Limits of Glory: Campaign I – Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire from Form Square Games – Action Point 5

A few years ago, we became acquainted with Andrew Rourke through his Coalitions design from PHALANX that went on to a successful crowdfunding campaign. He has since been a busy guy with starting his own publishing company called Form Square Games and also starting the first design in a new series called Limits of Glory that will take a look at the campaigns of Napoleon. In Campaign I, which is called Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire, the game is focused on the campaign of the French in Egypt between 1798 and 1801. It covers everything from the invasion fleets leaving France trying to avoid Nelson and the British Navy, to the final surrender of the remnants of the French Army to an Anglo-Ottoman force in 1801. The game is very interesting and uses some new ideas to focus on the luck and skill of commanders through a mechanic called the Glory Rating. This Glory Rating can be used as a type of currency by commanders to do several things such as re-roll dice for movement or in battle. This becomes a sort of push your luck and resource management aspect and the players who more wisely use this scarce resource will find themselves victorious.

In Action Point 1, we looked at the area movement Map Board and got an understanding of the various features and also how armies navigate the hostile terrain of Egypt. In Action Point 2, we examined the Event Clock and discussed how it effects the game. In Action Point 3, we discussed the use of the Glory Rating for commanders and what it represents. In Action Point 4, we covered a few examples of movement, combat and sieges and showed how they work. In this Action Point, which is the conclusion to the series, we will discuss the path to victory for both the Coalition forces including the British, Ottomans and Mamluks as well as the mighty French forces.

Victory Conditions

As with many games, there is not just one type of victory in Limits of Glory: Campaign I – Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire. It is more appropriate to say several types of victory including a total victory for either side (French or Allied), a partial victory or even the dreaded tie! Let’s go ahead and take a look at each of these types of victory.

French Total Victory

A French Total Victory is not as easy as you would think. In order to obtain a Total Victory, the French player must control Alexandria, Cairo, Rosetta, Damietta, Luxor, Suez, El Arish, Jaffa and Acre as the end of any turn. If you look at the board, it contains a total of 41 spaces. A good portion of these spaces include open areas with little or no strategic value through which the French Army must move to get to populated areas, referred to as Built Up Areas. This means that the French player must control 9 of 41 spaces or 22% of the total land spaces on the board (excluding the sea and island spaces).

But that is not all. The Savants must also currently be located in the Valley of the Kings. The Savants is an interesting historical addendum to this whole victory puzzle as in the Napoleonic era, “savants” referred to a group of around 160 scientists, artists, and engineers who accompanied Napoleon’s military campaign to Egypt. These savants were tasked with documenting the country’s ancient monuments, natural history, and contemporary life, ultimately publishing their findings in a comprehensive work called Description de l’Égypte, which is considered today as a cornerstone of modern Egyptology. This means that the French will have to traverse all the way down through Upper Egypt to deposit the Savant piece in the Valley of the Kings. This is not easy to accomplish and should be a great challenge for the French player.

Only after those 2 conditions are met, can the French win a Total Victory! Not an easy proposition. Some of the territory the French must move through is inhospitable at best and they will have to spend plenty of Glory to reroll dice as they move through these spaces. Remember, that in order to move, the player must first successfully activate the moving force using the number value between 1 and 4 printed in these spaces, which indicates the number of dice to be rolled to activate elements in that space. The easier the terrain is to move through, the more dice the player will get to roll. Dice rolls will only succeed on a 5 or 6 and fail on 1 to 4. Only one dice success is needed to activate the space and be able to move out. Therefore spaces with a value of 1 will be harder to move out of as compared to spaces with a value of 4. Also keep in mind that to access Upper Egypt and the Valley of the Kings, the French player must start in Cairo or Giza and move south to Upper Egypt. This means they will have to move through 6 different spaces to reach their objective. Plus these areas have a space value of mostly 2 or 3 and will not be easy.

Now, let’s take a look at the Allied Total Victory.

Allied Total Victory

An Allied Total Victory requires that the British or Ottoman armies or both must simultaneously control Alexandria and Cairo at the end of any turn. Do you think that this sounds easy? Remember, that at the start of the game, there are very few Ottoman forces on the board and the Mamluk defenders can put up a fight but will not likely hold either of these required spaces for long. Add to that the British forces do not arrive on the scene until at a minimum by Event #17 when a British army arrives from India via the Event Clock where the Allied player will place Baird’s Position Marker, along with 6 Infantry Elements in the land space containing the Keneh BUA. This force is not very powerful and would have to team up with a sizable Ottoman force, if there are any left on the board at the time, in order to threaten control together of Alexandria and Cairo. But if the French have a run of bad luck and the events are kind to the Allied player, there is a possibility that this could happen with some nice dice rolling. But it is not really very likely. In case you were hoping. This outcome would prevent France from claiming Egypt as a colony at the Peace of Amiens.

Partial Victory

If no Total Victory is achieved when Event #14 is rolled on the Event Clock when the Peace of Amiens is concluded, the player with the most Victory Points at the time is declared the partial victor! Not really a victory but not a loss either. Victory Points come from controlling the BUA’s on the board. Victory Points are gained or lost by losing or gaining control of those BUA’s shown on the board with colored banners noting their Victory Point Value.

When control changes, the Elements losing the BUA loses the Victory Points of its color on the banner (Mamluk – grey, Ottoman – green, British – red or French – blue) and the Elements gaining control gain the points indicated by their color.

The only other means to collect Victory Points is for Bonaparte successfully returning to France on the frigate Muiron in any French turn following an event permitting it. Napoleon must leave from a French controlled Alexandria, Rosetta or Damietta. And will have to move successfully through both land and across the sea to make it. During this time, Allied navies may attempt to stop him and capture him. If any British or Ottoman Naval Squadron successfully intercepts Bonaparte’s frigate anywhere at sea, he is captured. If Bonaparte becomes a prisoner, the French player will lose 9 Victory Points and Ganteaume can never leave France with reinforcements via an Event.

If Bonaparte is successful in returning, the French gain 9 Victory Points and Admiral Ganteaume may now sail to Egypt with reinforcements if and when allowed by the Event Clock.

Tie

Finally, if both sides have exactly the same amount of Victory Points at the Peace of Amiens, the player that controls Cairo will win the game.

The Victory Conditions are not overly complex but can take a while to accomplish as there are lots of areas to control and lots of luck involved. I think that this is one of the parts of the design that I very much enjoyed. The game is based on the concept that the “outcome of a any situation can be influenced by the skill of the person involved, or even dictated by luck”. Or as the designer posits, “Can glory be considered a combination of skill and luck and do some people have more of this and some less? This is what I wanted to consider in my game design”.

And I think that Andrew did a fine job at that with this his first game in the Limits of Glory Series.

Form Square Games has great plans for the future and is currently developing a wide range of games in the Limits of Glory Series. These games have a single simple mechanic which makes play easy to learn, though the decisions a player constantly faces creates fantastic depth, engagement and replayability. Campaign I – Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire, which we have written this extensive series of Action Points over the past few months, covers Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Campaign II – Maida 1806, explores the Third Coalition’s six month campaign in Italy. Campaign III – Capri and Campaign IV – Santa Maura, are two smaller games in a single box, each covering the invasion of a small Mediterranean island during the Napoleonic Wars.

The next Gamefound launch will be later this year and the preview page is already up for you to follow. Campaign V – Donning the Sacred Heart is the next project in the Limits of Glory Series. This exciting new game will look at the complex and vicious civil war, sparked by the demands of conscription. Catholic peasants and their aristocratic leaders from the countryside of the Vendée in France, pitted themselves against the bourgeois inhabitants of the major towns in the region, who were backed by the staunchly Republican revolutionary government of 1793. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we can now exclusively reveal an exciting new project in the Limits of Glory Series, Jersey New Jersey. We will be offering two campaigns in a single box. First time designer Peregrine Nicholls, who comes from the island of Jersey, has designed an intriguing game covering the French invasion of the island as part of the American Revolutionary Wars. We believe there are no other games on this subject so hopefully it will be of interest to any fans of the Revolution!

At the other end of the prominence scale, in the box with Jersey will be a second game, covering the crossing of the Delaware into New Jersey. This celebrated campaign will cover the 10 days at the end of 1776 and the start of 1777 where the Revolution recovered from endless setbacks at the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Campaign VI – Jersey & Campaign VII – New Jersey will launch on Gamefound later this year together with Donning the Sacred Heart, so be sure to follow the campaign page on Gamefound. Each game will be available either separately or together.

Copies of all of Form Square Games products, past and present, can be ordered through the Form Square Games website. If you’d like to find out more about their forthcoming projects, please sign up for their newsletters through the website and keep in touch through the Limits of Glory Facebook Group.

In case you are interested and want to learn more, you can check out our video review of the game at the following link:

-Grant