Wargames Recap

“Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.”

Our first in-person wargames, held during the mid-semester break as a reinvention of the April online version, required our players to use all their wits, wiles, stratagems and powers to ensure they came out on top as the forged a brave new Mediterranean balance of power.

The game was mapped out on a large board (modelled after the WWII Map Rooms at RAF Uxbridge) and teams worked to represent key empires, moving legions and fleets around a large board via wax-sealed secret orders, trying to gain possession of industrial hubs. They could not let their military minds get away from them either, all the while needing to maintain good relations with their neighbours via both secretive individual diplomatic channels and the meetings of the General Assembly of the Council of Nations.

Here’s a brief recap of what went down…

The Game Begins…

As the game began, all empires expanded outwards. Rome forged key alliances, agreeing to grand bargains and divisions of land with Carthage and Greece in exchange for peace. However, early rumblings of an Egypto-Punic Alliance soon fell apart, as protracted disputes over possession of Bayuda and Phazania scuppered any hope of a deal. And the reclusive Persian Empire soon found itself victim to the first attack of the game – a surprise Egyptian invasion of Jerusalem that ruined their plans to amass their armies and march on Petra.

Tragedy in Greece!

But then disaster struck the burgeoning Hellenic Empire! A popular revolution left its leaders decapitated and it descended into a loose and chaotic confederation of warring states, with no unified command or diplomatic relations with its neighbours. Carthage and Egypt, seeing an opportunity to create a thorn in the side of Persia and Rome, helped block a Council of Nations taskforce from being set up to deal with the ‘Grecian problem’.

Egypt’s Eastern Front only continued to push forward, with the loss of Tyre and Sidon to invasions from land and sea proving disastrous for Persian morale, even if the border with Carthage remained stuck in stalemate. Meanwhile, Carthage also consolidated its gains, moving to the south of Hispania and ensuring a strong territorial position, controlling its lands border to border.

Chaos and War…

The disorganised nature of the Greek Confederation made its movement unpredictable and often contradictory, as it moved within striking distance of Rome itself, even while losing parts of the Anatolian Peninsula to a cornered and resurgent Persia.

Persia’s advance was only helped by Carthage’s breakthrough against an Egypt too deeply committed to its northern neighbours. With Punic troops coming as far as Memphis and threatening the Egyptian heartland, the map looked like it was about to transform…

But Egypt could not be kept down for long – a guerrilla counter-offensive through the desert saw them reclaim many of their lands and move towards a newly fearful Carthage, while its use of island forwarding bases in Cyprus and Crete placed it in a position to eliminate both the Greek Confederation and the Persian remnants in one fell swoop. And Rome, taking advantage of the confusion, continued to consolidate its position, moving closer to its own strike on the unruly Confederation.

The Endgame

However, in the end, it came down to a matter of trust. Rome, so long dormant, waited until its last moves to strike. Reneging on its original agreement with Carthage, one that had lasted through all the turns, it launched a mighty sea attack from the Baleares, coupled with a land march down through Gaul, to capture the Iberian Peninsula and rout the Carthaginians.

And while the Carthaginian Empire managed to secure its desert lands, Egyptian troops took advantage of their distraction to threaten to the capital itself via Numidia and Cirta. The Greek Confederation, without a true empire to speak of, invested its efforts in repelling foreign invaders, allowing for the rise of a new and uncontrolled Alliance of unaligned city-states around the Aegean, shaking off the shackles of imperial rule the way the Confederation had once done itself.

And, by simple majority, with Carthage, Rome and Egypt all concurring, the Council of Nations deemed this the status quo they could agree to protect. Where once five nations had begun, with the same amount of land, troops and fleets – the sun now set on a concert of nations playing in harmony: a diminished Persia lingering in the East; three middle powers, the Greek Confederation, the Alliance and the Carthaginian Empire; and two great Mediterranean superpowers, Egypt and Rome, locked in a strange new cold war.