards at any time.

    The Primary and Secondary VP Goals each have three levels. Pragmatism’s Primary VP Goal is to put more Naval Squadrons into play and it begins scoring when there are four Squadrons. It scores at a higher level when there are six Squadrons and at the highest level when there are seven or more. These points aren’t scored immediately when you achieve your goals in the Action Phase—instead, players use their Influence Cubes in the Scoring Phase to trigger scoring. As shown on the Scoring Cards, you can use three cubes to trigger scoring for your Primary Goal or two cubes for your Secondary Goal; in solitaire games, you use four cubes to trigger scoring in both categories simultaneously. The number of times you trigger scoring is limited only by your Influence Cubes, which you gain in each round’s Setup Phase through the placement of your Characters, as well as through bonuses in the Action and Audience Phases that you can earn by pleasing the Tsar. You’ll use these cubes not only for scoring, but also to support your policy preferences in Council Decisions and to get your Characters on the game board and into Offices. 

    The Action Phase Bonus works differently. This features a one-time achievement, as opposed to the gradual buildups that you pursue for your Primary and Secondary Goals. In Era II, the Pragmatism and Autocracy Factions seek to gain control of the Turkish Straits. On the right, you can see one side of the Turkish Straits Card. This is a Council Decision, so in a multiplayer game, players might be bidding against each other with their Influence Cubes. As soon as you achieve your Action Phase Bonus, you trigger an automatic, one-time payout of VP, and it won’t be scored again.

    The Zemstvos Card is another example of a card that’s closely related to scoring. In Era I, this is Reform’s Primary VP Goal and Pragmatism’s Secondary VP Goal. The first stage is to create Zemstvos in rural areas, the second in towns, and the third in cities. As each of these goals are achieved, markers are placed in the game board’s Government Tracker. Because scoring for this goal is performed in the Scoring Phase, you’ll notice there are no VP icons on the card. You’ll refer to your Scoring Card and the conditions on the game board to calculate points.

    Although scoring is tracked individually for each player, you aren’t pursuing the named goals for yourself, but for Russia. The Squadrons that Pragmatism builds are placed on the board, where they belong to the government, which is to say, they belong to the players collectively. Likewise, seizing control of the Straits and advancing the Zemstvos movement affects everyone by changing the course of the country. Although players have their own separate supplies of Influence Cubes, the economic resources they need to achieve their goals are also shared collectively. The Gold, Industrial Cubes, and Transport Points that Pragmatism needs to build those Squadrons come from the game board, not from any personal supply. The Reform Faction would like to use those same resources to expand industry, and the two Factions will compete with each other to persuade the Tsar to approve their respective priorities.

    Tsar is a semi-cooperative game. You share not only effects and resources but also objectives. Each of your scoring goals overlaps with one other player, and your partners are marked for you on the Scoring Cards. Notice that you score slightly higher amounts for your Primary Goal as opposed to your Secondary, so while two Factions will share a goal, their interests are not identical. The players will have to decide the degree of cooperation between them, and this cooperation applies not only to achieving goals, but also to scoring them. When you trigger scoring in the Scoring Phase, you trigger it for yourself and your partner. So if the players have completed two stages of the Zemstvos movement, the Reform Faction could use three Influence Cubes to score three points for itself and two points for its partner, the Pragmatism Faction. Alternatively, the Pragmatism Faction could use only two Influence Cubes to trigger the same scoring. So players will need to consider their own gains as well as the gains of their partner. Aside from coordinating their use of Influence, players might also coordinate their control of certain Offices or agree to support a player’s position as the Favorite. Although the partnerships in the game are fixed, the way you handle them is very fluid, and you’re free to switch your cooperation from one potential partner to another. There are also opportunities to impede rivals, such as lowering the Favorite’s Favor level, withdrawing a Character from the Camarilla, removing a Character from an Office, or even allowing a rival Character to be assassinated by revolutionaries.

    On the Scoring Cards, you can see another scoring option that’s always available in multiplayer games: using five Influence to score 1 VP for yourself only. This is much less rewarding than the other scoring categories, but you can use it at any time and you don’t have to share it. It adds another layer of flexibility to the game. At the end of the Scoring Phase, each player has to discard down to five Influence Cubes, so hoarding all your Influence is not an option. Typically, players will use Influence to achieve goals early in the game, and then switch to using Influence to trigger scoring later in the game.

    If you avoid revolution, the last card you’ll play in each Era will be Final Scoring, which immediately concludes the game. During peacetime, the game engine always seeds this card in the 16th round; in wartime, it will appear when the war ends or in the 16th round, whichever comes first. As shown on the card, players automatically score triple VP for both their primary and secondary goals. Your Gold (which you would want if there’s a revolution) is a penalty in Final Scoring. There’s no Scoring Phase in the final Quarter, but your unused Influence Cubes are the first tiebreaker. The second tiebreaker is Player Order, which begins with the Tsar’s current Favorite.

    If you’re playing in legacy style, scores will be reset in the next Era, but there are some carryover effects based on victory rank: the winner becomes the initial Favorite in the next game and gets first dibs in drawing special bonus cards (the Order of St. Vladimir Cards) that reward you for avoiding revolution or penalize you if the regime collapses. In lieu of an Order of St. Vladimir Card, the player in last place gets to retain 10% of their VP score. Going into the next Era, this gives the players somewhat different incentives when it comes to avoiding revolution.

    In the next InsideGMT article in this series, we’ll take a closer look at decision mechanics.

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  • Volunteers Sought to Help Playtest/Develop the Congress of Vienna Vassal Module Mark 2! – InsideGMT


    Introduction by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer/Editor, Fred Schachter – The currently available Congress of Vienna Vassal Module may be found at Congress of Vienna Goes Electric, 2025 Edition (with VASSAL!)  – InsideGMT, 

    While this Module certainly works, and works just fine, as many of its users will attest, feedback indicated there is room for improvement… to make electronically playing Congress of Vienna an even better game playing experience!

    The CoV Vassal Team is fortunate to now have the Vassal programming talents of Fredrik Lindner and Mark Benson, who are building upon the current Module developed by Joel Toppen and CoV Designer Frank Esparrago.  It’s my pleasure to here introduce them and their good efforts to the InsideGMT audience.

    However, as there are many within our beloved hobby who prefer a physical game, sitting around a “table of rivals” with all the fun and excitement that entails, your support of Congress of Vienna’s P-500 Second Printing would certainly be appreciated.  To learn more of that offering, as well as access a vast array of Congress of Vienna material, see: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna, 2nd Printing

    With that, matters are now turned over to Mark & Fredrik!

    The CoV Vassal Module Fred above references enabled us to enjoy the game virtually, ensuring us wonderful times playing the current Congress of Vienna Vassal Module, whether as one of the Sixth Coalition’s Major Allied Powers or as the “Corsican Ogre” himself: Napoleon, emperor of the French!  However, we’re inveterate “tinkerers” and, as we gained more experience with the game, could not resist suggesting program enhancements.  Therefore, we reached out to Frank Esparrago and Fred Schachter to volunteer our enthusiasm and computer programming help… not only for our own sakes, but for all those who enjoy via Vassal Frank’s wonderful Congress of Vienna design (inspired by Mark Herman’s Churchill).  

    The core CoV Team meets each weekend with representatives, not all of whom are present every session, from the UK, Sweden, Spain, and various USA locations from the east to west coasts to playtest our Vassal Programming efforts, dubbed CoV Vassal Module Mark 2.  That’s been fine to an extent… but we now need and would greatly appreciate input from more fellow Congress of Vienna gamers before this latest Module can be confidently ready for public release to replace Module Mark 1.

    A number of volunteers have already come forth through a BGG (Board Game Geek) solicitation and it would be grand if more could flock to the CoV Vassal Module Mark 2 playtest volunteer banner from InsideGMT’s audience.

    To that end, those interested in contributing, and hopefully having a blast playing Congress of Vienna with its latest Vassal Module, whether multi-player or solitaire, are urged to respond to: New Vassal Module – Playtesters Wanted (2p/3p/4p/Solo) | BoardGameGeek 

    As something of a teaser, here are selected screen shots from CoV Vassal Module Mark 2.  Thanks in advance to those responding to this solicitation.  Enjoy Congress of Vienna!

    Figure 1: Screen Shot of a Russian card hand. Note the new card trading area. This version duplicates what many gamers do when playing the physical game through automatically organizing cards by Major Power with any neutral card(s) placed on the bottom row flush right.
    Figure 2 The Allied CDGSM Card. Players asked for less graphic clutter and clearer labelling of the cards on display to choose from. We accommodated them. Better?
    Figure 3: The CoV Vassal Module Gameboard Mark 2 as of an underway Game Turn Two’s Diplomacy Phase: Those familiar with Congress of Vienna should be able to deduce what’s occurred thus far by the placement of Issues and pawns upon the board’s Diplomacy Section as well as by the Military Map’s Armies and markers.
    Note the change in orientation which now emulates the physical game as players preferred scrolling between the Diplomacy and Military Map Sections enabling better visibility. Leader card images are now at each Major Power’s Seat (face-up to indicate availability). Pop Ups explain each gameboard component as well as enlarge them for easier reading. Automatic placement capabilities have been introduced in many areas, as a complement to traditional ‘click and drag’ interactions. This, of course, speeds up the pace of play.
    Figure 4: Sequence of Play: This automated chart allows players to easily navigate an entire CoV turn’s sequence of play while at the same time providing direct access to relevant game functions.
    Figure 5: A complete and easy menu for “Scenario Options”: Through which players can access Congress of Vienna’s different scenarios, as well as determine a game’s number of players, Initial Situation & Handicap cards. The Rulebook’s Optional Historical Rules can be locked in for a game. Choices, choices, eh?

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  • The Scenarios of SELJUK: Byzantium Besieged – InsideGMT


    The road to Manzikert is long… but only if you choose it to be! As the game gets closer to arriving to players, here is a spotlight on the scenarios in the game that showcase the breadth of available starting situations and game length options.

    Because SELJUK covers four years and turn length is a 90-day season, there is a lot of flexibility to choose the right play experience for your game. All scenarios begin with the spring turn of a given year and represent the historical situation. This also has the convenient byproduct of confronting players with a variety of different strategic considerations and exploring the various new mechanics SELJUK introduces to Levy & Campaign.

    Additionally, most scenarios will allow players the option to continue gameplay past the official stipulated final turn if they so choose; simply calculate victory via VPs as normal for any chosen stopping point. The modular construction of the game’s timescale and turn length gives players a great tableau for exploring historical outcomes, what-ifs, and campaign plans.

    Let’s take a look:

    Year of Treacherous Ambition (1070 A.D.)

    This scenario is perfect for players new to Levy & Campaign. It only lasts three game turns, plus the Winter sequence, and only begins with three Lords per side in play. Unlike all other scenarios, it begins with the Campaign phase, skipping Levy and allowing players to dive right into the action without needing to worry about future planning and learning the rules at the same time. Both sides have one Lord ready to join the fray starting on the second turn, and both sides will have to do a healthy dose of attack and defense: the Romans are confronted immediately by a Siege in-progress at Manbij in Syria while the Seljuks have the onus to use their large army to take back the Forts around Lake Van from Roman occupation. Additionally, both sides start with a map-edge “ALL” Capability in play, which will educate players how important it is for the Romans to protect their conquests (via Armenian Garrisons) and the Seljuks to use their Coin to shorten supply lines (via Marwanid Alliance).

    This scenario features special unique VP bonuses for controlling key Strongholds on the map at the end of the game, reaching specific locations with their Lords, and/or successfully causing the faction switch of one of the Sultan’s key allies via the game’s Treachery mechanic. Once players are familiar with the rules, this scenario can be played in as little as 90 minutes and is also a great demo scenario for teaching two virgin Levy & Campaign players.

    The Emperor and the Lion (1068 A.D.)

    This is the true beginning of the events in SELJUK. Romanos Diogenes has just been coronated emperor and the Sultan Alp Arslan has his eyes set on Aleppo and Syria while his coalition of allies seeks to plunder eastern Anatolia.

    The game begins as a blank slate for both players, with complete freedom to muster whatever Capabilities and Lords they deem fit per the game rules. The initial campaigns of 1068 were historically fairly limited in scope, and players have the choice to pursue these along historical lines or make completely different decisions. The Seljuk player will take time to ramp up to full efficacy as their armies are dispersed. Ibn Khan has his home in Hama and can cause real headaches for the Roman player depending on how he is equipped and his level of aggression. The Romans, meanwhile, have a much more consolidated army under the emperor that they can get anywhere on the map before the year is over. This means it’s one of their best opportunities to secure territory on the offensive along the eastern border before the conflict expands. The decisions made in the 1068 scenario will have ramifications year-over-year when playing the full campaign, and is one of the most exciting parts of the full game.

    This scenario can also just be played as the 1068 year if players so choose, and I have often demoed the game at conventions that way as it’s a great sandbox for exploring the opening possibilities for both sides.

    Specter of Norman Betrayal (1069 A.D.)

    Using the second year of the game as a starting point provides some interesting wrinkles to the dynamic between the two players. Historically, Alp Arslan spent a good portion of this year back home in Persia putting down rebellions, so he is absent to start this scenario. Both players begin with four Lords on the map and with the opportunity to add more as the scenario progresses; however, both sides are going to be bottlenecked by financial concerns. Both armies are scheduled to Disband in the fall turn, so working in Tax command actions over the first couple of turns is incredibly important for the Seljuk player since they will be missing the Sultan’s ability to use his Coin across the map on his subordinates. The Romans are hampered by a different problem: they start in a VP hole, and the Nomisma Debased Capability starts in play, which allows them to extend the Service of all their Lords in play for one season. This is very powerful, however once used, the Roman player cannot use the Tax command action for the rest of the game with anyone except the emperor! Historically Romanos debased the gold content of imperial coinage in 1069 in order to pay for the large numbers of troops he was levying, but it caused severe inflation over the next several decades.

    The maneuver in 1069 will be about finances as much as it will be about battle. On top of that, one of the Roman player’s Lords, the Norman mercenary Robert Crépin, begins the scenario under control of the Seljuk player at Edessa, providing a very inconvenient (and effective) raiding or harassing force in the center of the map. Whichever side can wrangle the chaos of their situation should come out on top.

    Showdown in Anatolia (1070 A.D. – 1071 A.D.)

    For players who want a longer game or a chunkier commitment, this scenario also begins in the spring of 1070, but goes through the end of the calendar to the fall of 1071. If you’ve wanted to see if you could win (or avoid) your own Battle of Manzikert situation but want to lay a more successful groundwork for that fateful campaign, this is the scenario for you. It marks the beginning of Alp Arslan’s historical advance to Aleppo which was aborted over the winter and led to his speedy march to Manzikert where he caught the Romans by surprise. In 1070, Romanos did not command the army personally as he was engaged in political matters in Constantinople; because of this, he gave command of the armies to his ally Manuel Komnenos. In the game, Komnenos serves as the Roman Commander when Romanos is not in play, and while he does have a good ability to levy resources and troops, his action ratings are not nearly as good as the emperor’s; the Roman player will be ceding initiative in this scenario thanks to the Seljuk player’s speedy Turkic Horse and better available commanders.

    Because the scenario is six turns in length, players will get to see the cascading effects of decisions over multiple years. Both sides start with the same VPs, but if the Roman player does not do well defending against Seljuk incursion, they will find themselves in the position of having to gamble the game on a big battle, perhaps participating in their own Manzikert-esque engagement. Both sides will need to manage their Lords’ Service length, with the additional handcuff for the Romans tied to Nomisma Debased having been considered used before the start of the scenario!

    Manzikert: The Fall of the Roman East (1071 A.D.)

    If you’ve ever wanted to see if you could change history or get a better understanding of the maneuver that led to this notorious battle, this is the scenario for you. Beginning in the spring of 1071, the game is essentially a race between the two players. Alp Arslan and the Seljuk army is engaged in a Siege at Aleppo, which could potentially produce big VPs if they crack the hilltop citadel. However, the Romans have assembled a huge army themselves and can win the game outright if they take both Manzikert and Khliat. On top of that, the weather over winter was chaotic and the mountain passes between Syria and Armenia are not traversable, hampering the Seljuk player’s ability to intercept the Roman march across the plateau. The scenario is designed in such a way that both sides will be incentivized to clash in a major action somewhere in eastern Anatolia… unless they feel that a more conservative approach in which they outscore their opponent in the long term is prudent. With no Winter phased at the end of the scenario, it is impossible for the Seljuk player to score any bonus VPs with Loot, so the decision about maintaining their position in Aleppo or contesting Roman advance will be critical in determining victory or defeat!

    That is your detailed look at the scenarios on offer in SELJUK: Byzantium Besieged as you prepare to take the field very soon. I look forward seeing what narratives emerge when players command the Christian and Muslim powers of medieval Asia Minor.



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