The Games
The Highest Ground
Designer: Paul Roberts
Type: Wargame
Status: Free
BGG entry:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/17000
Available from:
ftp://ftp.grognard.com/download/games/board/highpdf.zip (PDF format),
ftp://ftp.grognard.com/download/games/board/highps.zip (Postscript format)
The Highest Ground is a game that imagines a world with a very long period variable climate. Where an alien species has, approximately every 800 Earth years, collected a band of warriors from the most advanced warrior state on Earth at the time, and transported them to this planet. There they are to achieve dominance over the local population, grow a crop for the aliens, and, in the ensuing climactic holocaust, be almost wiped out and, therefore, not become a threat to the aliens.
At the time depicted by the game the have just bagged a new group of Earthlings and taken them to the planet. This group is from 1979 and is a bunch of mercenaries on the losing side of an African civil war. They have been grabbed from a soon to be terminally untenable position. They have been taken to the planet where the society that has grown up around the survivors of previous recruiting drives consists of several warring states peopled by Medieval feudal kingdoms and knights, Roman Legions, pony riding barbarians and Egyptian pharaohs. The game finds the few mercenaries, having allied themselves with the European kingdoms, at war with the local Roman Empire.
This game allows you to fight with a mix of weapons, capabilities, and peoples in order to capture territory. Destroying the opposing force is not as important as forcing them to retire, or even rout, off of the field. The game design will allow you to vary the layout of the ground and the size and makeup of the forces involved. Generally the Alliance will have fewer and lower quality troops, but superior methods of deploying them. The addition of the mercenaries’ modern weapons can, and will, have important effects upon the moral of the units involved.