While looking through some old copies of Hal Thinglum's MWAN magazine, I noted an interesting article by Alisdair McIntosh of Glascow, Scotland, centering upon an ancients campaign that he had designed.
In MWAN Issue #93, of May/June, 1998, McIntosh outlined his thoughts on a campaigning system which permitted him and a couple of friends to, first, use a strategic campaign map to enter the movement of forces, and second, to use the DBA rules to set up and fight a battle whenever two armies met on the map. Due to the short time required by the DBA system to resolve combat (perhaps as little as a half-hour), the McIntosh group could get in as many as 4 encounters per night. At the end of the gaming session, they'd mark the locations of their armies, roll up the map, box up the armies, and be ready to set up for the next gaming session.
The McIntosh campaign focused on three empires... Egyptians, Hittites, and Assyrians. The DBA army lists gave the appropriate numbers and types of stands for the battles. Although DBA limits its listings to 12 stands per army, the McIntosh system allowed up to 24 stands per army, depending upon the situation.
I thought that McIntosh's system was extremely clever, yet I wanted an even faster campaigning method than the multi-gaming-session he described, one that could be accomplished in a single gaming session of 4 or 5 hours.
McIntosh put an historical 'gloss' on his campaign by relying on the DBA lists for the content of the armies. Hittites had to have so many chariots, and Egyptians had to have so many cavalry, and so on. This was not for me. I don't really believe Phil Barker when he says that 39.6 percent of all Assyrian armies that were ever fielded consisted of chariots, and 64.9 percent of an Egyptian force always consisted of infantry. Poppycock!
And so in my adaptation of the campaigning system, away went the pseudo-historical gloss and glitter, and in its place, I used three generic types of stands... due to the availability of figures, I used mounted knights as the most powerful, foot knights next, and down the scale to the lowly men@arms. Visually, therefore, I set the campaign in the medieval period, but one could just as easily have placed it in the modern era... use the same relative combat values, but instead of mounted knights, substitute heavy tanks, instead of foot knights, use light tanks, and instead of men@arms, use infantry.
The strategic map is composed of a number of areas. I drew up a ping-pong table sized map of some 30 areas, with each of the areas about 8 inches by 8 inches, sufficient in size to hold a number of troop stands. My simplified version of McIntosh's army system utilized an army made up of only three stands... one of mounted knights, one foot knight, one man@arms. As the campaign progresses, and new troops are raised, the composition of each 3-stand army can be varied.
Armies move from area to area, and must conquer new territories. As in the McIntosh scheme of things, there are four types of areas (termed provinces).
- First is the Imperial Province, wherein troops can be raised. At the start, each side starts out with a single Imperial Province. The object of the campaign is to build a number of Imperial Provinces... each gives logistics points.
Second, are the neutral provinces... those have haven't been conquered yet.
Third, we have Allied provinces. Enter a neutral province, defeat its army, and you've acquired an allied province. These do not provide logistics points.
Fourth, you can raise an allied province to the status of Client Province. Here, you raise logistics points, and of most importance, you can raise a Client Province to the status of an Imperial Province.
The McIntosh system used a deck of 52 cards to provide for the 'diplomatic' background when making strategic campaign moves. Each card suit provided for a different type of strategic action. I expanded upon the system and used the cards as follows:
- Clubs These are 'attack' cards. Playing a club allows a participant to move one of his armies to attack an opposing player. Play of a club can be trumped by an opposing player playing a higher club, but, in turn, the trumping card can be trumped again.
Hearts These permit a player to annex a neutral area, or to raise the status of an allied and client province one grade (allied to client, and client to Imperial Province).
Spades Play these on an enemy province, and you foster a revolt. A rebel army appears, and sits, and must be defeated before the opposing player can regain control.
Diamonds Played on any of your own provinces, a diamond permits a province to become an agricultural one.... crops spring forth, and provide additional logistics points.
Note that any time a player sets out a card, it may be trumped by the opposition. And the trump card itself may be trumped... and retrumped... and so on. The number of cards received by a player each turn is limited... initially, you get 4 cards, but as the number of Imperial Provinces grows, so does the number of cards you draw... one additional card for every imperial Province.
When two 3-stand armies meet in combat, the sides align their stands in the order in which they wish to do battle. Then stands are paired off and compared, and each adds a 10-sided die to its combat value. The stand with the higher total keeps fighting, while the lower total withdraws from the encounter. The combat ends when stands of only one side remain in combat. This type of combat resolution takes less than 5 minutes, permitting the emphasis of the campaigning effort to remain focused on the strategic aspect of the game.
The combat values of the stands (which are added to its die roll) are:
- Mounted Knights +2
Footknights +1
Men@arms +0
There is only one augmentation to the above combat values. We have a deck of 8 cards, 4 of them as zeros, and 4 of them as '1's'. Occasionally, a player is permitted to randomly draw from this deck and to use the card value to increase the combat value of a stand in combat. Half the time, a zero appears, but on occasion, a valuable '1' shows up.
This deck is drawn upon when an Imperial Province is being attacked. The defense draws 3 cards. This gives the defending force a wee bit of assistance... of course, it may give none at all... but it deters players from attacking other player's Imperial Provinces.
Three of us (Fred Haub, Tony Figlia and me) spent a very interesting run-through of the campaign rules for the first time out. We each started with a single Imperial Province and two 3-stand field armies. Each was dealt 4 cards form the 52-card deck.
We took turns, and on each turn, we were permitted to play as many of our cards as we could.
For example, late in the game, I played the following cards when my turn came in the sequence:
- (1) I played a club, which permitted one of my armies to advance an area, enter a neutral area, and do battle with the 'intrinsic' garrison army it contained. All neutral areas had an intrinsic army of 3-stands... one Footknights and two Men@arms.
I fought and defeated the garrison... the garrison was destroyed, and the area now became one of my allied provinces.
(2) I played my second card, a heart. This raised the status of the newly acquired allied province to a Client Province.
(3) I played a second heart, again raising the status of the province. This time it became a full-fledged Imperial Province.
(4) My last card was a diamond, also played on my new Imperial Province. This card transformed the Imperial Province into an agricultural one, to proved logistics points.
All this was done on a single turn via a lucky draw of cards. On any play of the cards, one of the opponents could have trumped the play, stopping the sequence. But again, I escaped unscathed.
Obviously, as you'll note by examining the above actions, there's no time scale to the game. In the course of a single play, you can conquer, build and instantaneously grow crops.
Early in our game, Fred Haub's single Imperial Province was conquered by Tony's troops. In effect, this left Fred "homeless", and at first, we thought he'd be out of the game. But several turns later, via the play of hearts, he had built up one of his remaining allied provinces into another Imperial Province. King Fred lived again!
There would seem to be no limit to the grunge you could add to the game... but I'm not sure it would be worth it. The McIntosh system works extraordinarily well, and there's no reason to fix it if it ain't broke.
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© Copyright 1999 Wally Simon
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