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England, 1459. The son of the great Henry V has not lived to fill his father's shoes. England has lost the Hundred Years War, and mighty lords amass lands and wealth rivaling the King’s own. Henry IV left the door open for any such powerful lord with good pedigree to reach for the throne, and the best candidate is Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York.
Mounting tension over the Crown leads to armed clashes, under the excuse of freeing the king from his evil counsellors, and finally ignites the Wars of the Roses that William Shakespeare would immortalize in his plays:
A Yorkist rebellion that succeeds in placing Edward IV on the throne and exiling the Lancastrians to Scotland and France.
A civil war pitting Warwick the Kingmaker and King Edward’s brother Clarence against the King and his other brother Richard Gloucester.
The reinstatement for a few months of Henry VI and the invasion from France by his son and wife leading to a final contest between Richard III and Henry Tudor (later known as Henry VII) and the Battle of Bosworth that ends the Plantagenet dynasty.
Treason, bravery, political maneuver, and a cast of memorable characters mark one of the most intense and divided periods of English history.
In Plantagenet—the newest volume in Volko Ruhnke's Levy & Campaign Series—players lead one of the two factions across the three main periods of war, as individual scenarios or the entire Wars of the Roses.
Designer Francisco Gradaille adds overall and local political influence to Volko’s medieval operation system to reflect the ever-changing loyalties of the time while keeping play familiar to fans of the Series. Players will create and maintain a network of allied lords and nobles in order to obtain the provender and coin needed to supply and pay their armies. As ravaging and looting will damage each side’s reputation, each faction will strive to convince cites to join its side. Great battles will seek to kill or capture enemy lords—perhaps even a king. Two kinds of operational moves will be in play: the military and the political.
In the end, when the dust settles and all arrows have flown, one rose will sit on the throne. White or Red, York or Lancaster, gather your troops and banners and join the fight.
—description from the publisher
- Easier to learn than previous Levy games
- Logistics planning involved
- Mind games and bluffing elements
- Resource management
- Combat is straightforward once learned
- Confusing terms initially (e.g., 'prender')
- Requires understanding of consequences (e.g., starving army)
- Can take a long time if playing full scenarios
- The Cousins' War for England, implementing the War of the Roses
- England, 1459-1485 (Wars of the Roses)
- Neki
- Levy
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action Point Allowance — Each Lord has a limited number of actions they can take per round.
- Area Control — Players gain influence points by controlling cities, towns, and fortresses.
- bluffing — The order in which Lords activate can involve bluffing and strategic deception.
- Card Play — Capability cards can be attached to Lords, and Lords activate based on a chosen order.
- Combat (Dice-based) — Battles involve Lords, archers, and melee units with phases for archery and melee, resolved with dice rolls and armor.
- Resource Management — Managing food (provider/prender) and influence points as a resource is key.
- scenario-based — The game features scenarios with varying lengths (short, medium, long) and different numbers of rounds.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- 10 years technology still bites Us in the ass
- Tony just goes just like uh oh yeah so yes unlike for the past 10 years that's two curse words you've heard on rdtm which you've never heard us you know I mean it's we're tired it's late and we got to recreate the magic
- it's like hey Tony you've only got two trees but one of them doesn't really count as a tree in Vanessa's world because it's got to be a six foot tree but you said yours is only two foot it's only two foot and it gets all the crappy ornaments
- oh I've got six pretty cool I mean you're like how can there be these perfect nature circles you know
- how to kill bugs to keep them from putting white circles around your trees you're you're a bug trying to create a perfect circle around a tree that I mean there you go Elizabeth Hargrave there's your next game there's a theme for you
- I don't know how people can do that
- The whole gameplay the logistics of it it's a logistics puzzle of how you accomplish things
- I am a problem child
- I don't know if you ever heard the Paper Mario series Paper Mario series was also an RPG so it's not a platformer there's no jumping or anything like that it is literally a role playing game which you honestly may like then
- The big knock of this game is don't knock over the Tesseract
- y'all there was some amazing things happening over November there was Black Friday sales there was one day where there was free shipping for orders $50 and over and you know what that wasn't in the daily email y'all nope nope you had to go over there and click on the miniaturemarket.com website to see this was going on