Module:Lion of the North

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 * '''From the Lion of the North BGG game page.
 * Lion of the North is the third volume in GMT's heralded Great Battles of History (GBoH) Series. The Thirty Years' War signaled the dawn of modern warfare ... a return to the supremacy of linear tactics, drill and discipline, to what some historians call "the return of the legion." Lion of the North represents two of the most famous battles of that period:
 * Breitenfeld, 1631
 * Lutzen, 1632
 * Scale:
 * Map = 100 yards per hex
 * Unit = 100 men per strength point
 * GMT's Lion of the North page (Forever Out of Stock) - Lion of the North-GMT Games
 * About the Lion of the North Vassal Module
 * Lion of the North Vassal Module version 1.0
 * Version 1.0 uses the same interface style that GBoH players will be familiar with in use with the other vassal modules in the series. LotN presented some change in rules enough to require some module modifications, particularly with the use of the Breitenfeld and Lutzen HI/Tercio Hit Loss Charts. Refer to the included pdf file available above to see how to use those charts. Hint: They act like counters in which you right click, to increase hits on the appropriate unit line.
 * Info included prior to the module's creation
 * Module pending completion
 * The Lion of the North Vassal Module recreates the original game in Vassal form by painstakingly hand scanning each individual piece with GMT's permission. Per Anthony Curtis, Manager GMT Games LLC, the original files were The files were "lost two hard-drive crashes ago". Thus all the images are scans from my own pristine copy of the game. That said, scanning around some of the imperfections inherent in the die cutting process make for some uneven results. When necessary, I edited to re-center pieces, smooth out solid color blotches and resized to meet the vassal scale of 70x70 pixels per square unit. The maps were scanned in whole, however because I had to rely on someone else to scan, the result while very good overall, suffers a little on the Breitenfeld map due to it being a two piece map. Joining hex lines on two individual scans requires the scans to be perfectly scaled and perfectly square angled to each other. Unfortunately there is about a .1 degree tilt on each map, enough to make the join less than perfect. All things considered, the results are very good and players should not be hampered any more than the imperfections of joining two physical maps in the real world.
 * For my own part, I became interested in building this module, less so because of the actual subject of the period or battles, than the fact that is was the sole remaining volume in the Great Battles of History series published by GMT Games that had not been Vassalized. As I began working on the module, the process of working through the rules made it evident that the volume is a solid member of the GBoH line. LotN is in many ways, the forgotten volume. Paraphrasing some of the reasons that I have come across on the interweb, it appears that many fans felt that the game stretched the series too far from its core ancient period of classical warfare, simultaneously stressing the ability of the core GBoH rules to adapt to the vast span of time and system change required by LotN. Additionally, some comments indicate the complexity of the GBoH rules versus some of the games published since LotN that cover the same period. My preliminary experience indicates these claims are mostly unmerited. Mr. Herman and Mr. Berg seem to have made the necessary adaptations to handle the millennia and a half advancement in warfare, including the invention of gunpowder warfare which is still in its infancy at this point in time.
 * To date, I have received no interest from feelers out on the Game Board Geek forums, but hopefully, once available, there will be some GBoH completists that give this game a shot.

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