Historicon 2000

Historicon's timing was just before the big Successors JodieCon was to take place, so we certainly wanted to have another promotional presence there. We decided the unusual 30 minute game model was successful enough to try again, but wanted to have a new scenario.

Since the event modeled in the Cold Wars 2000 scenario took place just before the events in the JodieCon took place, I thought that it would be fun to continue that trend and find another significant event that happened before the great Diadochoi wars began.

I found the answer in Perdikkas' actions just after the Babylonian Settlement. As you will recall, Perdikkas immediately went north and subdued the rebellious Persian satrap of Cappadocia. We decided not to recreate this set piece battle, as it would not fit the rapid-play model we wanted, so we came up with a different angle on this action.

The event we created was labeled as the Second JodieCon Successors Challenge and had the title, "Can you Capture the Satrap?" Its premise was that after the devastating battlefield loss to Alexander's Successors, the renegade Persian satrap Ariarathes of Cappadocia is locked up in his citadel and is trying to escape. Perdikkas and Eumenes have the ancient citadel almost surrounded and are about to spring a surprise attack. Four players could play this event which was an open square of buildings set up with various troops and individual characters (including Ariarathes) hidden inside. The players had to try and scale the walls and then run around trying to find where troops or treasure were hiding, each being worth different amount of points. True to the period's backstabbing nature, I allowed any player to attack another if he wanted to take that player's points, however, this wasted time because at the end of the 1 hour time limit, the satrap would escape and potentially more points would be lost than gained from another player.

This event turned out to be a lot of fun due in part to the unclear situation of "just what is over this wall" or "what is behind that overturned cart" and to the interactive aspects of, "drop that chest of gold fellow gamer or feel my steel." We ran this event all day on Saturday and in the evening had the top four scoring players come back for a face-off. The winner received another great prize army.