Game Rules - Short Version
Winning the Game - To be the game victor, you must be the player with the most Glory on the
side that wins the war. To be on the winning side, the enemy nation must either surrender (if they
are the South), or lose their will to fight (if they are the North). A nation surrenders once it
loses enough territory, so taking land from them is a good thing. The Union loses its will simply
with the passage of time, so the Graycoats just have to hang on long enough. Oh, and losing your
capital is a BAD thing, so work on not doing that.
Now all you need to complete the task is to have more Glory than any other player does on your team.
You acquire Glory by being in command of battles that you win. You get command of a battle by having more
troops on the battlefield belonging to you than any other player on your side. You win a battle by driving
the opponent from the field.
Game Setup - First, the team gets their troops. If the team can’t agree on assignments, or are quibbling
over some detail, use the bidding process to get the essential units you want. Now deploy your new forces.
While you can generally place them in one or more provinces anywhere that is friendly, again you might
want to get together with your team and hash out a deployment scheme.
General Game Flow
Play proceeds through a series of turns. There are four ‘Week’ turns, (most turns lasting four real days each)
followed by a ‘Monthly’ turn (two real days length). Each ‘Week’ consists of a Movement phase (two real days)
and usually a Combat phase (another two day’s real time). The bulk of the time for each phase consists of the
players working out their plans with each other, and submitting their orders by the deadline. The GM processes
those orders within six hours of the closing of the deadline and posts the updates to the forum. This starts the
clock for the next phase, with the next player orders due within 48 hours.
Unit Movement - A Movement turn consists of two movement phases. Infantry and artillery move one area
(during the second movement phase), while ships (includes ground units transported at sea), armor, mech infantry
and self-propelled artillery can move up to two.
Movement Restrictions -
Units cannot leave an area if there are more enemy units than friendly ones.
Sea - Ground units can only enter friendly controlled sea zones. Naval units start movement by deploying into the
sea zone adjacent to their port. Naval units must stop movement when entering enemy controlled, or
un-controlled sea zones.
Air units must stay within two provinces (or one sea zone) of a friendly province.
Rail movement. Up to six ground units may move by rail each turn. They may move from any friendly province to
any other friendly province, as long as both provinces can trace a path of friendly provinces to the capital. Units moving
by rail move in the second phase.
Movement Orders - List each province where you have units, then where you plan for the units in that province
to go to for each phase.
For airplanes and submarines, simply list the destination for the units.
Combat - Not much you HAVE to do; the units will automatically pick useful targets to smack around. You could
set priorities for shooting, but you don’t have to.
If you are the battle commander though, you will have to pick a Tactic, and choose a Resolve level. At a minimum
level of effort, pick a random Tactic. You could go wrong, but it is only for one round of the fight.
The Resolve level is a bit more involved. This value determines when your side decides to yield the field to the enemy.
It represents the percentage of your force remaining in the fight. The higher the value (range is 0-100); the sooner
your side will bail. Use common sense in picking the value.
Some things to think about:
1. Ground troops can only retreat to a province, NOT a sea zone.
2. The more different types of units you have in the fight, the greater the chance that you will be able to damage the
enemy before you are shot at.
3. When a unit is hit by an enemy, normally it just retreats out of the battle. There is a chance however, that it will be
destroyed, and placed in the Salvage box. Roughly half the units in Salvage are placed in the Muster box each turn, the
remainder generally is destroyed.
Monthly Turn- Consists of up to four phases; Victory Check, Assignments, Research, and Production.
Assignments - This is where players get new units. The Muster box contains all of the units awaiting assignment to a
player. Players may bid what Influence they posses on which ones they want to control. The high bidder for a given
unit takes possession. As part of the bid for a unit, the player indicates the destination province for the unit. The GM
assigns units that no one has bid on to random players.
Research - The player with the lowest Glory value directs the placement of research tokens. That player assigns the
tokens as desired in the research fields. However, for any field, there may only be an increase of one token over the
previous turn. The more tokens a field has, the better the chance that those units will win on the battlefield.
Production - Again, the player with the lowest glory value directs the production Focus. That player can either add one
chip to a particular unit type, or move one from one type to another. The Focus values for unit types generally increases
the number of units of that type produced.
Province Repair - Players may allocate their Influence to repairing damaged provinces. Damaged provinces do not
contribute to new unit production. The player pays from one to five of their Influence and rolls a die. If the result plus
the spent Influence is six or higher, the province repairs back to normal.
Influence assignment - Generally, the lower your Glory, the greater the amount of additional influence you receive.