The first part of this article showed us the many advances made by the French in the crucial field of injury treatment and emergency response in the heat of battle. Now it’s time to see how this relates to the mechanics of Napoleon in Egypt.
French Regulars are the most powerful unit in the game. British Regulars are a close second but still, no unit packs more punch than the French Regulars, who get to roll the prized Elite die. At the start of the campaign, 35 of those Regulars set foot in Egypt, a force that looks downright unstoppable. It would make sense for these well-trained soldiers to be harder to kill but instead of using a “2-step unit” system, we decided to link their resilience directly to the scientific progress that would lead to field hospitals, flying ambulances and all other breakthroughs Pascal talked about in part 1.
In this installment of Cuius Regio Developer Notes I’ll be talking about the evolution of the Cuius Regio map.
We started off with several key principles – we wanted a map that covered the area where the fighting and campaigning of the Thirty Years War in the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) took place, the key population centers needed to be represented as focuses of supply and political influence, and we wanted the geography to encourage the flow of operations in historical ways.
To cover the area of the conflict we settled on a scale of about sixteen miles across a hex (or about 250 square miles per hex). This allowed us to design a map that covered an area from north to south of about 750 miles, and from east to west of about 500 miles. Since we were looking to capture the operational movement of armies, this turned out to be a great scale. It allowed us to set the time scale to yearly turns during which armies could be activated several times to accomplish strategic goals or respond to developing situations.
Along with my friends, Johan and Chris, I have been playing the scenarios in The Ancient World: Rise of the Roman Republic and The Ancient World: Carthage pretty much every Wednesday night since December 2023. At first, we just wanted to take the system for a spin as Johan spoke highly of it, but it has since turned into a grand adventure.
Our first play of the 1st Punic War scenario from Carthage ended with a Carthaginian victory. We had so much fun with that play, we immediately reset and went back to it again. This time the Romans prevailed. It was also around this time that, since we had been asking so many questions of the developer, Alan Ray, we formally signed on to the playtest team.
Since that time, we’ve played every scenario in both Rise of the Roman Republic and Carthage (except the Mercenary War – that’s coming) at least once and a few of them twice. It still hasn’t gotten old. Playtesting can sometimes be work; this doesn’t feel like it.
What is it that’s so engaging about this system that we keep returning to it?
A Gest of Robin Hood has been out for nearly two months now, and both Fred and I are very pleased with how it has been received so far. It has been especially gratifying to see people enjoying the game with a wide range of friends and family, including young children and non-wargamers. One of our aims with the game was to make a relatively accessible entry point with a family-friendly theme, and it seems like it has been a resounding success in this regard. However, we know that not everybody is able to find a gaming partner all the time, and so I wanted to put together this short guide to playing the game “two-handed solo” (playing both sides to the best of your ability).
Like other COIN and Irregular Conflict Series games, A Gest of Robin Hood is already fairly well-suited to multi-handed play, as the cards are all open information (when drawn) and it is relatively easy to formulate a strategy for each side based just on the current board state. However, unlike most of these other games, A Gest of Robin Hood does feature a small amount of hidden information, and I’ve come up with a few tricks for handling these when playing by yourself. In collaboration with British Way designer Stephen Rangazas, Fred and I have also designed a set of “heroic and villainous personas”, which you can use to add some additional variation for either solo or two-player games.
Now that we have covered all the basics of Decisive Action, including fire combat, movement and opportunity fire, and activations and actions, it’s time for the piece de resistance: Assets. These are the combat multipliers available to the commander (i.e., you) to dispense with as he or she sees fit and include capabilities like Close Air Support (CAS) aircraft, UAVs, electronic warfare, and attack helicopters, as well as more colorful optional assets like chemical weapons and drone swarms.
A U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from the brigade (playtest art)
Of course, this smorgasbord of bellicose lethality is not an all-you-can-eat buffet: rather, you will have to make some tough decisions about what Assets you want served up to complete a particular mission, as well as when the serving is going to happen. Each mission provides a list of Assets you get pre-mission for free and a list of other Assets you can acquire with Operations Points (remember, Operations Points are an abstraction of the time and attention the staff and commander have to direct orders for changing Activation cards, calling in artillery, and, in this case, communicating with a higher echelon to request support). Assets can be “bought” either before the mission begins or while it’s taking place, but requesting them beforehand costs less Operations Points since the staff can focus all its attention on these tasks without getting distracted by Private Perkins umpteenth request for orders shouted over the radio above the din of artillery rounds going off. Nevertheless, the tactical situation may unexpectedly end up requiring a different tool, so you as the Commander will have to decide if you can live without that extra A-10 Close Air Support sortie or not.
Over the years, Fields of Fire has proved to be quite tricky to learn for a lot of people. As a solitaire wargame, the usual method of a finding an experienced opponent, or even a club of experienced players, to guide you through learning this new, complex system is a non-starter. This leaves you at the mercy of the Internet and its hidden pearls of wisdom amongst an awful lot of noise.
We intend to offer up our design notes regarding our simulation of the 2nd Russo-Ukrainian War, Defiance, beginning with Volume 1: Miracle on Dnipro: Kyiv & Chernihiv Campaign, from time to time. Given that we are designing a simulation regarding an ongoing conflict, it’s a first draft of history. Consequently, at least you’ll get some insight into why we got some items wrong 🙂
In our fourth article in this series, our developer, Bob Heinzmann, pipes up. As always, feel free to break out a beverage of your choice. We always include a recipe for a cocktail, mocktail, or appetizer at the end of each of our Defiance Design Happy Hour articles. This time, we go with a mean RED RAZ Martini.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of combat and movement, it’s time to tuck into the meat and potatoes of the game: Activations and actions. Grab your tactical spork and let’s dig in.
Small Battles of the American Revolution: There are many interesting American Revolution battles that are simply too small for the Battles of the American Revolution series scale (200 yards/hex, 100 men/strength point and 1 hour/turn). That’s why I’m pleased to report that Bruno Sinigaglio is designing the first “Small Battles of the American Revolution” game!
In the Small BoAR series, the base scale will be 25 yards/hex, 12 men/strength point and roughly 7.5 minutes/turn. At this scale individual units are identified as carrying predominately muskets or rifles, and all infantry units will be able to fire (something that is abstracted at the current BoAR scale). Fire results are also more granular with results such as “reform”, “recoil” and “shattered” now possible. At this scale, cavalry will have the ability to charge, and players will be able to put cavalry in reserve during movement and then to charge!
The first game in the series will be Cowpens, which lends itself perfectly to this smaller scale. This game introduces a new unit type (Skirmishers) and terrain features (cane brake and “gentle slope”). Research on this battle has been extensive, including a day-long visit to the battlefield by Bruno, developer Dave Stiffler, and BoAR series designer Mark Miklos. The result is what might be the most historically accurate Cowpens battle map ever produced.
Other Small BoAR designs in progress are the Battles of Hubbardton and Bennington by Curtiss Fyock and Cooch’s Bridge by Rob “Cappy” McCracken.
Update from Mark Miklos:
Battles of the American Revolution: Volume 11
The Battle of Green Spring Plantation
I am hard at work designing volume 11 in the Battles of the American Revolution series, The Battle of Green Spring Plantation. Fought in Tidewater Virginia in July 1781, this battle was the immediate prelude to Yorktown and represents Cornwallis’ last victory during the American Revolution.
British forces had been rampaging virtually unchecked in Virginia until General Clinton, expecting a Franco-American attack against New York City, requested Cornwallis send him reinforcements. As ordered, Cornwallis moved his army from Williamsburg, VA to Jamestown Ferry on the James River, intent upon crossing over to Portsmouth.
Shadowing the British in Virginia were the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, and “Mad” Anthony Wayne. Their combined forces of crack light infantry, Pennsylvania Line, and Virginia militia remained just out of reach. Deceived by British “deserters” and run-away slaves into thinking the British had already crossed the bulk of their forces over the river and that only a rear guard remained holding the ferry, the impetuous Lafayette, and the equally impetuous Wayne, rushed ahead to defeat this exposed element of the British force in detail. Little did they know that Cornwallis had laid a trap into which the Americans obligingly fell. Only the heroics of Wayne and his Pennsylvanians prevented disaster.
The Battle of Green Spring Plantation will feature a historical scenario and a campaign game. Very little new chrome will be added to the core series rules in this volume although rules for skirmishers, who played a key role in springing the British trap, are being developed. Counter density will approximate that of Saratoga.
The sketch map, reflecting on-site and archival research, is complete as is the British Order of Battle. American Order of Battle and Exclusive Rules are being written as this goes to press. We anticipate Green Spring Plantation to be ready for P-500 in 2024.
Decisive Action is a game all about deep planning, tactical maneuver, and judicious use of combat multipliers like artillery and electronic warfare, as discussed previously. But this is war, and so, at the end of the day, you’ve got to put the pointy end of the stick into the other chap. Or rather, put the armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round into the other chap’s explosive reactive turret armor, this being modern war. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today: how combat works in Decisive Action.
