Britain in 816 A.D. was choking on the smoke of warfare. The young Anglo-Saxon kingdoms vied for supremacy or seized more land from the retreating Britons. These Romanized Celts had long since lost their thin layer of Mediterranean civilization as their kingdoms were slowly consumed by the invaders. Even the far northern lands of the Picts were aflame as they wrestled with migrating Scots from Hibernia. Into this crackling bonfire, the seas tossed a new menace ashore -- the Vikings. While Saxon battled Brit, Welshman warred on Angle, and Pict struggled with Scot, the Norsemen raided all. It was a time when the clouds of the Dark Ages were thickest.

This was the setting for a 10-player De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) campaign played by former or current Columbus residents for the last few years. Each player controlled a historical kingdom or people striving to expand (or merely survive) in ninth century Britain. The kingdoms were all different sizes and strengths. Some were minor powers like Scottish Dal Riata or Anglo-Saxon Essex, others more than double their strength, like Wessex.

The map of Britain was divided into 37 provinces. These irregularly shaped and sized provinces contained an array of "dots," representing settlements. I spent much time researching historical names for the settlements, but being the "dark ages," doubtless many of the names and locations are open to debate. On the map, these settlements were connected by dashed lines creating a "point-to-point" map. The lines represented the roads or trail of the day. Armies were limited to marching along these roads a specified number of settlements per turn.

Some settlements were designated as fortified, representing walled towns, hill forts or other strongholds. One fortified settlement per province was named the capital. The player controlling it ruled the province and collected its income in Autumn. An advantage of forts was that armies could withdraw behind their walls and decline a field battle. This forced the invader to declare siege. Sieges were usually time-consuming and were resolved by a monthly die roll modified by fortification size, garrison and time besieged.

Each turn represented one campaign month. Special rules covered differences between Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Provinces generated income once per year in October. This led to many battles to relieve sieges of provincial capitals in the late Summer or early Autumn months. Income was used to replace losses, recruit additional troops or upgrade fortifications.

One of my major concerns was to reduce bookkeeping and maintain simplicity. As such, the concept of "size levels" was created to handle increases or decreases in army strength. There were seven size levels from Detachment (no field battle capability) through Great Host (36 DBA elements). An army defeated in battle dropped a minimum of two size levels -- more if the loss was severe. This was determined by comparing the number of elements the victor lost to the defeated. The winner's size level remained the same -- reflecting that most casualties occurred in the pursuit of a beaten foe, not in battle. Thus, destroyed elements during a tabletop encounter do not "count." They are only used to determine who loses and how many size levels they drop. This was also the method by which players transferred troops from one army to another. For example, if the Mercian player wanted to send troops from his Army (30 elements) guarding the quiet Welsh border to the Warband (12 elements) facing a major Wessex invasion, he transferred detachments. If one detachment was sent the Army dropped to Host (24 elements) size, and when it arrived the Warband would be raised to Legion (18 elements) level.

While land movement was restricted to following following the roads on the point-to-point map, sea movement was more flexible. An army could embark at any port hex and put out to sea on one turn. The following turn it landed in any other port hex in Britain. However, the ships of most kingdoms had restrictions on their range. This was to reflect that it was highly unlikely historically, for example, the Welsh to send a fleet to invade the Pictish Orkney Islands. Naturally, the capabilities of the Vikings would be the best. Severe rain in the province of the army's destination forced them to divert. And Winter storms caused losses, as well as hindered land movement.

I began the campaign with a scouting system that gave a chance for the player's information to be inaccurate. However, after a year or so of gaming it was scrapped because of the excessive turnaround time it required. Currently, most kingdoms see groups who are within one province of their own armies, or invading their kingdoms.

I realized the campaign was inherently imbalanced, with some nations simply being tougher than others. I told all that if they were "knocked out" and had played faithfully (not missing numerous turns), they returned as additional Vikings. In the following issues, I will run "Bretwalda" as a regular column, reporting on the progress of the campaign.

More Bretwalda

Winter 816 A.D.
Spring 817 A.D.
Summer 817 A.D.
Autumn 817 A.D.
Winter 817-818 A.D.
March and April 818 A.D.
May and June 818 A.D.
Who Won? Part 1
Who Won? Part 2
Who Won? Part 3