Wednesday 3 December 2014

Dux Britanniarum Campaign

One of the main reasons for me picking up Dux Britanniarum is that it includes a campaign system. While I enjoy throwing down a few soldiers and rolling dice on a casual basis, I find that a good scenario adds so much to the experience. A linked series of scenarios is even better. Hopefully, DuxB will give all this.

The book covers dark ages warfare in the age of Arthur. The Romans have left Britain, their successors (the Romano-Britons) are facing threats from Saxon invaders. The campaign system includes a character generator for both forces, careers for your chosen Lord, raid scenarios, battles, force development, etc. There's just one problem in all this - we don't have any figures from this period. But we do have plenty from about two centuries later, in the shape of Saxons and Vikings. So we are going to use the book but jump forward in time - in our campaign the Saxons are now rulers of Britain, with Viking invaders launching the raids. We can easily tweak any references as appropriate.

The first decision of any campaign is to decide on a region in which to base the campaign. There's no place like home, so we have decided to fight the Invasion of Rheged. It's a part historical, part fantasy campaign. The year is 808 AD, vikings have established a settlement on the Isle of Man, a base from which to launch raids on the mainland.

The aim of the campaign is to gain/defend territory. The region of Rheged is split into seven provinces and to win the campaign the vikings will have to conquer all of them. The Saxon aim is to build defences in these regions to make it more difficult and/or to drain money from the Vikings so they cannot sustain themselves in enemy lands. Each lord progresses throughout the campaign, attracting more followers and agents.

The campaign is fought over years, each split into months. After a raid is fought, a number of months will elapse before the forces are back to combat strength. More raids and battles see the revenues expand, which is spent on more troops, defences, upgrades and so forth. The year starts in March and ends in October, then there's an end of year process and the cycle begins again.

In order to make it more likely that we reach a conclusion, we will be fighting for seven campaign years. At the end of AD 815 we will see which of the two rulers has fared best. Hopefully that will be achievable and should give us plenty of good games, but not drag on too long and be adandoned as so many campaigns are!

1 comment:

Gary said...

Look forward to more posts. Dux Britanniarum is a great game. The only problem I have is finding some to play it with. Had an idea up going back to the Roman invasion. That would be another great period.

Gary

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