Gunpowder, Treason and Plot!

Well, no gunpowder, but plenty of the other stuff.

Behold the kingdom of Novembre!

Novembre was a stable prosperous island nation with good relations with its nearest neighbours. It is divided into three main regions: the Northern Marches, the Midlands and the Southern Plains. The current capital is Unaville, founded named by the late King after his daughter. Unfortunately the king had no male heir and so Queen Una is the current ruler. She has so far refused to take a husband, leaving the kingdom without an heir. This state of affairs also contradicts one of the primary edicts of the Church of the Nine, Novembre's state religion. This puts Archbishop Trente, head of the church, in the position of Una's most prominent critic and opponent.

Things reached a crisis point last year, when the Archbishop made the long journey from his mountaintop abbey at Heaven's Gate to the capitol, where he hoped to plead with the Queen to bow to convention and choose a spouse. The two did meet, but tempers flared and all diplomacy failed. The Queen issued an edict pronouncing Archbishop Trente a traitor to the crown, while the Archbishop spent his entire journey home preaching at every church and temple, loudly condemning the "Red Witch of the South" in what became popularly known as The Trail of Lamentations.

Summer passed into a winter of discontent, as the kingdom's divisions continued to simmer under the surface. But when spring arrived, nobles up and down the kingdom found themselves rallying to one side or the other. Archbishop Trente led the so called "Pilgrimage of Hope" south, with the aim of once more confronting the Queen. This time however, the so-called pilgrimage consisted of a body of well armed temple troops backed by local levies.

When Trente found his path blocked at Middleburn by a body of men led by the Duke of Medwinde, it set the scene for the first battle of the Novembre Civil War.

So if you haven't already worked this out, this is the setup for my planned solo medieval campaign for Solo Wargaming Appreciation Month. The challenge was to do some big solitaire game, above and beyond your normal gaming efforts. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, inspiration struck when I found a box containing my old fantasy/medieval human army, plenty of elements for a couple of DBA sized armies with some variations.

Here's how things are going to play out. Each real-time week I'm going to fight a minimum of one battle from each of the three regions (North, Midlands, South). Starting out in the central town, the winning side pushes the opponent back one space up the road. If a force is defeated in its home space (i.e. the end of the line) then the cause is lost in that region, which declares for the other side. The battles themselves are going to be semi-randomly picked scenarios from the three Charles S Grant scenario books ("Scenarios for Wargamers", "Programmed Scenarios" and "Scenarios for All Ages")

There's one minor change from the original plan. DBx was always notorious for not doing a good job of handling medieval battles, so I'm going to try out "Rally Round the King" from 2Hr Wargames. I've long been a big fan of 2HW's various skirmish rulesets, but this is the first time I'll be trying one of their big battle rules.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a battlefield to lay out. November, and the war, starts tomorrow!