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instead have to put together an opera- tion, do reconnaissance, rehearse, etc. Then the payoff is the battle.”
I The Ancient War series, his favorite design
As an example of what you can expect
in a Miranda design, we’ll take a look at what he considers his favorite design, his Ancient War series that consisted of four separate games: Trajan (S&T 145, 1991), Roman Civil War (S&T 157, 1993), Caesar in Gallia (S&T 165, 1993) and Germania (S&T 75, 1995, plus 2004’s combined series and expansion). With maps based
on Ptolemy’s world view of 150 AD and three month turns, Miranda makes players interact in a system where variability is maximized.
That variability comes in three distinct mechanisms. The first is a random events table that provides things like omens and portents, something the ancients took very seriously. The random events can help or hurt and there’s little a player can do but work with the effects. The second variability is in movement. Each individual force in a map loca- tion rolls on a March Table prior to movement; the table will indi- cate whether the force actually
moves or not, whether it suffers scatter (i.e. ends up somewhere different than it intended), or attrition and lose some of its force. In the game Germania, for exam- ple, the Roman supreme leader Varus has his forces (some six legions and auxilia- ries) scattered along the border initially, while the German leader Arminius and co-leader Maroboduus have two big con- centrations of barbarian hordes ready to rumble. Varus has to try to concentrate his forces before Arminius makes his move.
The next variability that Miranda uses a lot in his games are stratagem markers. These markers are used to give players
some advantages. In the Ancient War series, there are three types: military, political and agent. The uses are varied. Military stratagems can be used to aid marching (negating, for example, the “don’t move” result from the March Table, provide additional marching, intercept- ing an enemy force moving adjacent, or providing tactical superiority in battle, among others. Political stratagems can be used to recruit new units, or try to force an enemy to defect or desert. Agents can attempt assassinations or gain intelli- gence on enemy forces. Stratagems also add to the fog of war, since you don’t know what the “other guy” might be holding.
The kicker on stratagems is that they are limited, drawn from a pool of available markers each turn based on the supreme leader’s leadership rating, sometimes obtained or removed from the events table and as the result of battle. Using them is again limited by the leader’s leadership rating (Caesar can use three per turn; Varus can use one, for example.) How they are used is completely up to the players
Combat is based more on discipline than on numbers, with Miranda making the point that the more organized and training a force had the better they’d fair against a less disciplined (i.e. barbarian) mob. As Miranda states in his design
Joe Miranda ca. 1989,
based on a photo from Fire & Movement #63 (Dec/Jan 1989/90)
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