I again had opportunity to come back to ancient Gaul and see if Caesar will be successful also this time. All this thanks to Falling Sky and the superb, quick and intense scenario – 52 BC (Pax Gallica). This time it was via Vassal!

Shortly about the scenario. It is 52 BC, all Gaul is pacified, Belgae were just crushed and dispersed. It is however also the beginning of The Great Revolt lead by Vercingetorix and Arverni. The scenario is relatively short, the initial forces are pretty well concentrated and prepared; it is the case of the immediate fight, war and battles rather than the systematic development and build-up of the forces.

All this is visible in the below scenario set-up situation:

52 BC.png
52 BC scenario set-up (click to enlarge in the new window)

Shortly about the method how we played. We used a boardgamegeek.com for communication, Vassal to do the moves and Google Drive to store the saved save files. So you get the message on BGG that this is your turn, download .vsav file from Google Drive, do your moves and send it back with new number. Plus inform colleagues that it is now the particular faction turn.

As for the colleagues, I played with Exoww (Aedui, blue), Petr (Rome, red), Matt (Arverni, green) while I was leading the Belgae forces in the North (yellow). Now, the main developments of the game:

  • As a dispersed and crushed Belgae, I was actually rebuilding my forces and rallying my Allies through most of the game
  • Rome focused intensively on Arverni, to the extent that my Belgae had pretty free hand to do what they wanted
  • Aedui were better then me at taking the advantage from Rome’s focus on Arverni, and had to be delicately brought to order by everybody when they were on the brink of victory before first winter
  • What was very unexpected and interesting, is that Germans developed so much, they reached Veneti!
  • Couple of last turns were very exciting, when we played actually everybody for himself. It resulted in below situation:
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52 BC scenario end-state (click to enlarge in the new window)

Nobody achieved automatic victory, but two factions – Belgae and Aedui – had the same, smallest negative score. However, the tie breaker clearly shows that weaker Aedui will win in such the case, the triumph of being the first went to Exoww!

Point situation at the end of the game:

  • Exoww (Aedui, blue) minus 1
  • Michał (Belgae, yellow) minus 1
  • Petr (Rome, red) minus 4
  • Matt (Arverni, green) minus 6

That was very quick, nice ad exciting game without longer interruptions as it took 1-3 days for everybody to do their moves. Definitely, I would like to play more of this game!