For those of you who have been following Mark’s “What Was Old is New Again” series covering Peloponnesian War design and strategy, please enjoy another selection from the years ago published Volume 28 #1 of The General. This four part article series is a replay of Peloponnesian War featuring Kevin Boylan as the Athenian Player, Doug Whatley as the Spartan Player, and Mark Herman as the Neutral Commentator. To read parts one, two, and three, follow the links here, here, and here. Enjoy! -Rachel

TURN 4

Political Phase

Random Event Segment: The Random Events die roll is “10”, which is one of the multi-event results requiring a second roll to determine the exact occurrence. The second roll is “4”: Argos enters the war on Athens’ side, so four Athenian Allied Hoplite SPs are placed at Argos as directed by the Random Events Table.

Delian League Rebellion Segment: Since the Athenian SCI is a positive number, there are no Delian League rebellions.

Leader Selection Segment: The leader picks are Lysander for Sparta and Thassyllus for Athens. Lysander’s superior strategy rating allows Sparta to conduct the first operation.

Just like the Soviets attacking the Japanese in Manchuria during August of 1945, the vultures show up to get a share of the spoils. This just about hammers the final nail into Sparta’s coffin by putting Argos’ sizeable land force within easy striking distance of the city itself.

Operations Phase

First Spartan Operation: In hopes of pro­tecting itself from Athenian coastal raiding, Sparta sends Lysander 10 Gythium to bolster the fleet with his excellent Tactical Modifier.

First Athenian Operation: Athens picks Thassyllus to lead an expedition against Cyllene. Seven Naval SPs are activated at Athens, and another at Ephesus (total cost: 3,200 talents, reducing the Athenian treasury to 3, 150 talents). The expedition’s path along the Peloponnesian coast is randomly determined to be: Methana, Cape Seyllaeum, Troezen, Hermione, and Prasiae, all of which are ravaged. However, upon entering Epidaurus Limera, the Athenians are intercepted by the Spartan fleet, which prevents that space from being ravaged as well. The same thing occurs as the Athenian fleet traverses the Cythcra, Cape Taenarum , and Corone spaces–none of which are ravaged. Skirmishes occur in all four spaces, but without losses to either side. No battles result from the skirmish die rolls. The Athenians then proceed to ravage the Asine and Pylos spaces.

At this point, Kevin must make a crucial shortest-route determination. Since the Zacynthus­Cephallenia-Cyllcne and Lepreum-Pheia-Cyllene routes are of equal length, Kevin has to randomly determine which route his fleet takes. All he needs to do in order to ensure a Spartan surrender at the end of this tum is to ravage ten Spartan coalition spaces. Kevin has ravaged seven thus far; if the Lepreum-Pheia­Cyllene route is chosen, three more spaces will be ravaged.

Kevin: This is it! If I roll a”1″, “2”, or “3”, I take the Zacynthus-Cephallenia route and will have to run another operation in order to win during this turn. If, on the other hand, I roll a “4”, “5”, or “6”, I get to ravage those three spaces immediately and the game is over.

Doug: Aaargh!! (Guess what the die roll was?)

With those ten spaces ravaged, an automatic -1 will be deducted from Sparta’s Bellicosity at the end of the turn, pushing it into surrender. Yet, Doug could still save himself by winning at least two battles or sieges (i.e., by generating an SCI high enough to yield a +1 Bellicosity adjustment when divided by two and rounded down). There are, of course, two major problems with this scenario. The first one is that it assumes that Athenian Subsequent Operations won’t cause more reductions in Spartan SCI. However, an even more fundamental issue concerns whether or not Doug can pass the Auguries rolls necessary to pull it off.

Second Spartan Operation: Sparta fails its Auguries attempt on a roll of “5.”

That ends the game! Athens is victorious; there’s no need to play out the rest of the turn. (Kevin, stop dancing on the table; you’ re creasing the map and denting my ceiling!) Let’ s conduct a brief post mortem. I’ll start by pointing out that Doug should not have cursed the gods on Game Turn 1! What else can account for his abysmal run of luck?

Conclusion

Doug: Seriously, my biggest mistake was not building a navy sooner and thereby protecting my coastline. Just look at how effective even a comparatively small navy was on the last turn; but it was unquestionably a case of too little, too late. Sparta can’t let the Athenians ravage at will like that and still hope to win. Historically, the Spartans defeated Athens by shattering her naval supremacy; and while that’s certainly a tall order in the game, the Spartan player is well-advised to try, at least to some extent, to neutralize Athenian seapower.

Kevin: I think the turning point in the game was when I was able to wipe out that small Spartan army under Brasidas. It stopped Doug from running a key operation in support of the northern rebellions and gave me hostages which, by preventing Spartan attacks into Athenian territory, assured that Athens got the Eisphora every game tum thereafter. The extra talents allowed me to conduct more and ever larger naval operations, whose high cost would normally be prohibitive. At the same time, Doug shouldn’t have waited so long to build a navy, leaving himself vulnerable to the kind of miniscule naval operations that I ran on Tum 2. However, to be fair to Doug, I must admit that the luck did run in my favor throughout this game, both when I was rolling and when he was. The fact that Doug was able to conduct subsequent operations on only one tum out of four proved decisive in permitting me to build up an unchallenged lead, which eventually became insurmountable. Let’s just say that the Spartan soothsayer is worth every drachma we bribed him with!

I think that, overall, Kevin played consistently by sticking to his strategy of ravaging Sparta’s coasts and looking for opportunities to knock off vulnerable enemy forces. Kevin’s point about the cost of his operations is a significant one. Since most Athenian operations require the activation of Naval SPs at the rate of 400 talents apiece, that player usually can’t afford to conduct very many of them. Sparta, on the other hand, can run a great many operations for next to nothing because Spartan Hoplite SPs are activated for free. (Ironically, it was because of this dynamic that Doug himself, and others of my playtesters, insisted that Spartan Auguries fail on rolls of “5” as well as “6”. Two things mitigated against the normal pattern repeating itself in this replay. First, by capturing Spartan hostages, Athens was able to ensure that it would receive the additional 1,000 talents raked in by the Eisphora, a development which–as Kevin says–let him conduct more operations than would normally be the case. Equally important, however, was the fact that on each turn Doug activated almost the entire Spartan army for one operation, leaving few or none of his zero-cost Spartan Hoplite SPs available for subsequent operations. Now, with perfect hindsight we know that bad omens would have prevented Doug from running any subsequent operations except on one game turn anyway; but although the Auguries played a more prominent role in the game than I am accustomed to seeing, I don’ t think Doug was really out of the game until the end of Game Turn 3.

Doug: That’s what I like about this game; you never feel that you’re fully out of it. Even when I was one hundred points down, I could still have bounced back. A good tum can see the score shift almost one hundred points. For instance, if one side wins five battles against forces of the opposing side (i.e., non-Neutral forces) the score will shift 125 points in its favor.

Exactly! And on Turn 3, Sparta passed five Auguries rolls. Those five operations could have been used to pick off the small Athenian garrisons scattered all around the north, such as the single Athenian Hoplite SP located at Potidaea. By running up an impressive tally of victorious battles and sieges in this fashion, Doug could conceivably have put himself into the lead. Instead, most of the Spartan army was sent on a fool’s errand to Maraneia, an operation which had no prospects of bringing positive results commensurate with its size, and which almost lost the game by enabling Athens to attack Sparta directly. However, the worst aspect of the Maraneia operation was that four operations had to be wasted in a vain effort to get Theban reinforcements into Sparta, when they could have been used much more profitably elsewhere. For instance, if Doug had sent a leader to Thebes and taken three SPs to Potidaea, a battle would have been fought that he probably would have won. Add these missed opportunities to an admittedly bad run of Auguries die rolls, and defeat was the inevitable result.

Doug: I’ve learned many lessons on strategy tonight. Mark, what do you think was the most important lesson?

DO NOT OFFEND THE GODS!

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Author: Mark Herman