9-Player Pyrrhic War Campaign | TURN 1
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Over the course of 8 months, our wargaming club refought the entire war between Rome and Pyrrhus from 280 BC to 275 BC. Each turn in this linked campaign represented one year of the historical war, with players maneuvering armies on a stunning theater map of southern Italy and Sicily.
This is a 5-part video series, spanning the complete duration of the Pyrrhic War. Today in Part 1, we outline the rules of the campaign, the war objectives, and we play the first turn (280 BC). It's a wargaming experience unlike anything you've seen on TH-cam before, full of maneuver, diplomacy, sieges, and massive tabletop battles!
The campaign rules are available for FREE on the official LWTV website, while the tabletop wargame rules, called "Age of Hannibal," are also available on our site in print or PDF format:
www.littlewarst...
The Pyrrhic War campaign series is presented without TH-cam ads or interruption, courtesy of our amazing Patreon supporters. Thank you, team! Most of the music throughout the series are original compositions by Sebastien Angel. You can find his channel here:
/ sebastien angel epic m...
When a man wearing a turtleneck and jacket combination speaks about ancient history in a British accent, you know it's epic.
DAMN RIGHT. The British accent is simply required for ancient history.
Depends my Yorkshire lecturer at university gave an interesting wording to Napoleonic war module
@@LittleWarsTV Great video and channel. I just want to say the dialogue sound quality isn't as good as in previous videos. Are they wearing mics? They could help. Or just have boom mic overhead.
@@user-uy1rg8td1v In THIS episode the sound quality was not great because we were running an air purifier in the club (we filmed it during COVID, a year ago). In the next four episodes the purifier isn't running!
@@LittleWarsTV I can only imagine a British guy reading historical accounts then immediately donning the red coat once they are involved / present
"Who has lost his hair in service of Rome" made me LOL, great video
As a fellow baldy I feel this.
I concur
I wept when he said that.
Man put too much olive oil on his head.
nice pfp handsome
Damn, I SO MUCH want to see that documentary...
Great format on the Consul elections. That was an AMAZING idea.
We're editing the documentary now and will have it ready to roll out as soon as the campaign ends!
Do not throw your augury birds in the ocean!
Great start to a new series - and that table- amazing!
Fantastic!...the pageantry!....the drama! Truly taking it all to the next level guys.
Except for the rolls which were comical at best. I cannot wait for Part II.
This is dorkery on a scale I didn't think was possible. Love it. Subscribed.
Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant!
The fog of war you guys add to games like this really makes these games stand out.
Watched the finale trailer, which had me coming to the first episode. Holy crap, whenever I mentioned a table top, people tell me of Warhammer or D&D, which didn't catch my eye. I love the old histories, I didn't know these things extended to this period. The rule set and map blew me away, the armor is fun, and this is just episode one! Pyrrhic campaign is an amazing choice and have the crowd pick Consul is wild! I don't know what inspired the fickle and horrific Algorithm Gods to send me that trailer, but it worked this time!
Super Excited for this series!
This is incredible. Thank you. Just want I needed on my lunch break
Good news then, Frank. You have some really, really fun lunch breaks coming this month....
This was a fun campaign to vote in. Keep up the content!
Well, this was well in the making
Very impressive, great job guys. looking forward to the rest of the campaign...
Really looking forward to the rest of the series!
Terrific way to start this campaign here on youtube. Well done guys, thanks!
Suggest he go with Gregorius as his consul name in the future. A name ending in anus just causes your troops to laugh behind your back. No wonder the dice failed Greg.
But Gregianus just presents sooooo many more joke opportunities...
Great batrep. I have been looking forward to this campaign. I love how Patreon members elect the "Roman" consul. The map is amazing. I love forward to seeing a land battle in the next episode. I would also like to see the campaign rules if they are available anywhere. I am always fascinated by campaign rules, and the hidden army strengths is a great aspect.
Oh yes, the entire campaign rule set will be FREE next week!
Incredible video. Really enjoy the setup and balance between gameplay and roleplay. Well done!
Great video can‘t wait for Part 2
We should have known not to trust a bald man as counsel! his inability to fight have left our Carthaginian Allie’s defenseless and they now struggle in the region. Great vid :)
"Lost his hair in service to Rome" bah, surely a more hirsute general such as myself could have done better 😉
One Minute in and i'm hooked. This will be amazing, thanks a lot for the video and the inspiration!
Just found this channel by random happenstance, and I'm already loving it! Subbed!
Love the campaign speeches for counsel
Love the RTW music
"Most of the music throughout the series are original compositions by Sebastien Angel."
MOST of the music...but naturally we had to sneak in some RTW sound effects and a track or two. But yes, Sebastien's amazing Epic Gods series forms 80% of this. There are also some tracks from TH-cam's free library.
YEAAH! ITS HERE!
saw the intro and instantly subbed. cant wait for turn two.
Welcome! We'll have a new turn every Tuesday!
As someone who wrote his thesis on the punic which Pyrhuss precedes, Im really Hyped for this.
Your italy diorama reminds me of the rome total war map which is what made me get into war gaming I have a hail Caesar spartan army and Roman imperial army
ive honestly loved this, i truly appreciate all the work and time put into this
Wow, glad I stumbled upon this channel! The map/board is incredible.
Impressive table! Fun video.
Sublime.
Lovely game, can't wait to see how this pans out. hopefully, Pyrrhus will stomp those horrible Romans into the Italian dirt and change history.
Well we can't give away the ending, but by the gods our Pyrrhus is going to try!
Waiting for the next
Bravo!
Hey yall, just wondering where those awesome miniatures are from?
These are Baccus 6mm, though we also have Rapier 6mm in the club for ancients.
@@LittleWarsTV thank you!
Can't wait for day 2
best idea ever
What palm tree flag is that? It's awesome. What country does it represent?
We use that as a symbol for Carthage.
Good thing they threw that Gregianus of Tarpeian Rock.
Is the campaign map/ siege maps/ miniatures all hand made? Or is there somewhere I can buy them?
I kinda want to introduce this to my local gaming store!
The campaign map is hand-made (we have a video tutorial showing how), the siege fortifications are all paper models (we have them available on our website), and the miniatures are mostly Baccus 6mm! Available from the UK with worldwide shipping. We are big fans.
As a roman citizen I feel betrayed watching our army go into Magna Graecia! Consul Gregianus promised a defensive approach that will save my sons serving in the army. Seeing the Carthaginians dance around the island like a bunch of fools is nothing our roman consul can control - but why risking our roman citizens when you promised us not to?!
Rolling 1 that many times, its time to switch out the die and destroy the one you currently have.
Where do you get the figures
Does each side gain more army points based on how many cities they have taken? I don’t see the advantage of going all in on Sicily first just to knock Carthage out of the game
The available army points are fixed for each turn--but you DO gain VPs toward winning the overall campaign. And you can gain Momentum for the next turn (bonuses and free Diplomacy) by winning battles and taking a great city (as Steve did Turn 1).
@@LittleWarsTV ah that makes sense, can’t wait for the rest of these to come out I’ve really been enjoying the games with the larger scale then just one battle like you guys did with Malta and the battle of Marengo with the multiple boards
The campaign map really elevated this to a whole new level
A thing of beauty, yeah.
Pyrrhus taking Syracuse is HUGE! That alone would have saved him the trips to and fro Sicily and allowed him to focus on stopping Rome in its tracks. For predictions: I expect Pyrrhus to mop up Sicily in turn 2, for Rome to start threatening the Greek cities in southern Italy and for turn 3 to feature the first huge battle of the war and likely the most decisive one for how the war will play out.
Next week we'll see how good your predictions turn out. Pyrrhus indeed will attempt to "mop up" Sicily. Just how well that goes remains to be seen!
An excellent start to the campaign. But it also illustrates my one concern with rulesets like Age of Hannibal - everything hinges on the roll of a single die and I, like Greg in this case, can be relied upon to roll 1s (or whatever the worst roll happens to be) time after time. Whatever happened to ‘average dice’ or dice rolled in pairs (or triples) to give weighted scores and allow good strategies a better chance of working. None of which changes my enjoyment of Littlewars TV or my anticipation for the next episode. Thank you.
Dice karma tends to work itself out in the end...with enough rolls, everyone tends to revert to the mean. And in Turn 2, you might just see a little bit of that :)
I know what you mean. I, at times, can roll really bad.
@@LittleWarsTV romes gonna steam roll Carthage arnt they? Also now you guys have me playing Rome 2 total war
@@LittleWarsTV Ehh, i agree with Alan here. Unless it's DnD and you have dice economy on your side, it's unreasonable to expect the dice to average to the mean, as such only really happens with extremely large sample sets. In fact, it's actually super common in computation to get sample sets which tend wildly toward one extreme or another. This is a consequence of Boehr's law applied to hexanoic distributions.
@@LittleWarsTV From the opposite side of things, I have been working on a system that relies not on rolls, but concentric "Rock-Paper-Scissors" calculations to allow maximum player agency while still obscuring the immediate outcome of things a bit. Within the system, you could become the same as a master chess player and remove all doubt vs your lessers (whether thats good or bad is opinion). I think its worth a try to produce a range of systems, from wild luck, to weighted luck, to no luck. People value various things. Someday I hope you'll have the opportunity to try my system ^^
As one of the honorable senators who also advised caution towards the start of this war, I was one of the many who voted for Gregianus. His plan was sound, even though his sound did not go to plan.
I always knew Steve was Pyrrhus! A highly entertaining video. I was half-expecting Steve would have had backup singers repeating his taunts in harmony to reflect Pyrrhus' larger-than-life personality? That would have been awesome!
OF COURSE it was always going to be Steve. Naturally!
Soooo looking forward to watching this at home with some scotch NGL xD direct question, what miniatures did u used and what base sizes? Looks pretty dope
All 6mm figures on 40mm bases. Turn 1 is a lot of maneuvering, but some of the battles later in the campaign get pretty massive. So we felt 6mm scale was the way to go given the size of the armies.
@@LittleWarsTV thank youuuu for the quick help😊
--Gonna be a bit of a Gregianus apologist here-- I feel like his strategy of diplomacy and maneuver would have worked had his rolls been even statistically average. Also, there really weren't any major catastrophes for Rome here, so the compounding Roman advantage through the following turns will be able to be brought to bear without having to make up for previous casualties. I think Greg did okay given his limited information, however I will not lie- I was kinda on the Gregianus hate train on patreon for a while, this video clears a lot up though. Idk what do you guys think?
I would hope the denouncment of gregianus on patreon were both long winded and inflammatory
The best mechanic of this whole campaign, IMO, is the consular election. It doesn't really matter if Gregianus made the right strategic decisions or not, all that matters is whether or not he gets reelected to continue with his strategy. Great mechanic.
While his strategy may have been sufficient, his leadership skills matched what you would expect for a guy with anus in his name.
@@TheMoose8181 realistically though, no Roman consul would be reelected
A Flaminium strategy.
You did a good job hyping this campaign and episode 1 was worth the wait. Excited to see Turn 2 and some minis in action :) Really well done, folks.
Oh the minis are going to get quite a bit of action by the end of this campaign....
This campaign board and setup is amazing! I love the dedication for full costumes as well. You guys are aces.
Aces or just really shameless geeks. Maybe both?
@@LittleWarsTV is there a difference?
Absolutely fabulous stuff!! A remarkably fascinating & enthralling watch & great role play by all at Little Wars. Can’t wait for next installment! Big thank you!
Best wargaming channel on YT
You got that right!
Wow, thank you Stu!
I’m so into this campaign. Thank you guys, looking forward to the next turn!
Next Tuesday morning, Chapter 2!
Excellent start. Had I a vote, I would have voted for Greg but I see he also rolled dice pretty much like I usually do. Looking for some battles next turn (and better die rolling for the new consul).
Rome's next consul must pray to different gods than Gregianus, let's just leave it at that until next week....
Amazing map terrain. The prior video showing the construction was very informative. Maybe though, Gregianus should command construction projects only!
Hahahah yes, either exile or demotion to prefect in charge of aqueduct construction!
@@LittleWarsTV 🤣
By Jupiter! Those dice rolls were abysmal! Throw him to the lions!
This campaign is why I am a patron; fun, games, and history.
Clearly Gregianus' die thought it was the turn indicator.
I'm already in love with this series :) Rome Total War soundtrack hits so good with what is happening in the game. Highly looking forward to the next episodes!
Brilliant. Hopefully the next Consul will have more luck with rolls than Consul Gregianus Infelicitas! Cry Havoc and unleash the dice of war!
Would be neat (and messy) to complicate a straight forward game by introducing backstabbing, bribery and collaboration by members of the Senate not in the Consul's camp, and maybe someone on the side of the Greeks doing they same thing to Pyrrhus, pretending to be his aide and ally. Life is messy like that and it would add an unseen and dangerous element to such a game. Maybe down the road?
A most interesting idea here, Thomas. Bribery and backstabbing...that sounds like just the sort of thing our club enjoys. Stay tuned. You may just see a bit of that coming in the campaign.
Two Consuls, who would alternate holding the fasces each month, would have been interesting if Rome had two players each handing off strategy.
A petty disagreement leads to disaster, love it
Consul Antonio "Guido Sarducci"
If Pyrrhus wins the campaign easily by turn 5 then weirdly it won't be a "Pyrrhic Victory".
This is super cool I love the mechanics of the Roman Senate. I'm really excited for more and seeing that I had to wait for over a year to see this I am not disappointed at all.
That's a relief to hear! All the filming and editing took us a lot longer than expected, but we tried to pull out all the stops for this one. We had no idea how it would turn out in the end, but all 5 turns wind up telling one hell of a story.
@@LittleWarsTV that's exciting to hear. You guys are awesome keep up the good work!
Your videos are always a treat, I love your channel and how audacious you guys are in coming up with these big, visually and mechanically impressive games and campaigns.
I'm curious how others feel about the rather serious and 'epic' tone of the intro in this video. I really enjoy the silliness and lighthearted way your club members tend to approach most games and the difference was very apparent this time.
Oh yes, we went for the "epic tone" introduction on purpose. This was a very big, epic project for the club. But I think you'll discover plenty of silly, light-hearted moments coming in this as the guys get into it....
This sounds absolutely insane, and I'm so excited.
Edit: Man, the dice were just NOT in Greg's favor this time.
I am so stoked for this.
We are stoked to finally release it! We've been working on this for a long time and damn...we think the five-part campaign turned out great!
I like how this campaign has uncontested withdrawal mechanic. Some games act as if generals couldn't escape a field battle which is highly unrealistic. Almost all battles I can think of were mutually agreed on encounters. As such this campaign is a series of sieges and manuevers which is cool
Yes that always struck us as a realistic maneuver for a commander. But we do have a penalty for withdraw, allowing the attacker to gain a free diplomacy roll in the space vacated.
let me just say "ooooooooooooh"🤓
This is the best Little Wars content yet! I love how you combine the campaign map with on the field battles. My brother and I are just getting started in wargaming and my dream was do do something like this someday.
First time on the channel this is awesome!
Welcome, Gerhard! However you managed to find us, we thank the TH-cam gods!
Simply outstanding guys! Well worth the wait.
It begins !!!!!
Cannot wait for next part
It's Table top total war and its amazing
Damn! This looks like it's gonna be good, shame.i can't binge watch it xD
This is my first exposure to the channel and I have to say, the Patreon voters simulating the senate is ingenious. I appreciate the measured tactics displayed by Rome but alas, cursed by the dice rolls!
I like how on at the beginning of the video, on the roman senate, are the words of Darth Sidious. I'm just not sure what the second writing on the right is...
Pyrrhus to Gregianus (which I keep hearing as Groggy Anus): “No one likes you.” Not true. Seems like only 1s like him.
And with that, Gregianus was soundly beaten to death on the senate floor. :(
Or thrown from the Tarpeian Rock!
I love the Rome: Total War music and sounds in the video and look forward to watching the rest of the series. Gotta say, I am captivated, bravo and good work!
Woah. How have I not found this channel yet?! This is awesome!
We don't know!! We've been waiting for you!
Cant wait to watch all these
We'll air them every week, back-to-back!
This showed up on my recommended and thought that it was from like 3 years ago but found out that it was posted 11 days ago
How do you explain to the senate that you kept rolling 1's?
what an excellent campaign report!
This is amazing!!!!
Great video as always. Can't wait for part 2! My wonder is if you lot would do a campaign series later in history? I know it's an undertaking to do a campaign. I'm currently working on making a map (inspired by yours) I can use as an imaginary location on earth that could have been fought over in any time period so I have somewhere to base my soon to begin historical games. Sorry random comment. But would love a similar series (only after one episode!) In a later period.
A campaign year clearly hugely influenced by the Great Gods o f the Die.... Gregiarnus Inepticus was clearly one of the names history forgot. And I presume the 3 word description of our antagonist settled any further discussions on casting?
Outstanding guys. Totally locked in for the campaign...
As a terrain maker, seeing you guys jam sticks into your map, traumatizes me. A better terrain maker would have provided sleeves to insert those banners into.
Howdie. There is a video on how the table was built, there are indeed inserts in the table for the purpose of flags.
@@chalfantconley5995 that's good to know, did you build the table, because it's beautiful.
@@joshpotter9261 No, Greg built it.
Epic
A 9 player game, but we only see 2 or 3 of you???? Great idea for a campaign, however!!😀
It's a long war, Ron! You'll see them all....
fantastic stuff. you guys just keep getting better and better at presenting such wonderful and inspiring historical miniature games and campaigns.
What were those Roman die rolls??
Embarrassing, that's what. Gregianus has been exiled from Rome.
Damn I waited so long for this campaign.
Finally