Hegemon

A few years ago I wrote an Ancients Campaign for a magazine. It was okay, but upon reviewing it recently, it was clearly too long and too complex to be practical. Some of the ideas seemed to be worth pursuing, however, so I have revamped it (considerably) and made it available here.

It is set circa 340BCE and pits Macedon against Persia with Greece as the battlefield. It is specifically designed for DBA 3.0 but is likely to be easily adapted to other sets of rules which cater for battles of around ten to 20 units.

The campaign features a point to point map of Greece. Each turn represents a year and consists of a winter administration phase and two campaign seasons. Campaigns are likely to last three to five years (although a spectacular failure could see a campaign concluded in a single year) and likely to feature an average of three battles per year.

During winter players spend their budget to bribe/persuade Greek city states in a variety of ways to make them amenable to a player's plans and to buy new elements to reinforce armies in the following year. During each of the two campaign seasons players move their army or armies on the map and invade hostile Greek states, the armies of which are played by the opposing player. The winner of the campaign will be the player who allies the greatest number of Greek states, or at least renders them neutral, by the time either Macedon or Persia cannot field an army sufficiently strong to continue.

Although written with this specific hypothetical campaign as its basis, the campaign mechanisms are portable to other eras and armies, with the requirement only that the player create an appropriate point to point map of the area of operations. The article includes half a dozen ways in which to vary the original campaign and brief notes suggesting other historical conflicts of the classical period which might be simulated.

The article is fourteen pages long and incorporates a campaign map and a budget tracking graphic. Finally it also presents a very simple methodology for resolving battles in a DBA style using any flat surface and 30 or so dice of different colours. This will allow the player to experiment with the campaign framework without committing himself to six to twelve DBA battles.

This is available as a PDF only and is highly unlikely to be produced in hard copy.