Standing Armies

Each player has been given a pool of AP to use to purchase units as he sees fit.  Each player was awarded three HQ for free, with the option to buy more.  Each standing field army must have one Commanding General, but Kings can assign a nameless HQ as a Lt. General to serve within the same army.  Or they can buy an additional "named HQ" to command a fourth standing field army to your forces.  A single nation could, if it wanted, start the game with six armies of 15AP, for maximum flexibility.  That would require some fancy footwork and coordination to keep individual forces from being overwhelmed at every turn.

Some kingdoms start with more AP than others, to help balance out the stronger map position.  Each player has been given at least enough AP to field two full armies with some AP leftover for flexibility.  Likewise, each kingdom starts with zero, one, or two navies.  

Bear in mind the tabletop rules assume two equally matched forces of 40AP fighting each other.  The way the rules of the tabletop game work, you'll want to have one HQ for every 30-40AP worth of troops.  You CAN field an army of 60AP, but one HQ will limit its effectiveness on the table.  A nation could start with one massive field army of 100AP.  Likewise, an army of 20AP can serve as an effective delaying force to halt the advance of a much larger army to buy you time for other plans to develop.

The Deep Breath Before the Plunge

Messages have gone out to all five Kings that detail the last few bits of information needed to fire the guns that start this campaign. A couple of clarifying points for those following along at home.

You can think of today as the dead of the Winter Season.  The Kings are raising troops, positioning armies, readying messengers, and assigning Generals.  With the cold weather, everything has ground to a halt, but everybody knows that with the spring thaws, war is in the offing.  This gives the players some time to get their plans and houses in order.

Players have until December 31st to freely discuss their intentions.  After that, the game is afoot and all in-game communications should be sent via messengers through the Umpire.  For an example of the way this will shape the game, note that the Red and Blue kingdoms are on opposite sides of the map.  Their messages will have to pass through a lot of potentially hazardous territory, making coordinating moves between them difficult.

This will be a much more open-ended game than you are probably used to - a lot of unanticipated wrinkles and questions are sure to arise. The impartial Umpire, I'll make any final rulings with an eye towards maximizing fun and minimizing hassles for everyone involved. For example, Allied Contingents will be addressed as they arise.  The players will have to use messengers to work things out to the best of their abilities. ("i.e. I'm sending a messenger to a general ordering him to serve under an allied general.") This may make it possible to utilize a decimated army to some good effect against a common foe. If communications are not clear, we may wind up with some fractious battles where no clear chain of command allows a powerful army to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

For those of you new to the blog, what you're seeing is the strategic face of miniature wargaming.  The moves and countermoves that arise from this game will generate tabletop battles fought out and shown on The Joy of Wargaming.  The two games fit hand in glove, and exactly how they interact will be part of the fun and excitement of things.

If anyone else is doing anything like this these days, it's completely off my radar. Via the blog and the Joy of Wargaming, we might just be able to inspire a new renaissance in the lost art of this style of wargaming.

Not sure what else to add except to once again offer my thanks for following along with this grand experiment.

First Addenda - More To Follow as Questions Arise

The Kings have questions, and we've got answers.  The rules page has been updated to incorporate these clarifications:

1. Couriers can travel by horse or by ship, and freely convert back and forth at any coastal town (not just at port towns). The assumption here is that couriers are resourceful individuals who usually pass for locals and are not above stealing a small fishing vessel if that's what it takes to get the message through. Couriers travelling by sea can freely pass through unoccupied sea lanes, but are captured when trying to slip through an enemy held sea lane in the same manner as horse-riding couriers.
2. Heavy Foot is Heavy Infantry is Grenadiers. Those names are used interchangably.
3. AP not spent must be banked at a player's controlled cities. If that city is lost to a siege, then those AP are captured and may be spent the following winter by the capturing player. If a city that holds AP is under siege during the winter months, those AP may only be spent to recruit forces in that city.
4. Red lines on the map represent mountains and high ridges that are uncrossable.
5. The ships on the sea lanes mark port cities.  Might have made more sense to use anchors as the symbol. There are a number of coastal cities that are not ports.  Nightmute is a coastal city, for example, but not a port city. A coastal city might be converted into a port, but that would require a full year of control and a pretty hefty AP cost.

AN ARMY WITHOUT A LEADER IS HIGHLY VULNERABLE TO THE ENEMY.  An army without an HQ will not move to contact an enemy force, but may be attacked.  An army that loses its last HQ will either hunker down and wait for orders or will march to the nearest Home City for safety.  Reinforcements can be ordered to join an army already in the field and do not require a general, but again bear in mind they are very vulnerable with at least one HQ in the detachment.

Another Layer of Confusion

Each of the Trossian Nations has a pool of several generals from which to draw his Army Commanders.  Each one is a unique individual with his own personality.  Each General will have one or two identifying characteristics that add a bit of flavor and effect to the campaign.  

Some of the traits will be rule-specific.  For example, a General may be the scion of a wealthy family and if appointed to field command, generates additional AP over the winter that can be used to purchase new units.  Or he might be afraid of sailing, and this his forces cannot travel by sea.  Or he might be foreign born and refuse service against his birth nation.  Or he might be loved by his troops and thus his presence acts as a morale boost to them. These will be obvious, and explicitly outlined to the players.

Some of the traits will be general personality quirks that will come into play when a General is left to his own devices.  This can happen when the strategic situation changes, a message is lost, or the General is given vague or contradictory orders.  The umpire will use the trait to help adjudicate what a General does when left to his own devices.  One that is 'Aggressive' will pursue the enemy and seek out battle.  One that is 'Cautious' will hunker down and assume a defensive stance.

At the start of the campaign, the players will be given a list to choose from.  Each Army will need a General to function, and the selection will be hidden from other players until the fighting starts.  As Tros is a small Empire, everybody knows everybody by reputation, even if they don't know everything about them.  The post-battle reports will include plenty of information about the forces and the generals, and ideally over time, players who pay attention can use this information to make informed strategic choices.

In the event of the death of a General, the Army will continue to operate, as a subordinate assumes command.  The army will continue without any obvious advantages or drawbacks.

On Imperfect Information

The War of the Trossian Succession has some pretty lofty goals.  One of those goals, and one that few games attempt, and even fewer achieve is giving the players a sense of the uncertainty of running a major military campaign.  Warren Peace threw me a link to a review of The Flight of the Eagle.  As the players take the role of the Kings of Tros, the issue of perfect information during the tabletop wargames becomes a non-issue.  

As a suitable replacement for that uncertainty, The Wars of the Trossian Succession includes blind-pull event cards - one per year per player - which may not become evident until after traps are sprung!

Additionally, and of more practical concern, the poor Kings must rely on the communications of the day.  That means slow-post horse and/or packet ships:

[P]erfect information is only part of the problem. Armies are composed of individuals, and communication is an imperfect art. Messages are lost, delayed, misunderstood; subordinates are willful, disobedient, over-promoted, and commanders are egotists, out of touch with reality. War is the province of uncertainty, as Clausewitz reminds us, and things go wrong. 1815 once again provides us with a perfect example of this in the fruitless march and counter march of d’Erlon’s corps between Quatre Bras and Ligny.

Although the rules for Tros are considerably simpler than those for Flight of the Eagle, they should help capture some of the uncertainty and difficulty inherent in managing large-scale campaigning.  Much of what gets handled by iron-clad rules in Eagles will be managed in a more narrative format - subject to the whims of the umpire - in Tros.

As such, Tros is not intended to serve as a playtest for a ruleset destined for the market.  It relies too heavily on the trust established between players and umpire for such base concerns.  Rather, it is meant as a proof of concept, a means of demonstrating to the world that the simple rules and convoluted execution of old school wargames possess a charm all their own.  It is a stab at a return to tradition, and you are invited to follow along as we re-blaze a trail overgrown with rules crunch over the last few decades.

At any rate, the first portion of the review is well worth a read for anyone interested in a deeper-than-usual delve into a different way to emulate generalship and the high-stakes tension of issuing imperfect orders to imperfect soldiers.  It might even help the reader feel a little more sympathy for old hapless General Irvin McDowell, of First Manassas infamy.

On Artillery and Historic Accuracy

  

Turns out the miniature order that I placed was for Malburian/Seven Years War armies.

That necessitates a bit of shuffling figures around to get a better mix for the Napoleonic rules that we're using for our battles.  Somehow the French wound up with almost no cavalry, which just wouldn't work with the "2 x 2 Napoleonics" ruleset that we will be using to resolve battles.

For now, all you need to know is that the option to purchase horse artillery has been removed from the game.  All artillery in the imagi-nation of Tros is slow to move and packs a punch.  From a historical perspective, the changes in army composition and artillery place our modelled combat somewhere in the hazy gap between the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic era.  

The full maximize army sizes will be sent out to each King within the next couple of weeks.

Post Battle Sequence For Campaign Play

The following supplements the rules presented in Rod Humble's 2 by 2 Napoleonics, as well as the campaign rules listed here.  Victorious armies command the field of battle, and in subsequent phases can elect to pursue beaten armies.  Defeated forces will suffer considerably more attrition, and their retreat buys them an opportunity to fall back further on subsequent turns.

For the winning army:

• The winning army remains in the province where the battle was fought.
• Dice for all units destroyed during the game.  On a 1 or 2 the unit has suffered sufficient casualties and is eliminated from the game.  (Guard and HQ units get a +1 to this roll, militia -1.)
• Dice for units forced off the table by routing.  (Eliminated on a 1.)

For the losing army:

• The losing army retreats by one province.  If the army has no safe line of retreat, it is destroyed as a fighting force.
• Dice for all units destroyed during the game.  On a 1 to 4 the unit has suffered sufficient casualties and is eliminated from the game. (Guard and HQ units get a +1 to this roll, militia -1.)
• Dice for units remaining on the tabletop at the conclusion of the battle.  Units are eliminated from the game on a roll of 1 or 2.  (Guard, HQ, and Cavalry units get a +1 to this roll, militia -1.)
• Dice for units forced off the table by routing.  (Eliminated on a 1 or 2.)

For a draw:

• Both armies must retreat one province and cannot move in the following phase.
• Dice for all units destroyed during the game.  On a 1 or 2 the unit has suffered sufficient casualties and is eliminated from the game.  (Guard and HQ units get a +1 to this roll, militia -1.)
• Dice for units forced off the table by routing.  (All units eliminated on a 1.)

On Mountain Passes

In the Spring of 1801, each of the two major mountain ranges on the continent of Tros features a single pass.  As can be seen on the map, each pass lies within and is controlled by one of the adjacent provinces. 

Here we see that passage through Anaktavuk Pass is controlled by the player who controls the Bethel province.  At the start of the game, Bethel is a neutral province whose lord whose only hope of survival is to play the three adjacent nations against each other.

The other, as yet un-named pass through the Eastern Range, is controlled by the valley town of Kaunas, to the southwest.

This may change.  Players may have the option of constructing defensive works within the pass - the cost of which has yet to be determined.  This would create a new province within the pass itself.  Unlike other provinces, units would not charged a movement cost for passing through the strongpoint.  (i.e. for movement purposes units are considered to travel directly from White Settlement to Bethel.)  In addition, the defensive work would not generate income at the end of the year, but would require an upkeep of 3AP.  Should a King neglect to pay the upkeep, the fortress would fall into ruin and the status of the pass would revert to as it was at the beginning of the game.

On Couriers

This campaign is largely an excuse to fulfill two dreams at once; run a PBEM campaign, and run a strategic level game to generate organic battles for the tabletop.  Rather than a long string of perfectly balanced encounters, the hope for this faux-war is that we'll see a lot of asymmetric battles.  Maybe even battles between armies with less than perfectly balanced compositions.  As the attrition occurs, armies will struggle to maintain a fully effective force...just as happens in real life.

As to the PBEM nature of the game, this choice was driven largely by a desire to make the game as easy on the players as possible.  They are Kings in Salons, exercising all of the top-level decision making, and leaving the gritty details of the execution to subordinates.  That means that they will rely largely on the dispatch of messengers to ensure their will is carried out.

The most obvious expression of this game-design is that generals will be given the broadest  of orders.  "Capture Gwareth, and leave a portion of your forces there to screen a march on the City of Nightmute."  The umpire will do his best to follow those orders to the letter until ordered otherwise.  Some discretion will be required, though, as the general might take a detour to smash a relieving force before investing beneath the walls of Nightmute.

Less obviously, players will have to assign a courier to deliver messages to allies. At least during the campaign season.  That will take time, and there is a chance the message doesn't make it through - just as happened in history. If it's really important, they should send two messengers. The umpire will track messengers backstage so that players cannot see who is sending messages to whom, nor which generals have had orders countermanded.

Of course, players do have other means of communications at their disposal, as players of No-Contact Diplomacy and microphone-free Minecraft can attest.  For example, every player will be able to see the results of army moves at the conclusion of each phase.  As armies march forth and navies set sail, they will signal their intentions to all and sundry.

We will pause at the conclusion of the Late Fall phase, and during the long Trossian Winter, players can once again communicate freely until the start of the next campaigning year.