Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

Stately Sessions: Liberty or Death, Turn 4

Tabletop •

Due to our dining room table being needed for actual dining, I was forced to remove GMT‘s Liberty or Death from its resting place and put it all back into the box after Turn 3. Luckily, I had several badly taken and blurry iPhone pictures taken of the board at this stage, so setting it all back up wasn’t too much of a chore. Anyway, that’s why we had a slight delay in getting to Turn 4. Or, at least, that’s the story I’m sticking with. It had nothing to do with me being lazy, as far as you know. Onwards!

With Turn 4 I’m starting something a little new for Stately Play: Video! I know many of you don’t give a rat’s butt about video, so I’ll still be writing up reports for each turn, but for those of you who like poorly produced iPhone video with boring narration [he literally spends about four thrilling minutes looking up rules. Learn to edit, dolt! -ed.], today is your lucky day. You might notice a new YouTube link up in the corner, too. We’re going to try posting more vids as time goes on, and I’ll try to package all the LoD vids into a playlist if I can figure out how to do it. I’m hoping to get better at the video thing as I do more of it, too, so if you can put up with my amateurish nonsense for a bit, I guarantee it will only get better. Well, guarantee is a strong word. I offer you a 64% probability that it will get better. Hell, I bought a microphone, so once I figure that out it’s got to get a little better, right?

1775, Turn 4

Turn 4 has both the French and Patriots on the outside looking in. They both acted on Turn 3, so both are ineligible to do anything this turn. That leaves it up to the British and Native Americans, both played by AI, to deal with Turn 4’s event: The Tryon Plot.

Turn 4’s event…

First up is the British, who have no interest in what the Tryon Plot card is offering. Being able to remove Patriot pieces and activate Militias in New York and New York City are fairly useless due to the fact that New York City has no Patriot pieces and New York territory has only one Militia and it’s already active. So, it’s to the flowchart we go, with the British deciding to Muster.

The Muster command allows the British to bring more Regulars and Tories into the fight at any city or territory adjacent to a city. There are only 3 available Regulars and 1 available Tory, so the action will be a bit limited. That said, let’s get to it.

Colonel Muster in the billiard room with the rope.

The British selection revolves mainly around obtaining British Control. This simply means there are more British and Native American pieces in the territory or city than Patriot and French pieces. When there are multiple spaces to choose from, the bot will select those with the most population. In our game Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina all have 2 population and will change to British Control if the Regulars are placed there. Thus, we check the Random spaces generator to see which they choose and it comes up Virginia. All three available Regulars land in Virginia followed by the one available Tory. This turns Virginia to British Control.

The British then get to perform a Special Ability. Because Total Opposition (8) is greater than Total Support (4), they are going to Reward Loyalty. This means they will spend resources to move Support in spaces where there is both a Regular and Tory as far to Active Support as they can. The bot rules state that they will only do this in spaces with Propaganda or Raid markers after spaces without those markers. Thus, Virginia will have to wait as it has a Propaganda marker that was placed in Turn 3 when the Patriots performed the Rabble-Rousing command. The other spaces where there is a Tory and Regular are Pennsylvania and Boston. The British spend 2 resources to move Pennsylvania from Neutral to Active Support, and their last resource to move Boston from Passive Support to Active Support. This will add five to Total Support, putting it at 9.

How’s that for a nice, easy to read chart?

The Native Americans then get their turn. They, like the British, have no interest in performing the Tryon Plot event, so we’ll head to the flowchart for them as well. After following many arrows, we end up at Gather. This action allows the Native Americans to add war parties to spaces. Unfortunately, while the first war party is free to place, any others would cost resources. With their resources already at 0, this leaves them little choice but to place only one war party. The flowchart tells us that they will place it first wherever they also have a Village, so we place the underground war party in the Northwest Territory.

The aftermath in Virginia

If the Native Americans were being played by a human, that would be all they could do as they would be held to only performing a Limited Command. The AI, however, always gets to do a Full Command and Special Activity. The Special Activity we’re told to undertake is Trade. This is a way for the Native Americans to get resources from their British allies. The British can give some of their resources to the Native Americans but, unfortunately, the Brits resources are currently at 0 so they have none to give. No worries, even if the British refuse to give any resources the Native Americans still gain one resource, but they have to activate a war party in a territory with a Village. That means the underground war party we placed during the Gather command is flipped over and is now Active in the Northwest Territory.

See, I told you it was a real card.

That’s all for the Tryon Plot, which will lead us to Turn 5 and our new event, Antoine de Sartine, Secretary of the Navy, which is a real card.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a little board game excursion with some friends and will be gone for the weekend. As such, Turn 5 will most likely not grace these pages until Monday. I hope everyone is enjoying this walkthrough!

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Notable Replies

  1. Look at Dave’s neat ranking of the Brit cubes in their boxes. Fucking LOOK AT THEM. A ruler was involved. My force boxes are messier than my pubes.

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