Chandragupta (board game)

Gameplay

The game is traditional Hex-and-counter style game, The game maps are covered with an hexagonal grid, each hex representing 70 yards of distance. Each turn represents about 15–20 minutes, although the rules are designed assuming a loose time scale. Each counter represents 300 to 1000 fighting troops, depending on size and type. Since little is known about the terrain, numbers of men or types of units engaged, methods of combat, leaders and so on, these games, despite their high level of detail, remain essentially speculative and fictional in nature.

Play of Chandragupta follows the general sequence of the other hex-and-counter style board games, each player taking turns moving units, conducting combat, and resolving combat using an odds-based combat results table (CRT) using a die. As with the other games in the GBoH series, rules for leadership and command and control are emphasized, and players have the opportunity (depending upon leader quality) to conduct "extra" moves and/or "trump" an opponent, effectively cancelling activation of an opponent's leader. Combat results generally result in rout and/or retreat, and victory is achieved by (more commonly) forcing an opponent's army to quit the field when a certain threshold of losses has been achieved, or by (less commonly) obtaining a specific territorial objective.

Indian Military System

Using period sources as well as research from largely Indian military historians, Chandragupta attempts to model specific features of what is believed to have been common features of the Mauryan military system. One of the most distinctive features is the catarangubala, or the "four-fold" army consisting of foot-soldiers (patti), car-warriors, or chariots (rathin), elephants (hastī), and cavalry (aśva). Deployment of the catarangubala remained remarkably consistent throughout the period following the Vedic period (after which chariots and elephants came into full military use), through Arab invasion in 7th century AD. The game simulates the catarungabala by representing the four divisions with distinctive counters whose use in play is governed by specific rules for movement, combat, and command-and-control.

Another feature of the ancient Indian military system simulated in Chandragupta are rules for troop classes, based on a classification system with a long tradition preceding the Mauryan era. The classifications were hierarchical. At the apex of the hierarchy were the Maula or "hereditary" troops, who were professional soldiers and largely (though not exclusively) of the Kshatriya warrior-caste. Next where the Bhrta, or mercenary-class of troops, followed by the Srenis or Srenibala, who were essentially armed trade-guild levies, and lastly the Atavibalam, or "tribal" levies. The game Chandragupta attempts to simulate the differing qualities of morale, leadership, and fighting ability of these various troop classes. Other sub-classes, such as Mitra and Amitra (deserters from enemy armies, prison conscripts and the like), but for interests of playability and simplicity the designers chose not to represent these additional classes in Chandragupta.

Scenarios

Chandragupta has ten scenarios which simulate major battles from the founding of the Mauryan Dynasty under Chandragupta Maurya, through the Battle of Kalinga waged by Chandragupta's grandson, Ashoka:

The battle takes place in the valley of the Tamra Nala river, bounded by rugged hills overlooking Takshashila from the east. The centerpiece of the terrain is the city itself – the walled city, with four gated entrances, surrounding dense city blocks of congested dwellings. In the center of the city is its temple and palace. The game map is based upon topographical maps drawn by archaeologist J. M. Marshall's A Guide to Taxila.

The game deploys Seleucus squeezed close to the sands and mud of the Indus River at his back, leaving him with little room to maneuver.

The designer of Chandragupta (the game) opted to design the scenario with the premise speculating that the aging Chanakya, as viceroy of Takshashila, is faced with an uprising by the city's merchant class. Chanakya's forces occupy a portion of the city; the "rebel" forces – a coalition of Sreni – occupy part of the city, and its gates and the roads leading to it. Ashoka, with a force of Maula, must rescue the beleaguered Chanakya.

The game sets the hypothetical battles among tribal strongholds on rugged mountain terrain. According to Sastri the Khashas' strongholds were West of the Jhelum ("Hydaspes") River, though the historical locations of these battles are not known. We have opted to "condense" what was probably a series of scattered revolt suppressions into two scenarios.

Chandragupta and Chanakya had been hostile to non-monarchial states. Many such states, quasi-democratic oligarchies as well as republics, had been weakened by the wars with Alexander, and that weakness made possible the eventual hegemony of the Mauryan Empire. Thus, the Mauryans had always kept a wary eye on Kalinga. A large and fiercely independent saņgha (republic), Kalinga had been originally conquered by Ugrasena Nanda, but regained its independence during the rule of Sahalya, and remained so until the reign of Ashoka Maurya. Eight years after his anointment, Ashoka marched on Kalinga. On a battlefield near the village of Dhauli the Kalingan army was defeated. Records affirm that 100 thousand were slain, 150 thousand were deported (enslaved), and many times that number died thereafter. It is said that the river Daya nearby ran red with the blood of the slain. After the battle Ashoka ascended the hillocks to survey the field he had won; at twilight he saw heaps of dismembered bodies of soldiers and animals, heard the cries of wounded, witnessed the anguish of women searching the dead for their husbands and sons. As the story is told, the slaughter filled Ashoka with such anguish he changed from Chandashoka ("Ashoka the Terrible") to Dharmashoka ("Ashoka the Pious"), and converted to Buddhism. For this scenario, the game uses two mapboards as the scene of a large set-piece battle. The terrain represented is based upon topographical maps of the area near Dhauli Hill, the historical battle site and now a Buddhist shrine.

Expansions

An expansion was printed in C3i Magazine, published by RBM Publications (Rodger B. MacGowan, Editor & Publisher), which provided two "alternative history" scenarios. The first, "Ganges River," speculates a battle between the army of Alexander the Great and the Nandan army at the banks of the Ganges River (which did not happen historically due to the mutiny of Alexander's troops at the Beas River), and the second, "Magnesia," a hypothetical show-down between the Mauryan army of Ashoka and the Roman Republic in Asia Minor.