Overview of Optio's campaign system

First let's talk about Optio's terrain pre-game. In My Hardened Opinion the mechanisms in all major rulesets for setting up terrain for a battle are utterly broken. You divide up the battlefield in segments and throw dice to put a hill here and a forest there - I can just imagine generals in Antiquity invoking the gods whilst hills and forests fall out the sky onto the ground.

Finding the right battlefield was just as important in the real world as fighting the battle itself, and Optio has a quick 5-minute game to allow players to do that. Players have an operational map, divided into a square grid of which each square is a miniature of the battlefield, showing the terrain to be put there.

Each player has 4 blocks: one the army, one a scout and two dummies. The blocks reveal to the player but hide from his opponent what they are, a bit like the blocks of Columbia Games. When the game starts each player moves his blocks, one block per move, on the battlefield.



Blocks are moved alternately one at a time like chess or draughts. Only one block of the same player can occupy one square but one block can move into a square occupied by a block of one's opponent. Blocks move from square to square but not diagonally. They can move two squares if entirely by road but never through a square occupied by an opponent's block. A block must stop when it enters a square occupied by an enemy block.

When in that square a block can scout an opponent's block by being placed just above it. Using an arrangement of magnets a scout will detect an army without being detected itself (by repulsion) whilst an army will detect another army but will be detected itself (attraction - snap!). Dummies do nothing but keep the whereabouts of one's own army unclear for a while.

When two armies occupy the same square that square is used to set up the battlefield, the orientation depending on which side the second army entered the square. The system's fog of war allows one army to ambush another, getting the battlefield it wants. A game is rarely more than a quarter of an hour and usually much less than that.



Now for the campaign.

The campaign is an extension of the terrain pre-game. The map has two states each with a number of towns. Towns supply troops for the army and require prestige points, or kudos, to control. Each player starts the campaign with enough kudos to control all his towns plus a small reserve. Kudos are won or lost in battle. A narrow victory means the victor gains one kudo and the loser loses one; an average victory and the victor gains three kudos whilst the loser loses three; a decisive victory and it's five kudos that are won or lost.

A defeated army must retreat from that battlefield square.

Once a player's reserve of kudos is used up by defeat(s) the loss of more kudos means he loses control of one or more of his towns. If the other player has enough excess kudos he can take control of those towns, but they don't supply troops: they just sullenly accept his suzerainty.

As a players loses towns his army become smaller. He has one resource left: he can hand in the kudos necessary to control a town and double its supply of troops, though never more than will make up for the troops he lost. He will have that army at his disposal until the next battle, after which he loses towns he cannot control. It's a last desperate effort to change his fortunes. He must win the next battle. If he loses it he will probably have lost the entire campaign.

Players can besiege each other's towns: one's army simply occupies the map square in which a town is for 12 turns. If his opponent doesn't give battle and drive it off, the town is destroyed on the 12th turn and henceforward doesn't supply troops for anyone. It's a pile of smoking ruins.

A campaign is over if a player's capital city is destroyed or if the player decides he can't win and puts his hands up.

And that's all there is to it.