Here the designer of Levy & Campaign Volume IV, Plantagenet (shipping as we post this), gives us a quick rundown of how this new entry alters certain game mechanics from the Series’ first three titles, Nevsky, Almoravid, and Inferno, to better represent unique aspects in the Wars of the Roses. (Be sure as well to catch my video take on the history and mechanics in the game.) Enjoy! -Volko

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Parley, Influence, and Exile

After deciding that I wanted to make a game about the Wars of the Roses, an operational wargame that is, and setting it in the framework of the Levy & Campaign mechanics, it became very clear that we wouldn’t be able to simulate the historical wars without making significant additions to the system.

Considering that this was a civil war, not one of conquest but of direct conflict between two branches of the same family, we had to adapt how regional reactions changed and evolved with the war’s ebbs and flows.

The way we found that solved that problem was the Parley action. A direct inspiration from classic CDG games, Parley introduces a way to represent the temporal allegiance of a particular city or town to one of the sides. Sides have to take a direct action (political or diplomatic) to gather support from the various population centers of the country. Working within the structure of the Levy & Campaign system, the main moment for Parley is the Levy Phase. But the advantages of having an army outside of a city wall when negotiating cannot be ignored, so Parley during a Campaign is not only possible but very effective.

So, with the Parley action, Lords can modify the support (which we call Favour) of a Stronghold and thus, when having made it Friendly, gather different resources from it. Without too much detail about the mechanics, Parley basically consists of one Lord spending Influence to take the action and then rolling a die against his or her modified Influence Rating to check for its success or failure. The result will mean making the Stronghold neutral or Friendly and thus marking it with the corresponding Favour marker.

I mentioned Influence, and that is another of the big additions to the Series. Studying the development of the war, I found that the amount of diplomatic effort that the main contenders took to gather the support of other Lords was at least equal to the resources they spent to create and maintain armies. And this political influence behaved like any other resource. Once spent, it was hard to recover.

So, we included a full system of political points that were not only the fuel used by the players for diplomatic actions, but also the victory points of the game. The side that spends too much time in politics and doesn’t get enough return for it will be the loser—if the winners remain alive to enjoy the fruits of their success, of course!

We called those diplomatic and victory points Influence. And that is the resource used when taking Parley actions, when Levying Lords and Vassals, and also when Taxing their supporters. It is gained by the control of certain important Strongholds, some areas of the map, when defeating enemy Lords in Battles, by some Events and Capabilities, and when the enemy flees from a confrontation. It can also be lost when Pillaging to supply one’s troops, and, in the Full War scenario, when an Heir dies.

So, Influence is what players will spend to advance their position and what players will gather to win the game. But don’t expect Plantagenet to be a game of managing a spreadsheet. The nature of how Influence is won or lost makes it hard to predict where it will stand in future turns.

The last addition I want to comment on is the smallest of the three that I am presenting in this article, but I believe it is one of those small rules that make it all work. They seem unimportant, but they are the nail that holds the whole structure standing upright.

This rule is the possibility for a Lord, when confronted with a Battle they believe they are not going to win, to abandon everything and go into Exile.

Whenever one army attacks another one, barring Event cards, the defending Lords have the possibility of Disbanding to the Calendar and returning in a short amount of turns to the map. They go into Exile, and, instead of having to be Mustered again, they will just come back to the map in the area where they would have exiled historically (such as France).

This was a common situation in those wars. We have Richard York exiled to Ireland after Ludford Bridge. Edward IV escaped to Burgundy when he saw Warwick in a better position than him. Henry VI came back from his exile in Scotland and became King again in 1470. Henry Tudor returned from his exile in France to gain the English Crown. So, it made sense from a historical point of view to include exile in the game.

Exile is the key mechanic that lets the players fight the Battles that they want to fight and evade the Battles where they think they are in a bad position. And this forces both sides not to just amass a big army and attack all the opponent’s Lords, as they will just flee and leave the aggressive player in a tight spot without supplies or coin to pay their troops.

In summary, I would like to stress again the importance of these three additions to the Levy & Campaign system to better simulate this historical conflict. We need fluid allegiances of the Strongholds, and thus the Parley mechanic comes into play. We need a way to represent the costs and returns of the political actions of the Lords, and so Influence becomes the victory condition and the resource that players have to spend to achieve it. And, finally, we have plenty of historical examples of Lords only looking for a Battle when they thought there was a significant chance of winning it and going into a foreign country if there wasn’t. That is the Exile mechanic.

We believe we have designed a game that will bring the Wars of the Roses to life on your table—a game in which you’ll be able to experience not only the operational challenges of the armies but also an important part of the political maneuvering that took place in that time.

— Pako

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