For myself and for the Empire!

boardgame version (no umpire)

The campaign simulates the Roman civil war in 68-70 AD. In that period five different emperors ruled the Roman Empire. The campaign works well in a club environment. The minimum number of required players is 5. Characters listed after Vespasianus are there just to let more players join in. Furthermore Otho can be ignored. Instead automatically replacing Galba 1 turn after Galba becomes Emperor.

Players will take the role of Roman Emperors and provincial governors (Legati). The player’s goal is to become Emperor by eliminating all rivals or failing that to become the most successful Barbarian king ravaging Rome’s frontiers.

List of characters and starting area:

Caius Iulius Vindex - Gallia Lugdunensis

 Servius Sulpicius Galba -Hispania Tarraconensis

Marcus Salvius Otho - Lusitania

 Aulus Vitellius Germanicus - Germania Inferior

Titus Flavianus Vespasianus  – Giudea

Caius Licinius Mucianus - Siria (Optional)

Marcus Aponius Saturninus  –Mesia  (Optional)

 Lucius Trebellus Maximus – Britannia (Optional)

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus- Rome

Victory conditions

At the end of the game players will check if Roman Empire has been able to fight off barbaric raids. If it did, the winners are the Emperor and the best General. If it didn’t, the winner is the best Barbarian king.

Army Composition

Each player has an army made of 350 AP from the EIR list in 68AD. No special options are avalaible, nor any ally.

 8Bd are a legion. No player can field more than 3 legions, except that the emperor can field 4.

The emperor cannot use more than 8 RBdO. The first 16 Bd used in his army list must be RBdI. [1]

Vindex can only field Bd downgraded I (up to 24) [2]

When a rebel becomes the emperor, he must immediately change his army list to fulfill the emperor army composition (i.e he must use at least 16 RBdI)

Each army has a morale factor that depends by how many legions (or auxiliary brigades) the army has.

Each 8 elements of RBdO, RAxS and RCvO give 1 moral point. As example, an army made by 16 RBdO, 16 RAxS, 4 RCvO and 2 ILhO has 4 points of morale.

Morale is important beacuse it is lowered when a battle is lost or the army suffers attrition. Each point of morale lost lowers the troop grading of 8 elements of the player’s choice. For example, a forced march will lower morale by 1 point changing 8 blades from O to I or 8 RAx from S to O. Morale can be restored by 1 point for each major victory in battle.

If the morale reaches zero, the soldiers will rebel and kill the commander.

Game lenght

The game starta in autumn/fall 68AD and ends in Spring 70AD. Each turn is a season. The campaign has 8 turns, 2 of which are winter ones.

Rules

Players (and their army) start in the area indicated in the character list above.

Each turn is made up of the following phases

A)     Rebellion declaration

B)      Allegiance declaration

C)      Moves

D)     Battles

E)      End of turn victory check

Rebellion declaration

Each player, in turn order (see phase E), can declare himself usurper or pass. If a player passes, the following player in turn order has the choice. There can be just one usurper, willing to overthrow the emperor and become Caesar himself,  so once one is declared, this phase is over.  This means that Rebellion and allegiance declaration are skipped if the last turn’s usurper, at the start of the new turn, is still alive.

Allegiance declaration

Once the Emperor and the usurper are set, each player in turn order will decide if will be loyal to the emperor, or rebel and join the usurper. This phase is over once all players have declared their allegiance, forming two opposed parties.

Moves

The emperor always moves last. The other players will move in turn order.

Each player can move his army to 1 adjacent zone or to a zone connected by a sea route.

A player can declare a forced march and move 2 areas, but this will cause a penalty of 1 point to morale (see “Army Composition” above)

Sea moves are forbidden during winter. In winter normal moves cost 1 moral point and forced marches are not allowed.

Normally an area can be occupied by just 1 army, so an area cannot be entered if there is already a friendly army in it. If the army is enemy, the move is legal and will potentially cause a battle.

If a player has not yet moved and an enemy army enters his area, he has two options when it is his turn:

Stand and fight, or try to withdraw. The withdraw declaration immediately lowers by one his army’s morale, and is successful only rolling 4+ on a d6 die. A failed roll means the withdrawal has been unsuccessful and a battle must be fought. The morale penalty is applied wheter the withdrawal is successful or not.

If a player has already moved when an enemy enters his area the two armies must fight. A force-marching army must stop when it enters an area with an enemy army.

Once all moves are executed, the Emperor decides if he will send reinforcements to the borders. He can give up to 25AP worth of troops to each of the limitanei generals (see end of turn section below). These AP are lost to his army if he is engaged in battle. Battles are then resolved

Battles

Battles are resolved using DBMM 2.0. The invader is always the army that entered the zone where the defender was. If both moved in the same area, aggression is rolled as usual.

The battle will end with a major or minor victory.

Major victory means that only one army is broken. The losing player is eliminated, assuming he is killed, taken prisoner, or has fled away to never ebe heard of again. The winner stay in the area and restores 1 morale point. He cannot have more morale points than those he had at the start of the campaign.

Minor victory is any result where no army (or both armies) broke. The winner is the player scoring more VP. The loser must withdraw to a free adjacent area (not the one from where the other player came) and loses one morale point. If there are no avalaible areas, the army is destroyed. If he is the emperor defending in the Italy area, he is killed and eliminated having lost Rome.

If an army doesn’t break, automatically it recovers all troops lost.

End turn victory check

Players check if the game is over by having played the last turn (Spring 70 AD) or if the emperor is the only player on the map (i.e not sent to fight border wars), all others being eliminated.

The player order for the next turn is determined randomly.  It  is only fixed on turn 1 where it  is in the order of the list of characters.

Eliminated players reenter the game assuming the role of barbarian kings and roman limitanei garrison commanders in an alternating fashion. So if there are 3 eliminated players, 2 will be barbarians and one Roman.

The barbarian players will launch raids in the spring and autumn/fall turns. In the winter and summer end turns phase, each barbarian king will draw randomly which people he will lead in the next season. The list is:

Caledons, Batavi, Chatti, Roxolani, Parthians, Nobades , Armenians , Iazigi, Dacians, Preislamic Arabs.

Once the barbarian players have picked their people, they randomly pick a roman opponent from the border general group . If there are not equal numbers of barbarians and roman generals, then the extra garrison general role will be taken by the emperor or a loyal player picked by the emperor who is still on the map and that is not engaged in combat at the end of spring/fall move

The battles will be made with 300AP armies made before the battle.  If one army is broken, the opposite faction (Romans or Barbarians) will score 1 points, while the players get full VP.

At game end if the barbarians score more points, the winner is the barbarian king that collected more average VP using this formula: VP/games played +1 for each game.

If the Romans score the same or more points than the barbarians, the winner are the emperor and the roman garrison general scoring more average VP (using the same formula used by barbarian kings).

Map

[1] The Emperor has available legions I and II Adiutrix, Pretorians, and a legion sized bunch of urban cohorts. The use of BdI should give a slight advantage to the rebel. Historically, apart Vindex’s failure, each rebel was able to win against the imperial forces.

[2] Vindex’s forces seemed to be mostly militia, from his own tribe. He is the only one to have an army weaker than emperor’s, since he was also the only one to historically fail.

Thanks to Rob Brennan for the help given to translate the text