Whew! After a long hiatus doing not much of anything productive, I have returned to impart more thoughts on Clash of Sovereigns. The first French Strategy article, posted some time back, covered the big picture on COS play for France. So, for round two, let’s drill down and focus on a notable sub-game in COS – “The ‘45” invasion of the Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and his forlorn attempt to retake the English throne. [Note – all images are playtest visuals from the working Vassal module; production components will be different and splendid!]
First off, let’s lay out this win-win aspect of The ’45 in COS. The French can do just fine NOT launching Charlie in the Du Teillay vessel to cross the waters for the Scottish coast. They suffer no VP loss for ignoring it. But why skip it, when it’s relatively easy to enact, and can potentially generate a lot of fun getting the Brit player’s knickers in a twist?
The Launch: Have a look at cards and The ’45 Track below. The ’45 Track is opened up by Brit/Pied play of Treaty of Worms Event, or, if the Brits for some reason think foregoing their side a 3 VP swing is a good thing (duh!), by the safety valve secondary event I built in on the French Le Bourcet card, Indulging the Pretender (yes, the safety valve encourages historical card play, and dissuades gamey card retention; I do prefer history; I don’t like Gamey).
So you can get Charles launched no matter what. Thereafter (see the Track), it isn’t hard to keep things going. Every time the French play a 3+ Ops card – which will be frequently during campaign seasons, the marker advances on the track. And if Charles is successful in some of his doings on the track, it will advance another box as well. But for additional momentum, the French can play any other card they have on hand in an Event phase to keep things going.
The Goal? So, you may ask, besides using the northernmost spaces on the map, and bringing in those cool Scot Rebel sp (as if THAT’s not enough!), what’s the goal of all this hubbub? See box 6 – BRITISH RECALL, and its corresponding card. This effectively rips the guts of a usually already beleaguered Pragmatic army right off the continent for one or more seasons. [Read: You can clean up and rack up VPs in Flanders very easily, while Cumberland and Legonier are back in London!] And if Charlie plays it cagey, and sits in place, the Brits are going to have to spend at least one activation attacking him, as they have to wipe every rebellious piece off the English map before they return to the continent.
Yes, Charles may not even make it to Edinburgh, Prestopans, much less London, but if you’ve managed to make all the British leaders and a big chunk of their army return there, for very little effort, Louis XV will still probably send you a tray of Bonbons, and De Saxe may rename a captured fortress after you. Bon Chance!
Author: Bob Kalinowski
That’s an amusing sub-game system that can pose some difficulties for the British if the French have a few good die rolls.
This looks like a really interesting sub-system and I look forward to giving it a go, Culloden is always on my visiting list when I head up to Scotland.
BUT, ok understand so this is a playtest map but Edinburgh looks like it’s somewhere near Boston, Lincolnshire (maybe relocated to look for King John’s treasure), Moidart has become the Humber and both are definitely not in England as would seem to be shown on the map.
Oh and Derby seems to have moved to somewhere close to Cambridge?
John, HA! Well, that’s about every space I roughed in, so I’m batting .1000 for map distortion in England! We will try our best to align the spaces as closely as we can to the snippet of England/Scotland we get on the map. But as you may know, that is currently the very upper left corner of the COS map. Given the unit counter size, and corresponding space sizes we’ll need, I expect we are still going to have a somewhat squishy correlation between our map spaces and actual geography.
However, if you want to email me on the side, and tell me what directions/vectors to apply to those spaces, or send me your own rough in map take on those spaces, I’d be happy to adjust per your guidance. Thanks for the observations!
Certainly happy to help – where can I see the map?
Basically move Derby north and west until it is in the middle of England opposite ‘The Wash’ which is where Edinburgh is sitting at the moment. Move Edinburgh as far north as you can way into Scotland from its position in ‘The Wash’. Maldon and London are pretty good. Don’t be downhearted one of my gaming groups great fun things is to look at where American designers put British geography, this is far from the worse we have seen.