Some weeks ago, an enterprising YouTuber, Andrew Choong, with his delightful British accent, posted several videos singing eloquent praise of GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas: a seminal game of the American Civil War at sea and the major rivers of North America by Mark McLaughlin (Mark and I enjoyably teamed together on several GMT games over the years).
First, readers should know that while Rebel Raiders on the High Seasis currently out of print and unavailable for purchase directly from GMT, the game remains available via the “after-market” and, most conveniently and importantly, can be electronically obtained for play via Vassal!
Yes, the talented Joel Toppen, who most recently assisted Mark and I by creating a wonderful Vassal Module for Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East, authored a fine Rebel Raiders on the High SeasVassal Module. Here’s the link to access it: Category:GMT Games – Vassal. Then there’s Joel’s detailed description of how the Module works: Rebel Raiders on the High Seas – Inside the Game.
Furthermore, Joel so enjoyed the game that he did this interesting and entertaining Review /Description /Retrospective After Action Report (of a December 1864 clutch Union win, “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat”, as Joel incredulously puts it) of playing the physical game: Rebel Raiders – Inside the Game
Ah, but if the preceding entices you, dear reader, here are links to what Andrew Choong more recently released via YouTube!
Thank you Andrew and Joel for these video creations which so well show-case the game as well as your respective articulate, enthusiastic presentation skills, skills that could hopefully rekindle the GMT family’s interest in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas!
Introduction by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer/Editor, Fred Schachter – For those unaware, to familiarize this InsideGMT audience of what designer Frank Esparrago created with his fun and exciting Congress of Vienna game, available via GMT Games; InsideGMT has presented articles including a “Strategies for” series… (think of the old Avalon Hill General magazine’s “Perfect Plan” articles for that legendary company’s “classics”), “Game as History”: An Historical Introduction to the Congress of Vienna Period” as well as a four-part series entitled: “Meet the Statesmen of Congress of Vienna” and a host of other material such as game “After Action Reports”.
Use this link to access these articles: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-850-congress-of-vienna.aspx. This site includes a copy of the game’s full Rulebook as well as its shorter Quick Start Rules Summary. As to the Congress of Vienna Vassal Module, it can be found using this link: Category:GMT Games – Vassal. Isn’t it wonderful how many GMT games can be computer played using Vassal?
For Vassal is a wonderful way to game since it electronically duplicates all a game’s physical components, which in the case of Congress of Vienna, includes gameboard, dice, cards, various counters, pieces, rules and player aids to enable a four-player contest: one for each of the game’s Major Powers: France, Britain, Russia and Austria.
Without Vassal, the CoV Team’s efforts could not have been as comprehensive as they were. Those aforementioned InsideGMT articles could not have been as impactful. For that, an eternal debt of gratitude is owed to the very talented Joel Toppen, who back in 2020 created the initial foundational Congress of Vienna Vassal Module. Designer Frank Esparrago, in turn, built and modified it through numerous iterations to ultimately reflect the game’s final Terry Leeds’ published graphics. Through Vassal, CoV Play Testers could enjoy and contribute to the game from across the United States, Spain, United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Asia (Manila, Philippines and Shenzhen, China). Fun stuff!
We now present a “walk through “of how Congress of Vienna was converted into its latest electronic form, specifically VASSAL for the physically published game to enable four players, without geographic constraint, to have a grand time experiencing all this wonderful game has to offer.
Furthermore, readers may note that due to the wonderful support of those ordering and hopefully now enjoying Congress of Vienna, the game is currently “OUT OF STOCK” (thank you! thank you! thank you!). GMT will reintroduce CoV as a P500 Reprint offering within the next few months. You folks know how that system works, eh? For now, the game IS available to learn and play via Vassal. Have fun!
Here is Congress of Vienna Goes Electric 2025 Edition: starting with its “Game Set-Up” of course… so take it away Frank!
Note: If you would like to view any of the following screen illustrations (Figures) in a larger size, you can click on the image.
The first screen of CoV’s Vassal Module allows the choice of whether the game is to be conducted with players connected on-line or for an off-line contest by a single player or group using Vassal in lieu of the physical Congress of Vienna game. During CoV’s on-line play testing, one of the team would unlock the game and the other players would connect with it using the team’s established Skype guidelines!
The next two screens, Figures 1 and 2 shown below, are mandatory to get a game underway (that is, they always appear and must be properly responded to before commencing play). The first screen allows you to choose the desired CoV Scenario. The first option is the Full Campaign Game 1813-1814 (for a maximum of 10 turns). The other menu-offered scenarios are shorter, with less turns and different historical set-ups, etc. (see Figure 1).
Figure 1.- Congress of Vienna Vassal Scenario Selection Setup: The screen above allows choice of a scenario to play. Details concerning each scenario, such as its victory conditions and any special rules, are within the game’s Playbook Section 17. An “Add Your Scenario?” is a “Sandbox” option still under development for subsequent release. It is not shown within the above Figure 1. The CoV Team has this feature bookmarked as a pending “work-in-progress”.
Once this prompt is responded to, the following screen allows choosing sides (see Figure 2). It also facilitates selecting the option of a two or three player game. The final option is for playing Congress of Vienna solitaire (“Solo”), in which you manage all four Major Powers (per Playbook Sections 19-23). To fully experience the game’s solitaire offerings, you’ll need the large two-side printed Allied and French Bots which are included in the physical game.
Figure 2.- Congress of Vienna Vassal choosing side: This second screen of our CoV Module allows you to choose the number of players that will start the game. It is possible to play a game with a single player controlling two powers in a 3-players game, or a game with only two sides (e.g. the Allies of the Coalition against Napoleonic Imperial France). Finally, you can play a Solo game using either of the printed French or Allied Bots included with the physical Congress of Vienna game.
When Vassal remains open after a scenario and player(s) by their respective Major Powers are selected; the Module’s Main Window of the entire gameboard appears (see Figure 3)!
Figure 3.- Congress of Vienna Vassal Main Window: We used Terry Leeds’s beautiful, yet wonderfully functional, game board graphics, but had to adapt them to a computer screen. As Terry’s design is meant to be viewed from a four-player zenithal position when placed upon a gaming table, it was converted to a single-player front-facing image for a computer screen viewing. To accomplish this, we altered the direction of the Military Map’s facing by rotating it 90º. We also added an area, on the screen’s far right, for trading cards. This was needed since in games with physical boards and cards, cards are traded between players face down without passing them through the game board! A nice elegant solution, eh?
At this screen’s top are different buttons identifying CoV game components: two red and green buttons are located to its top left (surrounded with a dark blue rectangle). Both allow you to select an additional national card each turn to the player winning the Initial Environment Table’s turn start result (This is an achievement of creativity and Vassal programming virtuosity by the talented Joel Toppen! Bravo and thanks Joel!).
Thereafter, this button allows you to draw the Initial Event Card through which each turn begins and to its right is the Character & Event Card Deck (both surrounded by a red rectangle in Figure 3). This last button directs you to the main driver of this Vassal game. Immediately to the right of this button are four buttons that open the hand of cards for each Major Power Player (Austria, Britain, France, and Russia). Once a game is underway, these buttons can only be activated by the player who owns that Major Power. This requires privacy (except for a two/ three player contest or a Solo game). We put these four buttons inside an orange rectangle in Figure 3 above.
The Chart Folder buttoncontains different player aids such as Congress of Vienna’s Detailed Sequence of Play, Battle DRM, Campaign Game VP Chart, Rules, etc…. Further to the right are the two electronic dice (surrounded by a dark red rectangle) which keep the game “alive” and for which we never used for other Vassal games.
This is a true technological marvel it seems to us (although a player frustrated by bad luck can’t throw these dice out an open window or smash one with a hammer to teach the other[s] a lesson… yes, such reactions are within the actual experience of some CoV Team members: readers may have other bad die rolling stories to share)!
To their right are other less important buttons allowing receipt of optional Handicap Cards or to remove Characters who may die during a game (this surrounded by a light green rectangle). In between these are the buttons and charts that facilitate electronic play for 2-players (see the following Figure 4 below).
On the left side of the screen top is the Clean Button. This activates the Vassal screen’s clearing of game components at the end of each turn. It returns all markers and cards to their respective locations ready for use next turn. This is a clear, valuable, and appreciated advantage over physical face-to-face games as it eliminates potentially disastrous gameboard upset risk from pets and/or small children on the loose!
Finally, there’s the Help option located in the screen’s upper left corner (surrounded by a light green rectangle). This option opens a PDF file player aid (CoV Vassal Notes) which explains in detail the buttons and options of this Vassal Module for players through text and explanatory screen images. A new player is strongly encouraged to check out this PDF document once the Module is loaded, for it contains “How to” details beyond what this article encompasses.
The main window of the Congress of Vienna Vassal Module has components which do not fit on a screen without overly reducing their scale and legibility. Perhaps the most important feature is the Diplomacy Display (surrounded. by a red rectangle). This is where the game’s 30 Issue Markers (diplomatic, military, economic and political), intrinsic to the game’s Diplomacy and Government Phases; are located at the beginning of each turn if available for player selection by not being initially placed on a Major Power’s Track or the Negotiating Table.
Figure 4.- Congress of Vienna’s Vassal Handicap Cards & Dead Characters Window: You can see the Handicap cards deck on the left. In the screen’s center are discarded Handicap cards. Although optional, these cards allow you to add more variability to games and/or are used to achieve balance between players with less experience with the game versus one or more CoV knowledgeable opponents. It’s nice having this “balance the playing field” capability, eh? On the right is the last card permanently removed from the game. In this example, it is the aging Kutuzov who has just died at the end of turn 1 (through an unfortunate die roll of 2 which precipitated his early demise!).
At the bottom of Figure 3, flush left, there is a light brown Track (starting at 0 and ending at 80) to tabulate each Major Power’s VPs (indicated by a text box and light blue arrow). The Military Map (highlighted by a yellow rectangle) is where, during the War Phase, each army’s movement takes place and upon which battles are fought on the map’s different Fronts (A-G, including America’s War of 1812,depicted by a box rather than a Front of multiple spaces). The following Figure 7 features this map and explains some of its attributes. Congress of Vienna is certainly a game of diplomacy; but it is also a wargame!
On the bottom right of the Vassal screen is a vertical/horizontal scroll feature to block out the screen’s Diplomatic Section. This enables viewing, without distraction, solely the entire Military Map. This comes in handy when resolving the Congress of Vienna War Phase. Additionally, two adjacent horizontal Tracks (orange for the Allies and light blue for France) allow Major Powers to record Military unit losses (cubes) during a battle via the DRM Battle Tracks.
The screen’s right side is the Diplomacy Area (surrounded by a light blue rectangle). This is where the Diplomacy and Government Phases take place. There you’ll find the Negotiation Table, each Major Power’s National Track radiating from it, Diplomacy Round Tracker with the Turn Record and other game features. Also, each gameboard corner includes one of the four National Force Pools and other markers. Finally, the rightmost section of the Vassal screen contains the CardTrading Area where 2 players place cards to be traded between them during a Diplomacy Phase Round (this Card Trading Area does not exist on the physical board as players directly trade their cards without placing them on the board!).
We present in Figures 5 and6, two key windows within the main window. Figure 5 below shows the Initial Event Card Window (this opens by clicking the appropriate button). In that window you can see the front and back of these cards. On the upper left screen side, the magnifying glass icons allow you to enlarge or reduce the magnification of these cards per viewing preference. The Figure 5 screen’s label, outline, and arrow are red in color.
Figure 5.- Congress of Vienna Vassal’s Initial Event Cards Window: As an example, you can see how the menu’s “Execute” option is used to open Initial Situation card A-2 for May 1813. This card’s instructions referencing additional player cards, Issues, and other markers are appropriately and automatically placed with this instruction in the players’ hands and upon the gameboard. The preceding turn’s card A-1, for March-April 1813, is to the screen’s right.
In Figure 6, we show the Character & Event Game Cards Window. This window opens in the same manner as the previous one. Presented, as an example, are two cards: “Fouché” (#11) which is a CHARACTER CARD and a “Debating card” (#60) which is an Event card. Both are drawn from the same common deck for all players.
Figure 6.- Congress of Vienna’s Vassal Character & Event Game Cards Window: On the left is the Game Card Deck from which cards are drawn to constitute the players’ respective Card Hands. These cards are used and discarded during the Diplomacy and War Phases. This Draw Deck is to the left. In the middle are placed Debate Event card #60 as well as Character card #11, Fouche. Both are drawn from that deck as examples.
Returning to Figure 5, if you click an Initial Event Card’s “Execute” option (which opens through a right mouse button click), all the card’s instructions are automatically completed… as if accomplished by a player MANUALLY! Designated cards go into the players’ hands, Issues placed upon the appropriate National Tracks/ Negotiation Table, additional units and Resources placed in each Military Map capital space or in the correct National Resource Stacks. Neat, eh?
When you move the vertical and horizontal scroll and use the magnifying glass to expand the screen, you gain a complete single-screen view of the Military Map (see Figure 7). On this map are located the different Army Blocks that occupy their spaces. These spaces constitute Battle Fronts, also known as Tracks. These are identified by a capital letter from A to G. In the below image, Track C’s British Army of Portugal is portrayed by a red block (a red arrow whose tip is in the lower left corner of the screen). This British Army begins turn 1 of a Congress of Vienna Campaign Game in the space of Portugal.
Figure 7’s Military Map Features’ Examples: Military units (which are wooden cubes in the physical game are also simply referred to as “units”), belonging to the British Army of Portugal are indicated within the Army of PortugalBox through a red double arrow and rectangles at the screen’s lower left corner. This Box indicates this Army’s Campaign Game Turn 1 strength as four British (red), two Portuguese (dark red) and two Spanish (yellow) units: this is a respectable force of eight cubes representing approximately 160,000 soldiers! The number in the upper center of the Army Box is its maximum allowed size of ten units. Its adversary, Track C’s French Army of Spain, located in the Leon space, contains six.
Figure 7.- Congress of Vienna Vassal’s Main Military Map Window: The explanations of this figure’s contents are found in the preceding paragraphs. To avoid need to rotate the screen, which would have been unavoidable by fully duplicating the published Congress of Vienna gameboard, we had to rotate the Military Map 90º clockwise and horizontally place the two DRM Battle Tracks at the bottom of the screen. Note the DRM Battle Tracks’ two pawns, orange for the Allies and blue for France. These are placed in their respective “zero” spaces, poised for use in resolving a game’s next battle. This orientation altered Terry Leeds’ graphic design for physical game play functionality through enabling easier visual use of the Vassal Screen on a computer.
The BritishForce Pool portrays available British, Portuguese and Spanish units, as well as cylindrical British Fleets. It is located at the lower right corner of the Figure 7 screen (indicated by a light violet arrow, rectangle and text). Additionally, the British player’s markers, which include MilitarySupport, Resources, and Character Bonus Reminders, are displayed near this Force Pool Box. Furthermore, this Force Pool example contains an empty space where unbuilt Portuguese units are placed (as of turn 1, both are included in the Army of Portugal Box).
In Figure 8, we show an enlarged Window of the gameboard’s Diplomacy Area. At its center is the Negotiation Table (a square with rounded edges and yellow color border highlighting). This is where most Issues begin in CoV game and from which the negotiations and ensuing debates of a turn move them. This is the part of the board where, as a player, you will spend most of your time during the Diplomacy Phase’s negotiations and debates. It is also where, during the Government Phase, you’ll allocate your Resources on those Issues most vital to implementing your grand strategy for Congress of Vienna victory!
Figure 8.- Congress of Vienna Vassal Diplomacy Area’s Main Window: The explanation of this figure’s salient features is found in the paragraphs below. This image has been enlarged with Vassal’s magnifying glass function to show in greater detail the different elements of this key gameboard area.
At the upper mid-left of this Vassal screen image is the Turn Record Track (surrounded by an orange rectangle). This is where the Turn Marker is located. It is a black and orange marker with an hourglass symbol placed for a CoV Campaign Game’s first turn on its March-April 1813 space.
The Austrian National Track has been highlighted with a white rectangle in Figure 8. The nearby yellow pawn, which is a much larger gold pawn in the physical game, is used to designate the Major Power winner of an Initial Phase’s “Wager”. This pawn is subsequently shifted during a turn to designate its Diplomacy Phase winner. The winner goes last each Phase, so in this example, with the pawn by the Austrian Track, France would go first in clockwise order. The British Track is located beneath the Austrian Track.
Surrounded by colored rectangles are four important Record Tracks, each with a pawn to indicate its latest game status. On the right-side center of the Figure 8 is shown the Future Government of France Track, within has a dark blue pawn. This pawn is moved by its diplomatic Issue being won and financed with a Resource.
On the upper center of the image are the double Tracks (green and light red) of the Absolutism / Liberalism Record Tracks with their green and red pawns. A successful pawn movement, in addition to a Resource expenditure, requires a successful die roll result of 4 or more to trigger its Track space’s indicated VP effect(s). See Rulebook Section 12.4.5 for related details such as potential die roll result modifiers.
The Pax Britannica Track,with its red purple pawn at the bottom of screen, does not require a related Issue to be won for its pawn’s advancement, thereby winning Britain the entered space’s victory points. Instead, the pawn advances if the British player fulfills the next Track space’s prerequisite(s) and rolls a die result of 4 or more. That die roll may be modified per the Pax Britannica Track’s rule 12.4.11.
Finally, with Figure 9, we show a sample of the Allied side’s window used for Congress of Vienna’s Solitaire Game. Playbook Sections 19 through 23 describe the game’s solitaire play options. The Solitaire French side’s window is similar!
Figure 9.- Congress of Vienna Vassal’s Allied CDGSM (Card Driven Game Solitaire Method) Window: You can see the usual five cards in the standard CDGSM Playmat (A to E positions) at the top with four additional decks at screen’s the bottom. In this example, it includes the PUMC Deck (Potentially Usable Military Card) where only the #31 KUTUZOV card has been placed thus far. In the bottom row’s center is Draw Deck C with 17 cards remaining available and, to its right, is the Leader Deck, where the Coalition’s Leader Cards of Czar Alexander for Russia, Austria’s Metternich, and Britain’s Castlereagh are initially placed. Finally, in the bottom row’s upper right side, the Transitory Deck has the face up cards for placing as PUMC as face down in draw deck if not PUMC, just after the Wager.
Hopefully, the preceding encourages you to give Congress of Vienna’s Vassal Module a try with two, three, or a full roster of four players around a fun and friendly gaming table and/or versus its solitaire system.
Concluding Remarks by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer/Editor, Fred Schachter – The preceding provides an overview, a “lay of the land” if you would, of how Congress of Vienna is electronically depicted using VASSAL. To reiterate, CoV’s Vassal Module may be downloaded via: Category:GMT Games – Vassal.
Others are here invited to provide CoV videos of their own regarding the game so we may all continue our Congress of Vienna journeys either directly or vicariously. Hopefully, CoV’s Vassal Module, as well as the physical game, facilitates such creativity.
Please feel free to pose questions and/or feedback via the space InsideGMT provides for this purpose at this article’s conclusion. Thanks for your interest!
As our play testing of “Infernal Machine” continues apace, it is interesting to see how our teaching scenarios can be tinkered with to make sure they are providing much-needed information on game play and hints on strategy, as well as have some fun with the game system.
Scenario Ten has the Player fill the shoes of the Inventor, the “Man with the Dream”, who wants to design, build and then sail an Underwater Marvel of the Industrial Revolution, something that the newspapers have called a “fishboat.”
In the original Scenario Ten, the Player is a citizen of the Confederacy, who sees his fishboat as the means to drive off the Union Navy from the mouth of the Mississippi River.
I decided to see if we could work the scenario in reverse, and have the Union Navy under Admiral David G. Farragut send a ‘fishboat’ of their own up the Mississippi River to blow a hole in the obstructions that the Rebels had built to block the Yankee fleet in front of two fortifications protecting the lower River: Forts Jackson & St. Philip.
Here is what happened:
This time we are on the USA side at start, with our Machine Shop located in Boston, MA.
(Our fishboat is to be constructed at said Machine Shop in Boston, then assigned and shipped to the US Navy’s West Gulf Squadron. They are currently anchored at the mouth of the Mississippi River known as Head of Passes, south of New Orleans. Once there, our fishboat will be ordered to conduct raids (via Towed Launch) on the Rebel defenses centered around “Big Muddy’s” forts “Jackson” & “Saint Philip.”
The Union Player’s time factor is the same as that of the Confederate’s.
Union Adm. Farragut wants to see if “this new-fangled fishboat thingie” can help by raiding ships, clearing obstructions, destroying wharves and generally raising hell near the two forts.
Failure means Farragut’s plan to take New Orleans will hit a snag.
This won’t do Union General Benjamin “Beast” Butler’s short-fuse temper any good either The first image (see below) is at the end of Summer 1861, with hull built and Magnetic Engine installed, and an Air Lock next up for inclusion. This looks promising, with 2nd Mechanic converting a Journeyman to (Oh joy!) Sam Eakins of “Alligator” fame! Investments made on both Spring & Summer were middling. Autumn 1861 will have action beginning on Contract to keep funds flowing. Yep, Autumn ’61 is looking very interesting.
As I was running a previous playtest, I surmised that, if the Union Admiralty was less sold on traditional sailing warship practices and kept up with the advances being made through nautical engineering, they could have gotten out of the fishboat starting gate at the same time as Horace Hunley, James McClintock & Baxter Watson did in New Orleans.
If so, then the best place in Yankee-dom for a civilian contractor wanting the most up-to-date technology, along with the mechanics and engineers to wield it would be Boston, Massachusetts.
There were the Sciences and Engineering Departments at Harvard University, and also to the newly-founded (1861) Massachusetts Institute of Technology just next door to Harvard in the Cambridge suburb.
MIT’s engineering wizards of the era were a marvelously rich source; the Inventor’s team would be up-to-date on all the latest technical advancements, and just might be able to get their educated hands on a real engineering marvel: British physicist & inventor Michael Faraday’s battery-powered Magnetic Engine.
The choice of an Air Lock as the fishboat’s primary weapons delivery system would be easy to obtain from any competent steamship chandlery down at Boston Harbor, and a reputable salvage operation would be a source for a salvage and demolition Diver with the proper credentials.
Two guidelines to follow when starting this scenario:
1) Get a good Investor to start with. Mine is French émigré Brutus de Villeroi, a wealthy ex-French aristocrat, who is a naval designer, engineer and a self-described “Natural Genius.”
(At least that is what he told the Immigration folks his occupation was upon his arrival in New York City.)
2) Make sure you are hiring a capable multi-Expertise gang of Mechanics. You will need at least 12 Expertise total between your Shop and your crew so you can install the Magnetic Engine as soon as possible.
My plan is to finish building and training by Winter, 1862.
The fishboat and team will then deploy to the Gulf in Spring of 1862 where training missions and final tinkering occurs.
This will leave the Summer of 1862 is the only season for any additional training, plus the all-important attack mission.
“Fish Boat” under construction at Boston, Summer 1861
One more thing: you’ve got to make sure of your money.
Once you’ve got that key Mechanism in hand, (Mine will be the Magnetic Engine), you are looking at adding the Prow and Stern, plus one or two Boat Sections, a Steering Linkage, Ballast Tank, Propeller and Hatch.
Autumn 1861 is coming up. To scare up some ready cash, I plan to shift some Journeymen over to Contract work at that time, plus make another run at the Investment Table.
Hey, if it was easy being an Inventor of Fishboats, everybody would be one!
So here’s Autumn, 1861 where the “Spectre” (cool name, huh?) is being fitted out in Boston, MA.
Of course, I hadn’t paid attention to the weather.
In game terms, Boston in Autumn is little different from Boston in Winter, the only difference is that you still have a relatively active Machine Shop that brings in $7. In Winter, that Shop income plummets to $3.
Autumn is also the season our Boston machine shop will “promote” a Journeyman to Mechanic. This got me Mechanic Lodner Philips who can, once per game, promote a Journeyman to Mechanic all on his own, which he will do in Winter of 1862.
Praise the Autumn 1861 “Fortunes of War” table.
I rolled a 7 and got another Investor (instead of a Black Cube), one Professor Eben Horsford, currently on sabbatical from MIT who is Investing his grant money in our little fishboat project here.
His initial stipend plus that of Prof. de Villeroi’s funded the purchase of two hatches, a set of keel weights, plus a propeller and its shroud.
Fingers crossed, I should have enough for a steering linkage plus a snorkel and maybe a ballast/level tank pair.
With Winter 1862 coming up, Horsford and de Villeroi should “invest” a total of $15 as their “Holiday Gift” to the shop to bolster that meager $3 shop intake for the season. Despite there being only one Action this season, it has been a productive one for Project Spectre.
(Incidentally, I decided to drop the one season transfer cost for moving the completed fishboat from Boston to Head of Passes. Per the American Enterprise Institute, travel by steamship in 1857 between New York & New Orleans took just six days, with Boston to New York adding a half day steaming time.)
Thus, I have Spring, 1862 to complete building “Spectre” and deploy her to Head of Passes in Louisiana, leaving one Training mission and one Attack mission for Summer, 1862.
This is a tight schedule.
Each season’s Fortunes of War/Event could easily mess things up.
“Spectre” shown in final stages of construction. Note Magnetic Engine and improved propeller.
Winter 1862 turn finds Mechanic Sam Eakins exercising his Special Ability to add a second Action for the season. He’s quite the motivator, that one!
True to form Brutus de Villeroi & Professor Eben Horsford together add their $15 yearly benefit.
While at Eakins’ party, Mechanic Lodner Phillips uses his Special Ability to convince de Villeroi’s wife Eulalie to replace a departing Journeyman, which results in Eulalie de Villeroi joining both the project and the crew!
Remember, these are Mechanics, not superstitious Sailors.
Being French, de Villeroi is very proficient with pistol and saber.
As is Eulalie!
Winter, 1862’s first Action is an Investment Check of $5
A dr of 8 yields not only a $10 return but adds Investor Augusta Price, who adds $40 more to the project’s treasury.
This allows the crew to use the remaining Action to complete the “Spectre’s” mechanism manifest by adding a ballast tank combination, snorkel, periscope and gearbox.
A cold February Saturday finds all hands present on the wharf at Boston Harbor as the “Spectre” is loaded onto the deck of the USS “Varuna.”
With Investors Horsford and Price waving goodbye, “Spectre” and crew set out for Head of Passes, Louisiana and warmer climes.
Spectre construction completed
[Caption: “Spectre’s” Gauges Board at the close of Winter 1862. The crew positions assigned by de Villeroi have him Steering, with Eakins & Lodner Phillips in reserve if needed.
Log entry:
Acting Master Samuel V. Eakins, USS “Spectre.”
17 February 1862 – Aboard U.S.S. “Varuna” – at Sea, off coast of Long Island, NY.
(At this point I will let excerpts from Master Eakins’ personal log book tell the story of the “Spectre” and her crew on their journey from Boston to the mouth of the Mississippi River.)
-X-
We left Boston Harbor this morning about 10 o’clock. All passengers affiliated with the “Spectre” were assigned bunk space in officer’s quarters and had their gear stowed. The “Spectre” itself is currently tied down atop the central hold access gratings, lashed fore and aft between fore and mainmasts to prevent pitching during rough seas.
Which we’ve had plenty of, as the ship’s captain, Commander Charles S. Boggs, is determined to set a record for the fastest passage between Boston and the Gulf. To that end, “Varuna” was bouncing off a heavy snow squall in Long Island Sound that forced Boggs to tack continuously across the wind, with only the foretop sails set to assist “Varuna’s” remarkably noisy steam engine.
I’ve offered Boggs our mechanical assistance to help speed “Varuna” along.
Boggs sniffed at me, stole a glance at “Spectre” gently rocking in her stays on the main deck, and spat a large brown stream of tobacco juice over the side. Apparently, Captain Boggs enjoys his tobacco in its natural state.
The storm is really kicking up a fuss, with winds in excess of 20 knots and seas of 10 to 15 feet and increasing the further south we go, which is bad news for my crew of landlubbers.
Most of them are seasick, as is Madame de Villeroi who is being ministered to by the ship’s surgeon and de Villeroi himself.
I’ve avoided the effects of “mal de mer” by placing a sliver of fresh-cut ginger root under my tongue.
The “Varuna’s” helmsman, a garrulous Irishman named Reagan says we should be sailing out of the storm by the time we reach Cape May off New Jersey,
” – an’ that be some-toyme ter-night, Lord willing yore worship, sorr.”
We will see.
Log entry 18 February 1862 – Aboard USS “Varuna” – at sea off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
It is late afternoon (“Six Bells of the Afternoon Watch.”)
We’ve sailed out of yesterday’s snow storm and into a steady rain that has soaked through just about everything on board “Varuna”.
Thankfully, we’ve not encountered the usual gales found here above the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” but that may just be “Sailors Luck,” as the “Varuna’s” crew have it. Commander Boggs’ men are about as taciturn a gang of bluejackets as their skipper.
Though they are professional seamen, to a man they do have a sailor’s curiosity about “new-fangled equipment” and were very curious about “Jus’ whut be thet thang lashed down on th’ Main be, sorr?”
I’ve told my team to be friendly but not informative to the sailors about “Spectre.” The ship’s officers are another matter, and de Villeroi and I will be discussing where we are heading exactly, and when will we get there?
Before we left, the telegraph had brought news of Admiral Farragut’s West Gulf Squadron departing Pensacola for Head of Passes, which means he and the Squadron should be there by tomorrow afternoon.
The clock is ticking on our little venture.
Log entry, 19 February 1862 – USS “Varuna” – at Sea off St. Augustine, Florida.
We are making good time on our journey to Head of Passes. As we sailed past Flag Officer DuPont’s South Atlantic Blockade Squadron off Savannah, a US Navy cutter hailed us, then came along side “Varuna” and delivered the mail and a communique from Flag Officer DuPont, who wished us “…good luck in your endeavor, and death to the Rebels, every one!”
Commander Boggs read the communique to the ship’s crew, and to our crew as well. It got the usual response of sniffs, coughs and suppressed chuckling from the swabbies at the back of the gathering. Boggs glared back at those assembled but said nothing, then pulled his hat down in front and stalked off to his cabin.
Seems our crew of jolly tars have several among them “from Maryland,” which means they are Southern by birth; not necessarily “from Maryland” but still loyal to the Union, as far as that goes.
Serving on “Varuna” is Master’s Mate Henrik Schenderhans, a likeable Dutchman from Hoorn in Holland.
Henrik (he prefers this “familiarity” over my stumbling over his last name all the time) says that “Dis regionalz grumblin’ vill schtop!” as soon as “Varuna” joins Farragut on the Mississippi.
The meeting with Boggs’ officers over dinner last night was a frost.
None of them saw any advantage in sneaking up on the Rebels, blowing things up, then sneaking away again.
If sneaking means you get home with an undamaged fishboat and an uninjured crew, then I’ll have a double-helping of “Sneaking” and keep it coming, thank you very much.
Log entry, 20 February 1862 – USS “Varuna” – at Sea off Tampa, Florida.
We entered the Gulf of Mexico sometime last night, leaving cold, rainy and snowy weather behind for the balmy sun-soaked breezes of the Caribbean at about Six Bells in the Forenoon Watch (10:30 am).
Because of high winds in the Straits of Florida, we had to hug the coast, which brought us past Fort Jefferson to starboard. If there is any place more remote and forlorn than the Dry Tortugas islands, I don’t know of it.
God help the men who are building this monster way out here in the middle of the ocean, and it being all brick and masonry for the most part.
The February sun beating down was hot enough on board to have sailor and crew stripped to the waist for comfort.
Poor Eulalie, being a lady, could not partake, though she did strip down to her chemise and a skirt and sported a parasol while on deck.
We should be off Mobile, Alabama soon, perhaps by tomorrow.
The next day should find us at Head of Passes, where our work really begins.
Log entry, 21 February 1862 – USS “Varuna” – at Sea off Mobile, Alabama.
Early this morning at Six Bells in the Morning Watch (6:30 am), we joined the Navy’s West Gulf Squadron off Ship Island, Mississippi.
Commander Boggs went ashore to report.
The harbor master at Ship Island promptly told Commander Boggs to get back on “Varuna” and “report to Admiral Farragut at Head of Passes. Now, Commander!”
Boggs did just that, and has driven his crew like John Paul Jones with a wasp in his pants; telling his engineers and stokers to make all steam possible and the navigation officer to plot the fastest course to the mouth of the Mississippi, “Because I mean to beat Farragut there or know the reason why!”
de Villeroi and the rest of us are busy attending to “Spectre,” getting her ready for her debut tomorrow on “Big Muddy.”
Log entry, 22 February 1862 – Head of Passes, Louisiana.
This will have to be short, as we are casting off on our first training mission.
A while ago, Commander Boggs mustered the Spectre” crew on the aft deck and addressed us.
In his gruff manner, Boggs complimented us on our skills, our perseverance and our bravery, and said “that we could ship with him anytime we asked to.”
There’s been some argument between de Villeroi, Philips and myself over who will be at the helm of “Spectre”.
de Villeroi won the toss, darn his luck…
… and there’s Philips blowing his bosun’s whistle, which means we are about to get underway.
Faraday’s Engine has been tuned up, and that gearbox we got from Robert Stephenson has been quietly whirring away in its machine oil coating in anticipation of the trip we will be making.
I’ve also had a word with our Diver. Signor Stefano Rojas knows the Air Lock’s operation, both out and in.
We are as ready as we will ever be!
-End of excerpt-
-X-
Turn 5 – Spring 1862 –
After settling an argument on the merits of Union General Hunter’s emancipating the Carolina Sea Island slaves, (-$1 to the Pilot Town Tavern’s keeper for breakage) “Spectre’s” crew began its first training mission, sailing up the Mississippi past Tripod, then past Alligator Station and Northeast Point, then returned to Head of Passes, both “Spectre” and crew passing their first sea trial.
In the process they repaired a snag-clogged propeller shroud at send-off.
Next, “Spectre” passed Alligator Station while surfaced.
de Villeroi then ordered “Spectre” to be crash-dived thru Awash depth to Below Shallow on her first dive to show that the Ballast/Level system worked as he had designed it to. He then ordered “Spectre” back to the surface and sailed home to Head of Passes.
With a total of four black cubes against one red cube earned on this mission, “Spectre’s” success attracted a new Investor (per Rule Book p. 43), and Russell Sturgis joins the team, adding $15 to the treasury (that is now at $52).
Sturgis’ Special Ability is to bring another Investor on once per game.
On being informed by de Villeroi of the success of this first training mission, Admiral Farragut ordered another training mission forthwith.
“Spectre’s” second training mission had Northeast Point as its goal.
Almost from the start, equipment began to malfunction.
First, the Gearbox began acting up.
Next the Steering Linkage locked, but Eulalie de Villeroi was there with her toolbox and repaired it while dodging her husband’s feet at the helm.
At Alligator Station, a seal in the forward Ballast tank ruptured which submerged “Spectre” to Awash depth (and caused Lodner Philips to Panic), before Eulalie got that Malfunction repaired.
Entering Northeast Point, de Villeroi ordered a descent to Below Shallow. At that point the gearbox began to Malfunction again, this time dropping the Power Grade from “A” to “B”. de Villeroi immediately surfaced the boat, reversed course and headed back downriver to Head of Passes.
Arriving there, the “Spectre” got caught in a current drift and sprung a leak in an aft hull seam. Recovery was uneventful, with repairs being needed on the gearbox and an aft hull seam.
Back alongside USS “Varuna” that was now serving as tender for “Spectre,” de Villeroi and Eakins determined that the aft-section Leak was caused by an impact to the Shroud’s support framing that had cracked through into the lower propeller mount, and then carried along the lower hull seam for about a foot and a half. Fortunately, de Villeroi had requested that the “Varuna” be fitted with a forge and metalworking shop, whose machinists and shipwrights joined “Spectre’s” crew in lifting and positioning “Spectre” on “Varuna’s” main deck to repair the aft hull leak. As for the jammed gearbox, mechanic J.B. Morrell discovered that the clutch mechanism responsible for changing gear speed had broken a tooth in its cog, which caused the jam. Morrell and Lodner Philips got busy fashioning a new clutch gear for the mechanism.
Spring slowly changing to Summer found that repairs to “Spectre” had been completed satisfactorily.
An examination by de Villeroi, Eakins and the assembled mechanics declared the “Spectre” fit for duty.
As the “Varuna’s” launch carried de Villeroi and Eakins and their good news to USS “Hartford,” (Admiral Farragut’s flagship) the West Gulf Squadron’s mortar schooner fleet opened a thunderous barrage upon the Rebel forts ”Jackson” and “St. Philip.”
In the din, Eakins leaned over, tapped de Villeroi on the leg and pointed back towards “Varuna.”
de Villeroi turned just in time to see the “Spectre” being swung over “Varuna’s” starboard side and lowered into the Mississippi.
Turning to look back at Eakins, de Villeroi realized that “Spectre’s” and their time to act had just gotten significantly shorter.
Union Gauges sheet shows “Spectre” with 2 Training Levels at the start of her Attack mission. Note that Brutus de Villeroi and wife Eulalie occupy the steering helm under the forward hatch. The Faraday (Magnetic) Engine occupies the whole of the next tile aft, with the rest of the crew occupying the stern. Also note that the second successful training mission netted another Investor.
And so, to war.
“Spectre” departed the fleet anchorage to the cheers of the sailors on board USS “Varuna.”
de Villeroi, standing in the fore and aft hatches took the cheers, doffing his hat as “Spectre” passed under “Old Glory” on the stern of USS “Hartford.”
His hat tip was returned by both Admiral Farragut, Commander Boggs.
“Spectre” leaves Head of Passes heading up the Mississippi River.
Steering for the westernmost bank of the “Big Muddy,” de Villeroi ordered half speed on the Faraday Engine, to which Mechanic Lodner Philips complied. de Villeroi chose his course well, staying in the calmer shore current as “Spectre” passed the old semaphore “Tripod” on the eastern river bank. Alligator Station also proved to be a calm passage, the Faraday humming along as fresh air whistled through the open hatches. A solid blanket of clouds kept Ol’ Man Moon from an unwanted appearance, while the wind gusts tested de Villeroi’s steering ability. Northeast Point saw the first malfunction, being a ballast pump valve stuck open, diving the “Spectre” from Surface to Awash. Eulalie de Villeroi assisted Acting Master Sam Eakins in freeing up, replacing the defective ballast pump valve and then surfacing the “Spectre” once more. Rounding the bend just south of The Jump, Lodner Philips spotted some watch fires ahead, whereupon de Villeroi had Eakins crash dive the boat to Below Shallow to avoid detection.
“Spectre” passes The Jump.
de Villeroi kept the “Spectre’s” bow pointed into the river’s current as it slowly passed the old Salt Works factory.
At this point the Faraday Engine decided to kick up a fuss.
Though making a racket (and panicking Lodner Philips) it was still capable of forward motion at the current Easy pace, but needed fixing should de Villeroi need flank speed at any point in the journey.
With Lodner cowering behind the Leveling Tank it was up to J.B. Morrell and Eulalie de Villeroi teaming up to effect repairs.
After several tentative crackles and a whiff of ozone, the Faraday recovered its comfortable hum. As they approached Beaver Station, de Villeroi told the rest of the crew that “Spectre’s” mission was to blow a hole in the submerged river obstructions near the eastern shore of the river.
Raising the boat from Below Shallow to Awash enabled de Villeroi to use the periscope to confirm that “Spectre” had arrived in the right place.
de Villeroi ordered Eakins to dive the boat back to Below Shallow, and to get Diver Stefano Rojas ready for duty.
Diver Rojas prepares to disembark with his demolition charge.
Lugging his demolition torpedo, Diver Rojas exited “Spectre’s” Air Lock.
J.B. Morrell and Eulalie both kept an eye on the Faraday Engine at this crucial moment of the mission.
Rojas’ journey to his target was slowed by the inevitable silting up that the Mississippi had “dusted” the fascines and “dragon’s teeth.”
Diver Rojas plants the demolition charge on target
Uncovering a pre-existing Rebel-made passage through the line of Obstructions, Rojas placed the Large Charge on the left side base of the obstructions.
Upon detonation, the charge would widen the Rebel’s current passage, and the stronger river current would carry additional debris of the explosion downstream, making the breach even wider.
Once set, Diver Rojas carefully returned to the “Spectre’s” Air Lock and climbed inside, cycling the water-filled Air Lock and replacing it with air.
Rojas hooked the charge’s insulated electrical wires to a bank of Leyden Jar batteries, then climbed through the Air Lock access hatch and into the main cabin. At a nod from Rojas, Eakins threw a nearby switch.
A most satisfying “THUMP!” resulted, that was not only heard but felt through the hull. Success!
Image 9: (Tactical Board)[caption: The demolition charge destroys the Obstructions.]
The demolition charge destroys the Obstructions.
“Let’s get out of here,” bellowed Eakins, as de Villeroi executed a classic pirouette that reversed “Spectre’s” course heading to downstream and home.
Instead of skulking along in the shallows to avoid the worst of the Mississippi’s current, de Villeroi now swung “Spectre” into the main channel, letting Big Muddy take the strain of travel while the Faraday engine was recharging the Leyden Jars. Double the number of watch fires now burned on both banks of the Mississippi, while picket boats swarmed like angry hornets on the river’s surface.
But “Spectre” lived up to her name, ghosting along safe in the rivers depths.
As “Spectre” passed opposite Northeast Point, a mid-evening fog bank rolled in which further hampered Confederate pursuit –
Image 10: (Mission Board) [caption: “Spectre” passes Northeast Point as the Fog rolls in.]
“Spectre” passes Northeast Point as the Fog rolls in.
When “Spectre” arrived back at Head of Passes, the Faraday Engine conked out again just as “Spectre” pulled alongside USS “Varuna.”
As de Villeroi opened the forward hatch, a sailor on “Varuna’s” fo’csle hollered “How was yer huntin,’ boys?”
Standing in the aft hatch, Lodner Philips reached down, pulled a broom out and waved it energetically over his head: a “clean sweep!”
The “Varuna’s” crew erupted in cheers, and Commander Boggs ordering a signal gun fired to alert Admiral Farragut of “Spectre’s” safe arrival.
Sighing, de Villeroi pulled a cigar from his vest pocket.
Lighting it up, he took a long drag of Havana tobacco smoke and permitted himself a rare smile.
Looking down through the hatch he saw his wife Eulalie looking up at him.
Eulalie was smiling, too.
May, 1862.
Having visited the White House and been feted by President Lincoln and Washington society, the de Villeroi’s were taking the train back to their Machine Shop in Boston, Massachusetts.
The destruction of the Confederate river barriers below Forts Jackson & St. Philip allowed Farragut’s fleet to sail virtually unchecked past those two old piles of now-smoldering masonry.
The massive Confederate ironclad CSS “Louisiana” took a close-in pounding from the West Gulf Squadron and was last seen, adrift and on fire from stem to stern, floating downriver to the Gulf of Mexico, together with the wrecked remnants of the Rebel river fleet.
Upon a unanimous vote by the city council, New Orleans was declared an “Open City.” The councilmen then fled upriver to the state capital at Baton Rouge.
Union General Benjamin Butler and his soldiers were received by the now-leaderless Crescent City with something less than open arms.
Though there were still a number of firebrands calling for guerilla and urban warfare, most of the populace shrugged their collective shoulders and got on with life.
On de Villeroi’s recommendation, Acting Master Samuel Eakins was inducted into the US Navy and promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.
Lithograph image showing the Washington Navy Yard during the Civil War {source: history.navy.mil}
de Villeroi’s crew all returned to the Washington Navy Yard as contracted civilian Mechanics in the Navy’s newly-created Bureau for Underwater Research.
And they all lived (those that survived the war, at least) happily ever after.
The stewardship of the U.S. economy is one of the most important political concerns for modern U.S. presidents, and American economic performance has a large and undeniable impact on election outcomes. Yet Mr. President isn’t, and doesn’t want to be, a macroeconomic simulator. The complexity of macroeconomic modeling, the limited effectiveness of most economic tools, time delays, confounding factors… the list goes on and on, and macroeconomics in particular (the study of aggregates, as opposed to microeconomics’ focus on how individual people and firms make decisions) has competing schools of academic thought. Mr. President is about a balancing act at a higher level, and the problems you’ll confront are more practical.
This Crisis card represents a major bank failure. Like many other Cascading Events it has a clear play-around: if you can rescue the economy and get it back to 6 or more, then its stage 2 and 3 events will fizzle. Many of the economy-themed Crisis cards adjust one of the four State of the Economy tracks modeled in the game – U.S., China, Russia, and the Eurozone.
Sometimes one power’s economic problem is another’s opportunity – here we see Crisis Card #72, Oil Prices Spike to Record Highs. This card shows a unique pattern: in addition to immediate political pain in the form of Domestic Crisis and a Public Approval penalty, the public demands specific action in the form of energy independence legislation. Russia, as a major gas exporter, gets an immediate economic bonus; and if China and the U.S. are on good terms, a deal can be struck to help both countries recover.
But why do these economic tracks matter? For you, as U.S. President, a strong economy will offer political advantages. At high levels, you’ll get continuous upward pressure on your approval rating, bonus Action Points, and Congress will warm to you (every elected official wants to be seen as part of the solution to economic problems!). You’ll also get Economic Assistance actions that allow dice-free improvements to relationships with foreign allies or Regional Alignment – and those are precious, because it’s often easy to miss on them with standard actions, and high Regional Alignment will help you counteract the spread of Russian and Chinese influence. But a poor economy will cost you in all of these things, particularly with respect to your relations with Congress.
For Russia and China, your peer rivals in Mr. President, economic success brings bonus actions during their activation segments. This generally leads to more headaches for you: more influence spread, more military growth, or even war.
The Eurozone’s economy mostly drives that region’s Stability – at high levels, there are a couple of phases where the Eurozone can improve its Stability just by having a good economic level. Stability, of course, limits the presence of terror groups and civil wars, so more stability almost always means fewer headaches for you as President.
TRADE AND SANCTIONS
Two economic elements that get some explicit handling in Mr. President are Trade Agreements and Sanctions. Trade agreements, created with the Make a Trade Agreement action, require good relations with Congress to have a reasonable chance at passing, and carry a host of benefits and risks. In high Stability regions, they can lead to a lot of American economic gains on the State of the Economy and Public Approval tracks. They can also directly remove Russian and Chinese influence. But they can also lead to friction in both the trade partner’s Region and at home. Maximizing the impact of Trade Agreements requires a close eye on actions that preserve or improve Stability, and a strong relationship with Congress.
Sanctions, conversely, can only be targeted at four specific nations: Russia, China, the DPRK, and Iran. Sanctions make it harder for the latter two to develop their nuclear programs, and consume critical actions from Russia’s and China’s action budgets (which may mean fewer actions to spare for greater mischief).
WRAPPING UP
That may have seemed like a lot, but the simple track-based approach for modeling economic health, and the relatively small but well-purposed suite of actions that allows the player to interact with them, give economic considerations a scope and complexity budget appropriate to Mr. President’s big-picture design approach. The most complicated economic phenomena are reserved for the Crisis Cards, who can use their individual text to inject economic uncertainty and drama into the game without requiring players to learn a complicated economic model.
Ananda’s Previous Articles about digital Mr. President:
You can also check out Exia’s Mr. President Substack here for updates and perspectives from Exia’s artists, programmers, and developers.
This is the second in a series of InsideGMT articles from Paul Hellyer about his board game Tsar, currently on GMT’s P500. You can view the first article here.
As part of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896, the Tsarist regime planned an event to placate the common people of Moscow: a giveaway of food, kvass, and souvenirs at the fairgrounds known as Khodynka Fields. By early morning, hundreds of thousands of people had already gathered in eager anticipation. As often happened, the government’s plans were incompetent. The number of police on hand was woefully inadequate and the terrain dangerously uneven. When rumors of a shortage circulated, the crowd surged forward, people began to stumble and fall into ditches, and mounted police were swept along with them. Within minutes, 1,300 people were crushed to death. That evening, Nicholas attended a ball as scheduled, leaving the impression he was indifferent. The “Khodynka Tragedy” (or “Khodynka Massacre” as some called it) became a symbol of the regime’s callousness. People took it as a sign that Nicholas’s reign was cursed.
In the game, a Coded Card recreates this event at a fixed point in time. In the first round of 1896 (the winter Quarter), players get an instruction to seed this card in the game board’s “Q+2” slot, meaning it will be played two Quarters later, in summer 1896. The card is viewable at any time so players can plan for it. Like all the events in Tsar, Public Banquet on Khodynka Fields presents a mix of historical reality and player agency: the event might unfold as it did in real life or, through careful planning, the players might achieve a happier outcome. To avoid the tragedy, players need a competent government (as measured by the Total Adviser Rating in the red circle) and at least 2 Gold (to buy adequate supplies).
These requirements are not particularly difficult to achieve, but like the real-life regime, players will be distracted by their own factional ambitions, which exist in tension with the need for responsible government. Will you appoint the most competent advisors, or prioritize your own Faction’s Characters to maximize power for yourself? Will you leave enough Gold for this event, or spend it on your Faction’s scoring goals? One player has an immediate incentive to avoid disaster: the player who controls the Tsar’s current “Favorite” Character. The Favorite occupies an asymmetric role in the game, with enhanced authority over government appointments and scheduling, but with the burden of personal responsibility for setbacks. If the Khodynka tragedy occurs, the Tsar will direct his anger at the Favorite, as represented by the yellow “Favor -2” icon shown on the card. The other players in the game might also want to avoid destabilizing the regime or, if they’re in a more aggressive mood, might deliberately maneuver toward disaster to unseat the Favorite. These factional problems drive the game’s strategy as well as its simulation of the weak government that plagued Russia in the Tsarist period.
The Port Arthur Coded Card is another example of a card based on a specific historical event. After winning the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Japan forced China to cede Port Arthur, a strategic port city in northwest China known today as Dalian. This move alarmed the Tsar, who coveted Port Arthur for its year-round, ice-free access to the Pacific Ocean. With support from France and Germany, Russia pressured Japan to give up its claims to Port Arthur, supposedly out of concern for Chinese territorial integrity. Next, Russia shamelessly grabbed Port Arthur for itself by pressuring China to sign a long-term “lease.” Japan was infuriated, and this incident became a key cause of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.
The Port Arthur Card has several functional differences as compared to Khodynka Fields. The latter card applies one of two possible outcomes based on current conditions without giving players any choice—although it does depend on choices players made before resolving the card. Port Arthur, however, is a Council Decision with two numbered options: as long as players meet the requirements for Option 2, they may choose between the two options. The choice is made collectively through a simple bidding process using Influence Cubes (we’ll discuss decision mechanics in more detail in a later article). Tsar uses a mix of condition-type cards like Khodynka Fields and decision-type cards like Port Arthur, but either way events always have alternate outcomes, ranging from two to six different possibilities.
Although Port Arthur is initially seeded at a fixed point in time (Winter 1896), it can be reintroduced through the randomly-drawn Era Card The Kaiser, so that if players fail to secure Option 2 on their first attempt, they might get a second chance later in the game. This is why Port Arthur’sOUTLOOK instruction for Option 1 tells players to return the card to its deck (so that it can be drawn again), while the OUTLOOK instruction for Option 2 tells players to remove the card from the game (so that players can’t seize Port Arthur twice). Likewise, The Kaiser’s Option 1 removes the card but Option 2 leaves intact the default discard rule for Era Cards. Many cards have distinctions like this in their OUTLOOK fields, so that the game can distinguish between outcomes that might recur and outcomes that can happen only once.
Another difference compared to Khodynka Fields is that Port Arthur is a scoring goal for the Autocracy and Pragmatism Factions, so this card is more likely to provoke a struggle in multiplayer games. But like all scoring goals in the game, seizing Port Arthuralso contributes some non-scoring benefits: it boosts Russia’s Trade Capacity, raises Navy Morale, and increases Popular Support in the Bourgeoisie Sector. It also avoids the Favor penalty that comes with Option 1. These other features give non-scoring players something to consider: in a solitaire game, Dynasty or Reform players might still want Option 2, and in a multiplayer game, they might dial back their opposition.
Aside from its immediate effects, Port Arthur also impacts the game’s narrative direction and legacy-style play. The “Japan -2” effect means that Russia’s relations with Japan are dropping by two points, putting Russia and Japan closer to war. You still have a chance to avoid war through diplomatic maneuvers or by shoring up your defenses, but otherwise, seizing Port Arthur means you will fight the Russo-Japanese War in Era II. (Each Era is played as a separate game in a legacy style, with Era II bifurcated into peacetime and wartime tracks.) This is one of the clearest examples of the way your choices in Tsar can change history.
Tsar’s Coded Card and Q-Slot system can also support longer-term, multi-stage events such as Trans-Siberian Railway. During Era I setup, you’ll place this Coded Card in the active Hand that players share; if players choose Option 1 (“Begin work . . .”), they’ll have a chance to apply Option 2 and complete a stage of the railway two Quarters later. At that point, the card will be reseeded in the Q+4 slot, so that work on the next stage can begin one year later. This card will remain in play until the railway’s three stages are complete. Aside from advancing the players’ scoring goals for Industrialization and Grain Production, Trans-Siberian Railway also alters the historical story, albeit in a more subtle way than Port Arthur. This card is one of many that shape the game’s economic history, which in turn affects the regime’s ability to project its power and survive. When war arrives, you will find the outcome depends on Russia’s infrastructure, economy, and political stability.
Many other events in Tsar are generated randomly through the shuffled Era Decks. These decks include “All Era” cards that mostly feature generic, repeatable events like Drought and The Tsar Greets a Crowd, mixed together with Era-specific cards like Bosnian Crisis (Era III), Greco-Turkish War (Era I), and Maxim Gorky (Era III). Because they are shuffled randomly, the timing of these cards is unknown and they may not be drawn at all. This enhances the variability of the game and gives players a mix of long-term planning goals and short-term opportunities. The more problematic events in the “Unrest” and “Famine” decks are also shuffled randomly, but these are drawn only under certain conditions. (Drought is one example of how a Famine Card might be triggered.)
The game also includes many events that never happened in history, but might have happened. During the Russo-Japanese War, the British Empire came very close to entering the war on the side of its ally Japan—and in this game, that can happen if you don’t manage your relations with Britain carefully enough. Other alternate histories include political reforms that Nicholas II rejected in real life, Russian control of the Turkish Straits (see the Coded Card above), a military alliance with Germany, and construction of the Moskva-Volga Canal. That last one is something that actually occurred later (during the Stalinist period), and there are a few other features in the game that draw their inspiration from post-1917 events.
In the next InsideGMT article in this series, we’ll examine how Tsar’s game engine simulates the regime’s stability and the possibility of revolution.
As seen on TV, or at least in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, the Leper King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was a striking figure in a silver mask to hide his leprosy. There is no evidence that Baldwin IV wore a mask, though he suffered from disfigurement of his face and limbs as his disease advanced. When he was young, he was considered quite handsome, though sometime after ascending the throne at around the age of thirteen his leprosy accelerated. How disfigured he was at the time of Montgisard is unclear with some sources saying he was unable to lead the army and others saying he was at the head of it. What is known is that six years later he could not walk unaided and was blind.
King Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Baldwin was thirteen when he ascended the throne and a regent was appointed. When he reached the age of fifteen and was King without a regent, he planned an invasion of the Ayyubbid Kingdom of Egypt. He had some success against Saladin in 1176, but needed ships to besiege the port cities along the coast. He formed a short-lived alliance with Byzantium that fell apart before they could make headway in the invasion.
While the army of Jerusalem was engaged in the north helping Raymond of Tripoli attack Hama, Saladin planned his own invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from Egypt. Learning of Saladin’s plans, Baldwin IV, a teenager with leprosy but a most able commander, left Jerusalem with, according to William of Tyre, only 375 knights to attempt a defense at Ascalon, but Baldwin was stalled there by a detachment of troops sent by Saladin, who, again according to William of Tyre, had 26,000 men. Accompanying Baldwin was Raynald of Chatillon, Lord of Oultrejordain, who had just been released from captivity in Aleppo in 1176. Raynald was a fierce enemy of Saladin, and was the effective commander of the army, with King Baldwin too ill to command it personally.
The Christians, led by the King, pursued the Muslims along the coast, finally catching their enemies at Montgisard near Ramla. Saladin was taken totally by surprise. His army was in disarray, out of formation and tired from a long march. The Islamic army, in a state of panic, scrambled to make battle lines against the enemy. As Saladin’s army rushed to prepare, Baldwin began the charge across the sand.
The Jerusalem army smashed into the hurriedly arranged Muslims, inflicting huge casualties. The King, fighting with bandaged hands to cover his terrible wounds and sores, was in the thick of the fighting and Saladin’s men were quickly overwhelmed. They tried to flee but hardly any escaped. Saladin himself only avoided capture by escaping on a racing camel. Only one tenth of his army made it back to Egypt with him.
The historical text above was lifted from the Infidel Battle Book’s Historical Background for the Battle of Montgisard. In the game, the Army of Jerusalem is only 10 units arrayed against 65 Ayyubid units. That sounds like it should be a one-side loss for Jerusalem, but the Ayyubid army begins in complete disarray and within Charge range of the Knights!
(Note that the stream and hill in the image is ignored for the Battle of Montgisard)
You can learn more or pre-order the Men of Iron Tri-Pack 2nd Printing here.
In today’s article, I wish to discuss the context around designing A Fading Star as an ongoing conflict. The game covers a pivotal period of the Somali Civil War (2007-2014), which one could term “the golden age of Al-Shabaab.” But since I started working on the game and researching this topic, the situation that stemmed from this timeframe evolved. As the designer of a game about an ongoing topic, how do I position myself with those developments? What are some of the themes approached in the game that are still relevant today?
Let’s look at a timeline of the Civil War.
A timeline of the Somali Civil War, as covered by various different games
About a decade will have elapsed between the end of the timeframe depicted in AFS and when the game should hopefully hit the player’s table. Within that decade, the latest documentation I used to establish the model was from 2021. Simply put, there will be a 5-year “information void” where the latest expert studies and journalist investigations on the civil war will be unaccounted for in my model. And…that is all right! The first challenge in designing a modern ongoing conflict is to accept that we have to set hard bounds if we want to achieve a cohesive result, and to learn to not look back on this decision.
A less easy task is to contemplate the war’s latest developments and avoid seeing validation bias! In AFS, we ask open questions, some biased, some open-ended. How about checking some of those developments and how they relate to these game statements? Rather than a faction-per-faction analysis, let us focus on the Federal Government and how the institution operated over the years.
A “fixed” Somalia?
The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is comprised of six federal member states (FMS), each with its own degree of autonomy (or independence in the case of Somaliland). The biggest challenge for the internationally recognized government back in 2007 was to earn legitimacy and the trust of the FMS through state-building and interclan diplomacy. Not quite the easy fit when your seat of power is besieged by an all-mighty Islamist insurgency and your only military support at the time came in the form of an unpopular foreign occupation from eternal rival Ethiopia.
Through combined efforts with African Union forces, Al-Shaabab was ousted from all major urban centers in the country by 2012, allowing the FGS to achieve the minimal degree of legitimacy it needed for the country to start recovering from its status of failed state. The same year, delegates from most FMS would gather to approve a Provisional Constitution, setting another important milestone. A Fading Star’s timeframe closes around this period, with Al-Shabaab on the backfoot and still a looming number of tasks for the government to settle now that the country is back on track.
Navigating through several crises between institutions in the following years (2021 and 2024), the FGS would also see several political figures from various horizons being voted in by clan representatives, alternating between rival sides without blood being shed. After two traumatizing decades of warlord conflicts, Somali political apparel finally reached a minimum level of maturity, despite an endemic level of corruption at all levels of the state. This new state of affairs led to other important developments for the country: the lift of the weapon embargo in 2023, Somalia joining the Pan-African EAC economic alliance in 2024, and a victory at the International Court of Justice on a maritime dispute with Kenya. Without a doubt, the Somali State was back. However, this would be seeing the glass as half-full.’
With Great Power…
One important obstacle for the FGS has consistently been achieving authority and legitimacy among all member states. With foreign aid and weapons pouring into the hands of the new country’s military, a new temptation was born: bypassing interclan talks and instead coercing or corrupting the weaker states into submission.
Under President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” Mohamed’s presidency (2017-2022), the FGS focused on large centralization efforts, using all tools available to bolster the government’s reach to the FMS, at the expense of the more autonomous Puntland and Jubaland.
In a more recent example set in 2024, an attempt by elements of the Somali National Army acting on behalf of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to oust Jubaland State President Ahmed Madobe was thwarted, ending with dozens of federal soldiers captured.
They were already prominent personalities in the” Al-Shabaab Golden Age” era portrayed in A Fading Star, and faces of the decentralization vs. federal consolidation efforts.
The same president has also been accused of focusing the counter-offensives against Al-Shabaab in his home region rather than in more militarily relevant areas. This temptation is nothing new, and interfaction violence has always been a large obstacle towards stabilizing the country and unifying the war effort against Al-Shabaab. In A Fading Star, this uneasy relation is reflected through the ability of the federal government to attack any Somali elements (unlike African Union forces), regardless of their affiliation, or to redirect foreign aid towards subjugating FMS elders (as a reminder the Pirates faction also include minor clans):
With friends like that…
Somalia’s relationship with its neighbors Ethiopia and Kenya is another important factor in the fight against Al-Shabaab and in stabilizing the state. Both countries have contributed an important number of troops that helped retake large parts of South-Central Somalia from the Islamist group, especially in the mid 2010s. Until recently they manned many of the Forward Operating Bases established to maintain a military presence in the areas reclaimed by Al-Shabaab.
It is an understatement to say that without those states, the situation would be most certainly different today. However, this assistance did not come out of pity, and it is no mystery that both Addis Ababa and Nairobi have a vested interest in stabilizing the country … up to a point, solong as it serves their national interests.
For example, with the FGS’ reach and potential increasing over the years, the relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia has been rocked from places like presidential bromance to Somaliland-related tensions, nearly bringing the countries to the brink of war.
While Mogadishu accepted the presence of Ethiopian troops in the peace-keeping process to make up for the small size of its forces, Addis Ababa was primarily seeking to secure its borders and did not hesitate to undermine any process that could have led to a strong, centralized Somalia. That is the adversity of these two actors, who need each other to achieve their short-term goals but whose long-term policies will inevitably clash and result in heightened tensions, threatening the whole region in the process.
An example of major development in this aspect came with the de facto dismantling of Ethiopian-backed Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a (ASW) after clashes with federal forces in 2015. ASW is a Suffi militia that was instrumental in fighting against the Islamist militants but also an entry tool in Somali affairs for Addis Ababa in the earlier years of the war.
This agitated relationship is nothing new in the Horn of Africa’s political landscape. In A Fading Star, it is reflected through the tumultuous link between the federal government player (TFG) and the AMISOM (African Union) faction, which includes forces from both Kenya and Ethiopia, and their respective goals.
The former tries to achieve a greater centralization of power through territorial control and the establishment of allegiances with local clans and embezzlement of FMS funds. The latter pursues the decentralization of Somalia through the ”4.5 formula” seeking more autonomous (some would say easy to manipulate) member states.
This political rift and manipulation of the Somali civil canvas are modeled through game elements such as the Support level in an area, the Patronage accumulated by the government, and the inescapable Clan Trouble that will appear when those factions try to contain one another (sometimes at the expense of the minor clans).
Some of the Events that reflect Nairobi and Addis Ababa’s long-standing policy of containing the influence of Mogadishu in its own country
A problem: Al-Shabaab is still (very) relevant today
I would like to clos0e this article with an important statement: as mentioned in the timeline above, the military situation on the ground to this day was close to a stalemate with none of the factions involved making breaking progress. The Somali National Army was being retroceded by many of the countryside FOBs as African Union peacekeeping troops were rolling out of the country. The Somali were now in charge of their own security, with the backing of many countries such as Kenya, Turkey, Egypt or the US still contributing essential logistics, troops, or trainers.
ATMIS is the transition mission that succeeded to AMISOM, with a role focused on support rather than kinetic operations against Al-Shabaab. Source : ACLED
However, at the time I am writing these lines, the situation in South Somalia is degrading as Al-Shabaab is making important progress towards the capital, Mogadishu, in a trend not far akin to the existential threat they posed back in 2007-2011. This situation could be the very consequence of the interclan fighting and political instability that the federal government has been navigating in recent years and described in this article.
This is a good reminder that modeling an ongoing conflict is about providing the tools to understand its underlying trends and dynamics, rather than “forecasting” an outcome. I hope the game will help you understand why past and future events transpire a certain way and what we can learn about matters such as small-state diplomacy, terrorism, state-building, and counter-piracy. But ultimately, when A Fading Star hits your table, please take this product as a modest take on the Horn’s affairs, during a precise time frame of the Somali civil war (2007-2014). Nothing else.
Despite the signs of progress made in securing Somalia’s future, the White Star is still not safe from fading away. As the country is especially sensitive to humanitarian crises amid conflict and climate-related disasters, please consider donating to NGOs that help on the ground, such as Action Against Hunger or the Danish Refugee Council.
While the game comes with 12 scenarios, there is also a 2-page roll-your-own scenario system that will generate a HISTORICAL situation in about 5 minutes, after which both players secretly choose from one of many historical forces of platoon-to-company size with which to fight.
-Chad Jensen on Combat Commander: Europe (2006)
Magical Realism
The premise of Combat Commander’s Random Scenario Generator teeters close to absurd for a board wargame. Not Campaign for North Africa absurd where you’re tracking pasta rations, but “is that even possible” absurd. Random variables that generate plausible wargame scenarios across the breadth of World War II sounds like magical thinking. The number of permutations that can be generated from the variables of the RSG are astronomical. Just the two Allies and their troop quality, across the five years in the base Europe box, has tens of thousands of combinations. Balancing the outputs, so that a high percentage of the generated scenarios exist within a margin of error for fidelity sounds impossible. Yet, you roll one up and the evidence is right there waiting to be played. Magical. I became obsessed with that magic, and as I studied it I soon found Chad’s secret – research and data. Understanding how this data bridged the gap between history and the model, was central to our design process for Combat Commander: Vietnam.
Orders of Battle and Support Tables from Combat Commander: Europe
Wargame systems are notoriously data driven. Variables on counters placed in hexes with scale measurements and visual references for terrain with modifying effects. Detailed play sequences, with phases referring to one or more charts to resolve actions with sub sequences. Where Combat Commander differs is that the majority of charts in the game are for the Orders of Battle (OoB) and Support. In other words, the tables are focused on the receipt of units and their weapons, not about their use.
A design decision Chad made was to put most of the actionable data onto the unit counters and in the fate decks. Many mistake this shift to card driven mechanics as an abstraction that might reduce the game’s fidelity. Yet these asymmetric decks pack more faction and game data across their card counts than you would find in most of the tables and charts from other wargames. They also keep the games flowing smoothly, the actions immediately resolved, with little need to consult a table to determine a result. The heavy lifting of the design is not in the play itself but rather how each game is set up. Becoming a strong Combat Commander player includes understanding how setup impacts play. This is taken one step further with the RSG, which includes scenario as well as unit set up. For Combat Commander: Vietnam we wanted to provide a similar level of agency for players, grounded in the history, but balanced by their choices.
Page from the RSG rules in Combat Commander: Europe
The Balancing Act
To shape the balance of the RSG system, Chad provides agency in the setup process. Players are able to build formations with a bid for initiative balanced against available support weapons and fortifications. Playing through the RSG and having to make these decisions takes practice but it is where the model reveals itself. With experience, players will find the fidelity of the scenarios they generate increase. This comes from an increased understanding of the Orders of Battle and Support tables, and their competitive values in various situations. That they map closely to their historical values for the theater and period generated reinforces the decision space of a historical company commander, and we wanted to take the same approach withCombat Commander: Vietnam.
The first two volumes of Combat Commander, Europe and Mediterranean, were originally designed as one box, a point stressed to us by Kai Jensen when we first started working on Combat Commander: Vietnam. In order for the system to work across multiple years and areas, all of the faction data had to be balanced against each other, which meant that they all had to be designed at once (the following volume Pacific, redesigned the system to account for the additional theater). The primary reason for this was the central role the RSG system had on the whole design. Even some designed scenarios are balanced against what the RSG might generate.
This is a testament to just how powerful Chad’s design approach was. By putting so much of his research and data into getting the variables of the RSG system right, he designed a sandbox from which any WWII engagement at the tactical level could be modeled and validated. Appreciative of this, our first goal for Combat Commander: Vietnam was to build from the premise and design an RSG system that could generate scenarios for any region, with historical combatants, across the 15 years of the Indochina conflict. If we got the RSG right it would mean we could design and validate scenarios for any engagement at the game’s scale.
Anderson, Arnsten, and Averch, Insurgent Organization and Operations (August 1967).
We went through a number of iterations for the Order of Battle tables for Combat Commander: Vietnam, sourcing documentation of the force composition and weapons across the factions. Translating this data to unit values on the OoB formed the basis of the RSG system. As we started working on building out the maps for the base game, pulling from the 1:50,000 scale maps used during the conflict, we could immediately check the composition of forces from the primary sources against how they would be represented by the RSG. After months of iterations we started to find the magic.
Orders of Battle with Support Tables from the Combat Commander: Vietnam Playtest Kit
Campaign for Randomness
As the map count for Combat Commander: Vietnam increased and we continued playing RSG scenarios across them, something started to feel missing. In isolation the playthroughs gave a decent overview of the types of small-scale engagements seen across the conflict, but, without the context to really place where and how they fit into the broader war effort. To provide that context, we had to bring something completely new to the Combat Commander system.
When it comes to military operations, the easiest way to provide context is to go up in scale, and understand the significance of an engagement to the higher command. Combat Commander was originally called Company Commander in reference to the scale it models. Going up from the company is the battalion. We posited that if Combat Commander: Vietnam players could play a series of connected games as a battalion campaign it would contextualize the choices made in the individual engagements to better understand why fighting in Vietnam was so different.
Records of an ANZAC Battalion’s Operations. The Combat Commander: Vietnam Campaign system is built to represent this level of operation.
Campaigns have been in Combat Commander since John Foley introduced them in the second battle pack. To this point however they have primarily been a way of sequencing scenarios, both designed and randomly generated, to play in a historical succession. This allowed players to fight out multiple days of battle in Normandy or Stalingrad to great effect. Yet, these campaigns have only existed as add ons, not parts of the core rules. The last challenge we gave ourselves with the Combat Commander: Vietnam design was to build out a campaign system that was a part of the core. This meant expanding the system to be able to generate random campaigns across the factions, for any region, at any time during the conflict.
Composing the large battles are any number of small fights, little connected, and sometimes at cross-purposes one with the other. Each is local and limited in the feelings of the men who engage. Company fights company, platoon goes against platoon. How the regiment or brigade fared as a whole is something that has to be computed later.
-S.L.A. Marshall, Battles in the Monsoon (1967)
From the Combat Commander: Vietnam core box, using the Random Campaign Generator (RCG), players will be able to generate an area of responsibility for a battalion commander over a month-long operation as a campaign. The perspective provided by this form of play contextualizes the individual engagements in a way that allows players to experience the decision space of Vietnam at the tactical level with the context to understand the implications of their decisions operationally.
Campaign Map showing a Free World Forces Battalion operating in a relatively remote, Communist controlled area of II Corps.
With the RCG system in place we are also able to design historical campaigns which allow players to replay known operations. So much of the research that went into the design captured primary accounts from all sides including their operational maps. The campaign framework is a direct reflection of this, with the historical campaigns providing the decision space of their historic counterparts.
What will come in the base box forCombat Commander: Vietnam will be all of the things players already love about the system. 24 scenarios that can be set up at any time for a dynamic game full of the flavor but grounded in the historical realities of the conflict. The RSG system will expand the scenario potential from those base maps increasing replayability. The amount of variety you will get playing one off scenarios will be satisfying to system veterans and newcomers alike.
The Hurricane II, FFV Magazine, May 1967
For those looking to form a better understanding of the war and how it progressed over time, Combat Commander: Vietnam’s Random Campaign Generator will prove to be the central experience. Playing campaigns with a single faction will provide a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Across multiple campaigns you can see how their capabilities changed over time. Explore how the terrain in the different corps zones affected how formations operated. With the historic campaigns you can face the decisions of your historic counterparts.
All of this has been done in an effort to make Combat Commander: Vietnam the most comprehensive tactical wargame experience on the conflict. It gives players infinite replayability with the opportunity to enrich their understanding of the challenges faced by all sides during the war. Even more, all parts of the design are fully extensible which means future battle packs and expansions will provide even broader coverage. For anyone looking to immerse themselves in the Vietnam Experience, this is the starting point.
