Deus lo Vult – The Board Game of Rampage, Betrayal and Agony

Philip IV Special Unit Highlight
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Feb 02, 2019 at 04:33:57 AM

Philipp IV - King of France, known for his suppression of the Knights Templar and his mysterious death in the aftermath. Although Philip was known as handsome, hence the epithet le Bel, his rigid and inflexible personality gained him (from friend and foe alike) other nicknames, such as the Iron King (le Roi de fer). 

Philip was substantially in debt to the Knights Templar, a monastic military order whose original role as protectors of Christian pilgrims in the Latin East had been largely replaced by banking and other commercial activities by the end of the 13th century.  As the popularity of the Crusades had decreased, support for the military orders had waned, and Philip used a disgruntled complaint against the Knights Templar as an excuse to move against the entire organization as it existed in France, in part to free himself from his debts

At daybreak on Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of Templars in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. The Templars were supposedly answerable only to the Pope, but Philip used his influence over Clement V, who was largely his pawn, to disband the organization. Pope Clement did attempt to hold proper trials, but Philip used the previously forced confessions to have many Templars burned at the stake before they could mount a proper defense. 

It has been claimed that Jacques de Molay cursed King Philip IV of France and his descendants from his execution pyre. An eyewitness to the execution stated that Molay had shown no sign of fear and had told those present that God would avenge their deaths. He appealed "from this your heinous judgment to the living and true God, who is in Heaven," warning the Pope that, within a year and a day, he and Philip IV would be obliged to answer for their crimes in God's presence.

Eight months later Philip IV of France, at the early age of forty-six, was perished by an accident while hunting. After the rapid succession of the last Direct Capetian kings of France between 1314 and 1328, (the three sons and a grandson of Philip I), the 300-year-old House of Capet collapsed within fourteen years of the death of Molay. Its male line was extinguished, and the throne had passed to the lineage of his brother, the House of Valois).

Philip IV is a special knight unit.

• His special abilities are to kill Templars and to "borrow" their gold.

• Whenever the Grand Master of the Temple is sent to the Purgatory, Philipp IV must follow him right away even if he had no wounds at the moment given. 

Frederic I Barbarossa Special Unit Highlight
almost 6 years ago – Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 11:22:16 AM

Today, January 28, is the day when the Carl I the Great died back in 814 AD. He was the first person crowned as the Roman Emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. However, he has nothing to do with Crusades for an obvious reason. So here's another Holy Roman Emperor for you, the one we like better: Frederic I Barbarossa, "the Teutonic King Arthur", whos reign added word "Holy" to Roman Empire name.

 Prominent military practitioner and theorist of his time, he contributed a lot to the development of heavy cavalry. Frederic fought countless battles and campaigns, in one of which he was forced to disguise in a commoner's dress and make his way home on his own to flee from his victorious rivals. On other occasion he was thrown off his horse and believed to be dead, causing the imperial troops' panic and retreat. His entire army was wiped by a plague once in 1167. On 10 June 1190, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowned near Silifke Castle in the Saleph river. Frederick was thrown from his horse and the shock of the cold water caused him to have a heart attack. Weighed down by his armour, he drowned in water that was barely hip-deep.

Frederick's death caused several thousand German soldiers to leave the force and return home. The German-Hungarian army was struck with disease near Antioch, weakening it further. Only 5,000 soldiers, a third of the original force, arrived in Acre. Barbarossa's son, Frederick VI of Swabia, carried on with the remnants of the German army, along with the Hungarian army under the command of Prince Géza, with the aim of burying the emperor in Jerusalem, but efforts to conserve his body in vinegar failed. Hence, his flesh was interred in the Church of St Peter in Antioch, his bones in the cathedral of Tyre, and his heart and inner organs in Tarsus.

Barbarossa is a special cavalry unit.

• the only Cavalry unit that can use Charge ability on a first move 
• whenever he is killed, all HRE units on board must immediately retreat to their camp, dropping the loot.
• whenever Plague Divine Will Card is played, all HRE units on board die and go to the Purgatorium
•  can move as a single unit while being wounded

El Cid: Castilian Special Unit Highlight
almost 6 years ago – Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 10:28:33 PM

Today we take a closer look at yet another special unit from the "Personal Issues" Stretch Goal list. El Cid was a Castilian nobleman and military leader of extraordinary martial abilities, with a reputation of an outstanding battlefield commander. Legends tell that when El Cid eventually died from wounds in his tent, his wife Jimena concealed this fact and ordered that the corpse of El Cid be fitted with his armor and set on his horse Babieca, to bolster the morale of his troops. In several variations of the story, the dead Rodrigo and his knights win a thundering charge against Valencia's besiegers, resulting in a war-is-lost-but-battle-is-won catharsis for generations of Christian Spaniards to follow.

El Cid is a unique Horseman unit that won't leave the board even in death. Being wounded and therefore turned reverse side up, El Cid stays in service for as long as the Crown of Castille will need it. He can't be killed and sent to the Purgatorium like any other unit. Instead of that, he follows his band indefinitely until the player withdraws him from the board back to the citadel to revive. Apparently, he's unable to take or carry coins or Amenities in his cold dead hands.

The Four Seasons: Divine Will Weather Cards Highlight
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 09:45:43 PM

Originally, Divine Will cards were created for Campaign Mode, to be played in a prescripted order in specific pre-constructed missions (to add plague and cholera to 8th Crusade or scorching heat to the Battle of Hatin, for example).  But soon it turned out there's a lot of wicked fun in using them altogether in a random order, raining countless plagues and scourges upon woeful Armies of Cross (though we still don't recommend to use them in a "sporting" Classic Mode for chaos and randomness they bring on the gameboard). 

Today we're highlighting the four weather DW Cards: Heat, Cold, Rainstorm, and Duststorm.

Whenever Calor Card is played, the knights will suffer from unbearable heat inside their shells of steel. The healthy ones will flip wounded, and the wounded ones, apparently, will go to the Purgatorium.

Frigus Сard, of the opposite, brings cold rains and freezing nights. Poor pilgrims who spend nights under the stars will catch a cold and suffer one wound.

Pluvia Card pours deluges of rain on a game board, turning dust to mud and rendering hefty Siege Engines completely immobilized.  

Procella Card presents another, more usual for the Holy Land kind of storm: the dust storm. Loose sand and dirt are blown by the wind gusts, carried over vast distances, sometimes forming a moving wall of thick dust as much as 1.6 km (0.99 mi) high, making impossible to place a shot. Ranged attacks are unavailable on this turn.

Outremer Army Add-On Highlight
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 01:30:11 AM

Outremer Add-On presents the army of the Jerusalem Kingdom. The only Crusader army that uses mounted archers, Outremer also employs battle-hardened sergeants instead of regular, unprotected pilgrims, as well as fierce gasmoulloi mercenaries who are second to knights by their battlefield virtues.  But having so many strong units of the silver tier, on the other hand,  will cost you all your cheap copper soldiers - life is quite expensive overseas.

The Crusader states were a number of mostly 12th- and 13th-century feudal Christian states created by Western European crusaders in Asia Minor, Greece, and the Holy Land, and during the Northern Crusades in the eastern Baltic area. The name also refers to other territorial gains (often small and short-lived) made by medieval Christendom against Muslim and pagan adversaries. The people of the Crusader states were generally referred to as "Latins. " 

The (Latin) Kingdom of Jerusalem was a crusader state established in the Southern Levant by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks. Its history is divided into two distinct periods. The sometimes so-called First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187, when it was almost entirely overrun by Saladin. 

After the subsequent Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, and lasted until that city's destruction in 1291, except for a brief two decades in which Frederick II of Hohenstaufen reclaimed Jerusalem back into Christian hands after the Sixth Crusade. This second kingdom is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital. Most of the crusaders who settled there were of French origin.

For the nearly ninety years, between the founding of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Christian army at Hattin in July 1187, the armies of “Outremer” were substantial, surprisingly effective and nominally feudal. 

As in the West, the backbone of the Outremer was the feudal host composed of the knights who might be secular lords (barons) or ecclesiastical lords (bishops and independent abbots). 

The baronies of Outremer could be very substantial or almost insignificant. For example, the baronies of Sidon, Galilee, and Jaffa/Ascalon were owing 100 knights each, while the Bishops of Nazareth and Lydda owed 6 and 10 knights respectively. 

Yet, outremer army composition was far more complex than the term “feudal” implies.  They always included “armed pilgrims,” for example, and with time the militant monks (i.e. Knights Templar and Hospitaller) became an increasingly important component. Most unusual, however, they were characterized by types of fighting men completely unknown in the West: Sergeants, Gasmoulloi and Turcopoles. 

During the period of the Crusades, turcopoles (also "turcoples" or "turcopoli"; from the Greek: τουρκόπουλοι, "sons of Turks") were local mounted archers and light cavalry employed by the Byzantine Empire and the Crusader states. Turcopoles had lighter and faster horses than the western mounted troops and wore much lighter armor. Usually, this comprised only a quilted aketon or jerkin and a conical steel helmet. The Saracens considered turcopoles to be traitors and apostates, giving them no quarter wherever they met. The turcopoles who survived the Fall of Acre followed the military orders out of the Holy Land and were established on Cyprus with the Knights Templar and Rhodes and Malta with the Knights Hospitaller.

The Gasmouloi or Vasmouloi were the descendants of mixed Byzantine Greek and "Latin" (West European, most often Italian) unions during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire. As the Gasmouloi were enrolled as marines in the Byzantine navy by Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (r. 1259–1261), the term eventually lost its ethnic connotations and came to refer to any service as a lightly armed soldier, both on the sea and on land. In this capacity, Gasmouloi served the Byzantines and Ottomans in the 14th century, and the Latin principalities of the Aegean (where the servitio et tenimento vasmulia was hereditary) in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The fall of Acre signaled the end of the Jerusalem crusades. No effective crusade was raised to recapture the Holy Land afterwards, though talk of further crusades was common enough. By 1291, other ideals had captured the interest and enthusiasm of the monarchs and nobility of Europe and even strenuous papal efforts to raise expeditions to retake the Holy Land met with little response. 

The Latin Kingdom continued to exist, theoretically, on the island of Cyprus. There the Latin kings planned to recapture the mainland, but in vain. Money, men, and the will to do the task were all lacking. One last effort was made by King Peter I in 1365, when he successfully landed in Egypt and sacked Alexandria. Once the city was taken, however, the Crusaders returned to Cyprus. As a crusade, the episode was futile, and this and further coastal raids over the following decades led in 1410–11 to a destructive counter-raid by the Mamelukes; in 1426 Cyprus was forced into Mameluke vassalship with a hefty yearly tribute.