Battle Report: Men of Bronze- Solo-play

[Eric Farrington]

As many of you know, I have been working on a campaign booklet for Men of Bronze focused on the Persian forces and the Ionian Revolt. As part of the book I have been working on some alternate scenarios including; sea battles, sieges, and solo/co-op play rules for the game. Today will be a dry run of the Solo-play rules. It is important to note, that the solo-play rules are not intended to replicate an actual opponent, but are designed to keep the player on their toes and dealing with mounting difficulties in completing their objective.

The Spartan scouts returned to camp and let the Stratego know about the enemies approach. The Spartans had camped up in the hills, at the edge of the river. It seemed a good place, easy to defend, and accessible to water. Knowing that the enemy was approaching, meant that the Spartans themselves needed to prepare themselves for battle. They would sally out of the valley, and face the approaching foes on the river valley where they could divide and destroy them .

Forces:
I decided to use my Spartan army for this battle.

2 Elite Hoplites
1 Drilled Hoplite
2 Psiloi



Mission:
I followed the rules found in the main rulebook for choosing a scenario and complications. We rolled up Hungry and Thirsty, but all the Spartan units passed their check. Essentially, there would be no further impact from the Hungry and Thirsty complication.

The scenario was going to be a standard decisive battle. Again this was essentially straight from the rulebook as well. This battle will last 6 turns or until the Spartan collapse.

Set-up:
The solo rules have slightly modified rules for setting up terrain. The side that I deploy on use the basic rules found in the Men of Bronze rulebook. For that, I got a hill, a spring/pond/swamp, and another hill. On the other side, there are slightly modified and randomized terrain set-up and placement. However, it ended up being a Open terrain, spring/pond/swamp, and open terrain. Instead of the spring I decided to swap it out for a river across the board with a ford in the middle. The river was Dangerous, with the ford being difficult terrain.

We then followed deployment per the new Solo rules. Again, it was slightly modified. I placed my first unit of Psiloi by the hill on the Spartan right on the opposite side of the river. Then, a token was randomly deployed for the enemy, but not a unit. We kept taking turns deploying until the enemy forces had 1 token deployed more than I had units.

My deployment was Psiloi, river, Elites, Drilled, Elites, and Psiloi on the hill.



Across from us on the left was a single token in the center, two in the middle grid coming up the center, and three on the left grid square deployed forward.



Find out how the solo game played on the Blood and Spectacles blog if you are so inclined:

bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/11/battle-report-men-of-bronze-solo-play.html