Manlii v Julii End of campaign

End of Campaign -final thoughts

26 June 2024

With the Manlii win in game 52, which was a civil war battle to determine the winner of the Middle Republic Era, the era results to date for the thirteen being contested were as follows:

Manlii            7 wins

Julii                1 win

Draws:           1

Incomplete    4

Result

The final result was 7 era wins to the Manlii out of 12 undrawn eras meaning the Campaign was won by the Manlii.

The final campaign position is here click here 

Post mortem

The tenor of the campaign was set in the first round of battles for each era where I established a strong lead that was to endure throughout the competition forcing Gordon on to the back foot and immediately into the position of trying to regain ground. It didn't prevent us from experiencing a wide range of great battles, some with weather, some with imposed historical conditions and some with the random Battlefield Effects. All in all an excellent long-term contest that gave each game a lot more meaning, as was the intention, so I believed achieved the goal that I set out when creating the campaign. 

The bidding system appeared to work well, the most difficult battles to bid on were the ones with multiple conditions and Battlefield Effects which were also some of the hardest battles to play. For instance I think my worst performance was in game five, where I played the Romans in a refight of Telamon which I royally messed up.

The playing of the campaign through a video link appeared to work well, the only unanswered question is to what extent was the Manlii victory influenced by Gordon playing through it? I suspect it must have had some effect, though nothing obvious occurred in any game that I can point to. Gordon commented as follows when I asked him that question:

You asked about the difficulties of playing by video. I don't think that made a huge difference - My deployment might have suffered at times from an incomplete appreciation of the space available. There were times when I clearly had missed something. You might have got fed up with me asking "are you sure they are/aren't behind the flank of that unit?" That was real confusion

Gordon's final thoughts

The campaign provided an interesting way of playing many different games within a structured format with a degree of similarity for the Roman armies that, arguably, allowed both players to gain some experience and expertise with them. Although the campaign period covered 2,000 years, the periods broadly broke down into Roman heavy spearmen, Roman heavy swordsmen and Roman heavy cavalry vs a wide and disparate range of enemies. This meant that there was usually the opportunity to vary the Roman side in case one found the same army getting a little stale.

And, if you weren’t playing the Romans their enemies covered the whole range of other troop types.

Alec’s choice of battlefield effects added greatly to the novelty of the games, so that it never got stale. The only problem I found was that in some games it was very quickly apparent what was going to happen. The original all or nothing awarding of points for win/lose meant that I saw little point in continuing with some games after a few turns, often before most units had engaged. Alec addressed that in the latter stages with a more nuanced approach to victory.

Setting the games within a campaign format added another level of intellectual challenge, which I did not fully appreciate until some way through the campaign. Bidding to reflect the battlefield effects was a real challenge. Not only did one have to decide which side made more sense to play in terms of the choice of enemy and particularly battlefield effects, but the decision was also influenced by the current points in the era and the overall campaign situation.