I Had a Dream, Which Was Not All a Dream…
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 09:12:27 PM

Hello Everyone,

Today Vangelis will be available for you, running an ‘Ask Me Anything’ event at Reddit/boardgames. It is a great way to increase your knowledge about game design and publishing process. Vangelis has designed many bestselling games, so if you are interested in ‘behind the scenes’ stuff, please be there with us! 

You will find the event under this link.

Final 48 Hours

We are entering the final hours of this campaign. The game is funded already, but you can continue your assault, to conquer some stretch goals!

Please remember about the add-ons, especially about the Dice Tray set, specially designed for this game.

To include add-ons in your pledge, please click on the Manage Your Pledge button. To include any items you would like to receive, simply increase your total pledge for the amount of the add-ons. You will be able to let us know in the Pledge Manager (after the campaign ends) which items you have added to your order.

Lord Byron, Greece’s Superstar Romantic Champion

You have been asking for some additional info about Lord Byron’s role in these events. Knowing this request, Eric G.L. Pinzelli has prepared a capsule on this topic!

«I had a dream, which was not all a dream...» - Darkness, July 1816.

Byron was the cultural superstar of the Romantic age and his rise to fame had been meteoric. At the age of 24, his first epic poem was published to instant acclaim, and it sold out in five days. “I awoke one morning and found myself famous!” his friend Thomas Moore recalls him saying after the first two cantos of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” were published. Byron influenced all the writers and artists of the Romantic Movement during the 19th century. As a matter of fact, for the whole of his life and for many centuries afterwards, he was regarded as the greatest poet the world had ever known. Byron was also a tortured genius, struck down with regular bouts of depression. One of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, described the poet as “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

George Gordon Noel Byron was the son of Captain John “Mad Jack” Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon. Byron’s father had previously seduced the married Marchioness of Caermarthen and, after she divorced her husband, he married her. His treatment of her was described as “brutal and vicious”, and she died after having given birth to two daughters, only one of whom survived: Byron’s half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Byron suffered from a deformity of his right foot. From a young age, he nicknamed himself in French «le diable boiteux» (“the lame devil“). His first 10 years were spent in Aberdeen, living with his violently ill-tempered mother, where he attended the grammar school.

When Byron’s great-uncle, the “wicked” Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the young boy became the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, and went on to Cambridge, where he started to pile up debts and arouse alarm with bisexual love affairs. He rapidly rose to fame. He was adored by the fashionable and aristocratic women of the time, drawn to him by his good looks, charisma and the calculated upper-class bodice-ripping style of much of his poetry. Like a modern rock star, he seemed to attract fans and scandals wherever he went.

In March 1809, two months after attaining his majority, he took his seat in the House of Lords; seven times that spring he attended sessions of Parliament. On 2 July of the same year, Byron set on his grand tour, then customary for a young European nobleman. The Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of Europe, and he instead turned to the Mediterranean: He visited Spain, Malta, Albania and Greece. With was when his poetical account of his grand tour, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812) established Byron as one of England's leading poets. It was Byron’s first visit to Greece and he immediately fell in love with the country. After meeting Ali Pasha, the poet traveled all over the country. He rode into Athens on Christmas night 1809 and lodged at the foot of the Acropolis with Mrs. Tarsia Macri, widow of a Greek who had been British vice consul. He was transported, in ecstasy. Excursions in January 1810 to Cape Sounion and to Marathon, where the Athenians had defeated the Persians in 490 BC, reinforced for him the appalling contrast between the glory and might of ancient Greece and its contemporary disgrace under Turkish domination. To Byron, Greece was more than a country. It was the birthplace of Homer and Plato, of Pericles and Aeschylus! From then on, Byron would support attempts by the Greek people to free themselves from Turkish oppression.

After a failed marriage and more scandals, in 1816 Byron left England for good, spending the last eight years of his short life in exile abroad. After his Geneva period where he befriended the writer Percy Shelley and his wife, Mary, Byron moved to Venice where he met the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who became his mistress. Some of Byron's best known work belongs to this period, including Don Juan.

In 1823 Byron received an invitation to actively support the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule. He spent a tremendous amount of his personal fortune to repair ships of the Greek fleet and set up his own military squad, composed of fighters from Souli. His first six months in Cephalonia as a freedom fighter were rainy and miserable, but the poet remained true to his altruistic mission. He then decided to move to Morea (the Peloponnese), but he finally stayed in Missolonghi, where he contacted Alexandros Mavrokordatos, to whom he gave another large amount of his personal fortune for the needs of the Greek revolution. At the same time, he acted as a channel of communication between Greek fighters and British philhellenes to conclude the first revolutionary loan, as a member of the London Philhellenic Committee. Along with his concern for the military course of the Greek Revolution, he assumed the role of the bridge between the proud and unruly warlords. In the cause of Greek independence, Byron was willing to die in battle, preferably leading his Suliote cavalry in some furious charge or in a desperate last stand. By the end of March 1824, the so-called "Byron brigade" of 30 philhellene officers and about 200 men had been formed, paid for entirely by himself.

Byron then planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. On 9th April 1824, however, having been soaked by a heavy rain whilst out riding, Byron suffered fever and rheumatic pains and within days was fighting for his life. Repeated bleeding further debilitated him. Among his last recorded words were, “I have given Greece my time, my means, my health – and now I give her my life! – what could I do more?” He was thirty-six years old.

In death, the formerly scandalized Byron became a hero, celebrated for his passion, rebellious nature, arrogance, willfulness, tortured soul and untimely death. He was mourned by both the British and the Greeks, to whom he had become a hero of the cause. And because he was such an international figure by this time, he made it possible for Greece to rise, to bring other people in the struggle, and was the catalyst for the liberation of the country. By the start of 1825, within a year of Byron’s death, Greece’s struggle for independence had become irrevocably an international affair. Byron had been convinced that the future of Greece would also help determine the future shape of the Europe. Within six years, a general outbreak of revolutions and liberal changes was shaking the entire continent, challenging the reactionary post Vienna Congress order. Byron would have approved: As he had stated in Don Juan, Canto VIII, he was a firm believer that «Revolutions alone can save the earth from hell’s pollution.»

Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli

It is almost the last call to support Freedom! Pledging during this campaign will provide you not only the game itself, but also the Kickstarter Exclusive resin Game Round Marker miniature and the Solo Expansion for the base game. This saves you 35% off the retail price. Please do not hesitate to support us now, helping PHALANX to design, develop, and publish unique, challenging games.

Thank you!

Michal & PHALANX Team

Great Protagonists
about 5 years ago – Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 01:09:08 AM

Hello Everyone,

As the game is going to be published (thank you! :) ), today we would like to share the early rulebooks with you. Please note that these are at an early stage, versions that we have sent to previewers.

Did we wrote plural? Yes, as there is not only the English version, but also the Greek!

Freedom! English Beta Rulebook

Freedom! Greek Beta Rulebook

Ask Me Anything

Vangelis is planning to do an AMA on Reddit/boardgames this week, so you will be able to ask him anything you want about Freedom! (or any of his games).

The plan is for it to happen this Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET / 4:00 pm GMT (19:00 Greek time). Tomorrow we will post a direct link to the AMA thread. Looking forward to seeing you there! 

Main Protagonists Associated With The Sieges (1821-1826)

Freedom! wouldn’t get funded without you, as there must be a man behind every undertaking. Who were the main heroes of this story? Eric G.L. Pinzelli has prepared a note about the main protagonists of this siege.

I - Ottomans - Egyptians

Reşid Mehmed Pasha:

Son of an orthodox priest, he was born in 1780 in Georgia, and played a decisive role during the Greek War of Independence, winning numerous victories over the insurgents and allowing the Ottoman Empire to recapture the mainland. He commanded the Ottoman troops during the Battle of Peta where he crushed the insurgents and the Philhellenes, then participated in the first siege of Missolonghi in late 1822, alongside Omer Vrioni. After the failure of this first siege, Reşid Mehmed subdued Thessaly.

Following the Ottoman failures during the campaigns of 1823 and 1824, he was appointed governor of mainland Greece. Arrived in January 1825 in Larissa, he reached Yanina and crushed the rebellion in Epirus. He crossed Epirus, Acarnania, and Aetolia without opposition to reach Missolonghi and started the 3rd siege of the city in April 1825.

Once more, by the end of the year, the siege operations did not achieve any breakthrough. Finding himself in a bad position, he had to ask for help from Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. After the fall of the city in April 1826, he reconquered Central Greece and then Attica, laying siege to the Acropolis of Athens from the end of June. He won several decisive battles, including the battle of Battle of Phaleron in May 1827; the garrison of the Acropolis later capitulated at the beginning of June 1827, and Reşid Mehmed was able to complete his triumphant reconquest of continental Greece.

Later, during the 1831-1832 campaigns, he led an aggressive campaign into Bosnia with the assistance of the renegade kapetan Ali-paša Rizvanbegović and defeated the entire army of Bosnia Eyalet led by Husein Gradaščević outside the town of Stup. Although he was appointed Grand Vizier in January 1829, his following military career was a failure: he was defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Kulevicha (June 1829), and again by the Egyptians led by his former rival Ibrahim Pasha at the battle of Konya (December 1832) where his army was routed and he was taken prisoner. He died at Diyarbakır in 1839.    

Omer Vrioni:

Ottoman military commander in the Greek war of independence, the Albanian Omer Vrioni, was a member of the noble landowning Vrioni family of Berat. He received a military education at the court of Ali Pasha Tepelena, and served with Ottoman forces in Egypt fighting Napoleon in 1798-1799. He subsequently returned to the service of Ali Pasha and in 1820 he led 15,000 men to defend Metsovo Pass against imperial troops. When the troops under Ismail Pasha closed in and advanced on Yanina (Ioannina) at the end of that year, Vrioni changed sides and served as commander-in-chief of Ottoman forces, in exchange for the pashalik of Berat. In April 1821, after the start of the Greek revolution, Omer Pasha Vrioni commanded an army of 8,000 men sent from Thessaly to put down a revolt in the Peloponnese.

Omer Vrioni was known to have a habit of going on 'Greek hunts' to chase and kill Greek civilians. "They would go out in parties of fifty to a hundred, mounted on fleet horses, and scour the open country in search of Greek peasantry, who might from necessity or hardihood have ventured down upon the plains. After capturing some, they would give the poor creatures a certain distance to start ahead, hoping to escape, and then try the speed of their horses in overtaking them, the accuracy of their pistols in firing at them as they ran, or the keenness of their sabres' edge in cutting off their heads" Those not cut down or shot down during the "Greek hunts" were impaled afterwards when captured. (Brewer, David The Greek War of Independence, London: Overlook Duckworth, 2011).

His men defeated Greek forces at the Battle of Alamána near Thermopylae on 21 April 1821, thereafter he had his opponent, Athanasios Diákos (1788-1821), impaled, striking fear into the Orthodox population of the region. On 8 May of that year, his forces were, however, compelled to retreat after being hard press at the battle of Graviá Inn. He broke the Greek siege of the Acropolis on 1 August, but withdrew northwards from Attica on 10 October. In the spring of 1822, after the death of Ali Pasha in Yanina, he took part in fighting against the Souliotes and was put in charge of Ottoman military operations in southern Albania and western Greece.

Having defeated Aléxandros Mavrokordátos (1791-1865) and the Philhellenes in Peta near Arta on 16 July 1822 and having overcome the Souliotes in September of that year, he and Reshid Mehmed Pasha (1780-1839) besieged Messolonghi from October to December 1822. The siege was a failure and Vrioni withdrew to Preveza in March 1823. His forces made a second attempt to take Messolonghi in the autumn of 1823, but once again without success. Differences with Reşid Mehmed Pasha, together with Vrioni's failures in the campaigns of 1823 and 1824, and suspicions that he was acting primarily in his own interests in Berat, resulted in Vrioni's recall in 1824 and his new deployment as commander of Ottoman forces in Salonika (Macedonia). In the late summer of 1828, he also led an Ottoman force of 20,000 men to relieve the Siege of Varna, during the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829.

Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt:

Ibrahim Pasha was born at Kavala, Rumelia (now Greece). A son, or adopted son, of the famous Albanian vali Muḥammad ʿAlī, in 1805 Ibrahim joined his father in Egypt, where he was made governor of Cairo. During 1816–18 he successfully commanded an army against the Wahhabite rebels in Arabia. Muḥammad ʿAlī sent him on a mission against the remnants of the Mamluks to the Sudan in 1821–22, and on his return he helped train the new Egyptian army on European lines. When the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II asked for Egyptian assistance to crush the Greek revolt, an expedition commanded by Ibrahim landed in Greece in 1824 with 17,000 men and subdued the Morea (Peloponnese). He defeated the Greeks in the open field, and though the siege of Missolonghi proved costly to his own troops and to the Ottoman forces who operated with him, he brought it to a successful termination on April 24, 1826. But he suffered setbacks in Mani (Southern Peloponnese), the Greek guerrilla bands harassed his army, and in revenge he desolated the country and sent thousands of the inhabitants into slavery in Egypt. These measures of repression aroused great indignation in Europe and led to the intervention of the naval squadrons of the United Kingdom, the Restored Kingdom of France and Imperial Russia in the Battle of Navarino (October 20, 1827). Their victory was followed by the landing of a French expeditionary force, the Morea expedition. By the terms of the capitulation of October 1, 1828, Ibrahim evacuated the country.

In 1831, his father's quarrel with the Porte having become flagrant, Ibrahim was sent to conquer Syria. He took Acre after a severe siege on May 27, 1832, occupied Damascus, defeated an Ottoman army atHoms on July 8 defeated another Ottoman army at Beilan on July 29, invaded Asia Minor, and finally routed the Grand Vizier Reşid Mehmed Pasha (whith whom he had conquered Missolonghi 6 years before) atKonya on December 21. There were now no military obstacles between Ibrahim's forces and Constantinople itself. In May 1833, Ibrahim became governor-general of the provinces of Syria and Adana ceded to Egypt after his victories during the Egyptian–Ottoman War. In 1838, the Porte felt strong enough to renew the struggle, and war broke out once more. Ibrahim won his last victory for his father at Nezib on June 24, 1839. But the United Kingdom and the Austrian Empire intervened to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. By 1848 Muḥammad ʿAlī had become senile, and Ibrahim was appointed viceroy but ruled for only 40 days before his death on November 10, 1848.

II - Greeks

Alexandros Mavrocordatos:

Aléxandros Mavrokordátos, (1791, Constantinople—1865, Aegina, Greece), was one of the founders and first political leaders of independent Greece. The scion of a Greek Phanariot house (living in the Greek quarter of Constantinople) long distinguished in the Turkish imperial service, Mavrokordátos was secretary (1812–17) to Ioannis Karadja, hospodar (prince) of Walachia, and later went into exile with his master. He was in Pisa, Italy, when the Greek Revolution of 1821 broke out. Mavrokordátos joined the revolutionaries in Greece; despite their suspicions of his Phanariot origins, he soon established himself as head of a regional government at Missolonghi, in western Greece. During December 1821–January 1822 he presided over the first National Assembly, at Epidaurus, and led in the drafting of a constitution.

He commanded the advance of the Greeks into western Central Greece during the 1822 campaign, and suffered a serious defeat at Peta on 16 July, but retrieved this disaster somewhat by his successful resistance to the First Siege of Missolonghi. Mavrokordátos was elected first president of the Hellenic republic, but the new government exercised little actual power. He represented the national government as governor-general (1823–25) at Missolonghi, receiving there Lord Byron, the famous English poet partisan of the Greek cause.

The landing of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt followed, and Mavrokordátos again joined the army, barely escaping capture in the disaster at Sphacteria (bay of Navarino), on 9 May 1825, on board the ship Ares: Mavrokordátos was sent to the hold for safety, the ship sailed through the midst of the Turco-Egyptian fleet, being attacked on all sides and facing in total 32 ships one after another, before reaching the open sea.

After the fall of Missolonghi on 10 April 1826 he went into retirement. Ignored during the presidency of the Russophile Count Ioánnis Kapodístrias (1827–31), Mavrokordátos was appointed minister of finance (1832) and then prime minister (1833) under Greece’s first king, Otto. In all, he was appointed Prime Minister of Greece four times.

Lord Byron:

The most famous of the Romantic poets, he died at Missolonghi in 1824. His prestige and his role as a representative of the philhellenic London Committee in a critical time for the course of the Greek cause contributed greatly to European intervention three years later. I’ll write about him in a separate capsule.

Geórgios Karaiskakis:

Geórgios Karaïskákis (c. 1780—May 5, 1827, Athens) was a klepht (a brigand chief), who played an important role in the Greek War of Independence. He was the illegitimate son of a capetan from the Agrapha region in Epirus and a nun, hence his nickname "son of the nun". He is remembered both for his treachery and for his reckless courage. He had a weak physical condition and suffered all his life with severe health issues but had plenty of charisma.

He served in the armatoli (Ottoman militia), and participated in the struggles between the Turkish authorities and the rebel Ali Pasha of Janina. He served in Ali’s bodyguards, but was on the Turkish side when the pasha was defeated and killed in February 1822. During the following years he fought with the Greek insurgents in western Greece but capitulated to the Turks whenever the struggle for independence seemed hopeless.

Accused of treachery (he had entered in secret parleys with Omer Vrioni), he was pardoned by the Greek central government at Nauplia, then put down a regional revolt in the Peloponnese in the autumn of 1824. In April 1826, as commander of a few hundred klephts based on Mount Aracynthus, he couldn’t do much to relieve the third siege of Missolonghi; his illness and the lack of discipline of his men prevented him from giving the Missolonghiots any effective support in their attempt to break through Turkish lines during the Exodos, and few of the defenders survived.

His most famous victory was at Arachova a few weeks later, where his band together with other revolutionary leaders, annihilated a force of Turkish and Albanian troops under Mustafa Bey and Kehagia Bey. That victory made him the most respected of the Greek warlords but only for a short time: He was killed at the relief of the siege of the Acropolis in Athens in May 1827.

Markos Botsaris:

Markos Botsaris, (c. 1788,—Aug. 21, 1823, Karpenissi), was an important leader in the early phase of the Greek War of Independence.

Botsaris’ early years were spent in the struggle between the Souliots of southern Epirus and Ali Pasha of Janina. After Ali Pasha succeeded in capturing the Souliot strongholds in 1803, Botsaris and most of his surviving clansmen fled to Corfu. He remained there for 16 years, serving in the 3,000-men Napoleonic Albanian regiment under colonel Jean-Louis Toussaint Minot. Strongly influenced by the European ideas of national independence and identity, in 1814 he joined the secret society Filiki Eteria when his regiment was disbanded.

Botsaris returned to Epirus with the Souliotes in 1820 to join his former enemy Ali Pasha in his revolt against the Turkish government and, after Ali Pasha was defeated, committed the Souliotes to the Greek struggle for independence that had broken out in April 1821.

After serving in the successful defense of the town of Missolonghi during the first siege in 1822, he led a band 450 Souliotes guerrillas on the night of Aug. 21, 1823, in a bold surprise attack on an Ottoman vanguard encamped near Karpenisi. With some of Georgios Karaiskakis’ klephts they managed to catch the enemy by surprise and inflicted serious casualties, but Botsaris, who had proved to be one of the most promising commanders of the Greek forces, was killed by a shot in the head. Botsaris dead, many of his Souliotes later rallied Lord Byron’s new army at Missolonghi. In Europe, Botsaris was regarded as the romantic incarnation of Leonidas or Hector. Dionysios Solomos even composed a poem titled "On Markos Botsaris", in which he likens the mourning over Botsaris' body to the lamentation of Hector, as described in the Iliad.

Andréas Miaoulis:

Andréas Vókos «Miaoulis», (1769, Negropont, Euboea—June 24, 1835, Athens), was a famous Greek insurgent sailor who often successfully commanded the revolutionary naval forces during the Greek War of Independence (1821–30).

Miaoulis had acquired a considerable fortune from his wheat-shipping business during the Napoleonic Wars: He delivered wheat to French Mediterranean ports and the profit he made was huge for the time. Immediately afterwards, he sold the family ship and bought the merchant ship Miaoul from a Turk from Chios. Since then, he was nicknamed «Miaoulis».

As early as 1822 Miaoulis was appointed navarch (admiral) of the swarm of small vessels which formed the insurgent fleet. He commanded the expedition sent to take revenge for the massacre of Chios in the same year. Between August 1824 and January 1826 defeated the Turks in engagements off Leros, Modon, Cape Matapan, Suda, and Cape Papas.

He could not prevent the Egyptian troops from occupying Navarino in May 1825, despite fierce resistance. He managed several times to carry provisions and reinforcements in Missolonghi during the third siege, but was unable to avoid the city’s tragic fate in March 1826. His efforts to cut off the Egyptian forces' maritime communications failed, partly because the lack of money and supplies, and partly because of the enormous disproportion and firepower between the two squadrons.

Miaoulis continued to lead the Greek fleet until former Royal Navy officer Thomas Cochrane, entered the service of the Greek army in 1827; Miaoulis then retired in order to leave all freedom of action to the English officer.

After the war, he led a faction of the influential pro-English party; later his opposition to the pro-Russian president of Greece, Ioánnis Kapodístrias, and support for the anti-government rebels of Hydra moved him to seize the government naval arsenal at Poros (July 27, 1831) and burn the entire government fleet (Aug. 13, 1831). He later served on the commission that offered the Greek crown to Prince Otto of Bavaria and was made vice admiral shortly before his death. He was buried with full honors in Piraeus near the tomb of Themistocles, the founder of the ancient Athenian Navy and winner of the battle of Salamis.

Nowadays, in his native island of Hydra, the Miaoulia are held each year approximately during the last week of June, to mark the anniversary of his death. The celebration, the largest event of the island, lasts one week.

Panagiotis (Notis) Botsaris:

Not much is know from this member of the illustrious Botsaris family from Souli. Panagiotis (Notis) Botsaris was born in Souli in 1756. Apparently, he was Markos Botsaris’ uncle. During clashes with Muslim Albanians in Agragas, he was injured and captured, but after six months he managed to escape from the Klisoura fortress where he was imprisoned.

On December 4, 1820, Ali Pasha and the Souliotes formed an anti-Ottoman coalition, to which the Souliotes contributed 3,000 soldiers. Ali Pasha gained the support of the Souliotes mainly because he offered to allow the return of the Souliotes to their land, and partly by appeal to their perceived Albanian origin. Notis accepted to join Ali Pasha of Janina’s rebellion, provided he remained in Kooloko. Ali Pasha invited him to Janina and sent him in a mission to Larissa, to have him ambushed and killed on the way, but Notis Botsaris was warned and fled to Corfu.

In the Ionian islands he assembled the local Souliotes and this time sided with the Ottomans against Ali Pasha. We find him again leading the captains during the third siege of Missolonghi (1825-1826). When Reşid Mehmed Pasha asked for the city’s surrender, Notis replied in the name of all the Souliotes that before the Ottoman flag would be raised in Missolonghi, the Turks would have first to pass over their dead bodies. During the Exodos, the old Notis survived and managed to go through the enemy lines.

After the war, Notis Botsaris was honored by King Otto with the rank of Captain. He died in Lepanto in 1841.

Kitsos Tzavelas:

Kitsos Tzavelas, born c. 1800, was the second son of Souliot Fotos Tzavelas and the grandson of Lambros Tzavelas, both famous for their role in the fight against Ali Pasha of Janina, the governor of Epirus. He was raised in exile in Corfu, while the islands were under French, and later British occupation.

Tzavelas played an important role during the War of Independence of 1821 alongside Giorgios Karaiskakis. During the second civil war, at the end of 1824, he took part in the fighting against Greek Peloponnese rebels.

In August 1825, during the third siege of Missolonghi, with 580 men, he rallied the garrison by sea. During the last days of the city’s heroic resistance, he gallantly led the troops defending the island of Klisova on 25 March 1826: Five hundred Turkish-Egyptians were killed or wounded in the vain attempt to storm this fortified sandbank defended by a hundred fifty good marksmen. A few days later, Tzavelas led one of the three Greek detachment during the final exit of the Greeks at the end of the month and survived, eventually reaching Nauplia.

During the following year, alongside Geórgios Karaiskakis, he participated in the fighting around Athens. After Karaiskakis’s death, Tzavelas took command of the irregular army. However, at the Battle of Phaleron shortly thereafter, his troops did not perform the planned movements and some fled. He was even accused by Admiral Cochrane of having demanded payment before obeying, and by Gordon of obtaining funds by reselling to the Ottomans a part of the Greek army’s supplies.

After the war, he became one of the leaders of the Russian Party, and a few years later of the French Party. Tzavelas was appointed Minister of War in 1844 and, in 1847-1848, Prime Minister. Late in his life, (February 1854) he became the leader of the ill-fated Epirus revolt, with the revolutionaries demanding union with Greece. Kitsos Tzavelas died in Athens on March 21, 1855.

Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli

Would you like to buy an add-on with all Eric’s G.L. Pinzelli capsules, decorated with game graphics painted by Bartek Jędrzejewski? This could be a Kickstarter exclusive item, costing 10 GBP. Please let us know in comments below this update. :)

Thank you.

Happy gaming!

Michal & PHALANX Team

The Fortress is Taken!
about 5 years ago – Mon, Apr 08, 2019 at 01:42:02 AM

Hello Everyone,

Please accept our deepest thanks for bringing this game to reality. We had no doubts that it is worth to prepare Freedom! for publishing (the design and gameplay are fantastic), although we also knew that the theme of the game is difficult. But you have made it, and we are so happy about that! 

In order to reward your commitment we have decided to unlock for free the first stretch goal. Now the game will be published with colour printed cardboard insert!

And we are revealing a new stretch goal - 5 new images for the cards (something that you have already asked for). Hopefully we can enhance the way this already beautiful game looks in the final days of the campaign.

Social goal achieved

In the meantime, with 103 interactions, you have unlocked an exclusive linen finish for the game counters. This is going to be a real beauty! Thank you for spreading the word about Freedom!

Naval Warfare 

Control of the nearby seas was crucial in besieging a coastline fortress. Let’s ask Eric G.L. Pinzelli about naval warfare in the early 19th century and the situation in the eastern Mediterranean.

All the fans of Hornblower or Jack Aubrey have learned that while France's armies ruled Europe, the waves were dominated by Britain's Royal Navy. The naval balance of power during the Revolutionary, the Napoleonic Wars and beyond was one-sided, with Britain having so large and powerful a fleet it could probably match all the other sea-faring nations put together.

By the 18th Century, the biggest sailing ships could carry over a hundred guns along their sides. So a ship that could turn its broadside toward the front or back of the enemy ship could inflict vastly greater damage than its opponent. The simplest way to protect a ship's vulnerable front and back was to deploy a fleet in a line of ships end-to-end, turning the whole fleet into one giant broadside one to two km long. The first instance of line ahead formation was used was by the Portuguese, who created the first worldwide maritime empire, as early as 1500.

The enemy naturally adopted the same strategy, and naval battles tended to turn into two long lines of ships sailing past each other and shooting at each other at close range. By maintaining the line throughout the battle, the fleet, despite obscuring clouds of smoke, could function as a unit under the control of the admiral. In the event of reverses, they could be extricated with a minimum of risk.

Ships big enough to slug it out broadside-to-broadside in such a fight with a reasonable chance of survival were called "ships of the line"; smaller ones were used for reconnaissance, communication, commerce raiding, or even turned into fire ships, as was often the case with the Greek Revolutionary navy. Great Britain’s Royal Navy, which rated its sailing ships by the number of guns they carried, considered ships of the first through third rates, that is, ships carrying 60 or 70 to 100 or 110 guns, to be ships of the line.

The line of battle was marked by tactical rigidity and most of the time resulted in indecisive engagements when approximately equal forces were opposed. Moreover, ships at the very front and very back of the line were still vulnerable, and the most devastating thing you could do to the enemy was to "cross his T," meaning to position your line of ships across the end of his line, allowing you to pound the vulnerable ends of one of his ships after another with the broadsides of your vessels, or doubling, by concentrating firepower by putting ships on both sides of the enemy line. For about 150 years crossing the T was the most useful tactics in engaging an enemy fleet.

The dominance of cannon led to a number of different ammunition types. Solid round shot had the greatest range, and would be used by ships fighting at any distance; it was also best for sinking enemy vessels, although that was hard to do because a ball that hit the water surface tended to skip instead of making a hole below the water line. Grapeshot, canister, and case were all means of shooting lots of short-range bullets out of cannon to kill enemy crew. Chain shot, bar shot, and expanding shot were designed to cut the enemy's sails and rigging. Hot shot was a cannon ball heated red hot and then fired at the enemy ship to set it aflame, although this remained an extremely risky tactic.

Boarding was still used as the coup de grace against a crippled ship, enabling the victimized vessel to be recovered and used by the boarders' side rather than being sunk. Boarding weapons in the Age of Sail consisted of grenades, muskets, pistols, cutlasses, numerous other blades, and the short-barreled shotguns called blunderbusses. The 7-barrels Nock gun was invented by a British engineer named James Wilson in 1779. This was a weapon that could shoot a large volume of shot. Adopted in limited quantities by the Royal Navy, this firearm was intended to be carried onto a ship's rigging and to fire at the deck below, in the event that the ship was boarded by the enemy but its weight and massive recoil made it dangerous to use and it was discarded altogether. Sailors preferred to use flintlocks whenever possible, as the lighted match of a matchlock was extremely dangerous to use on board a ship. An important multipurpose weapon was the boarding axe, useful for attacking the enemy, but also essential for chopping down doors and bulkheads to break into closed quarters where defenders of a ship could barricade themselves. The heavy blade could also cut grappling lines. A boarding party would always include a complement of axe carriers to support the main body of marines and sailors armed with musket and cutlass. The most reliable weapons for boarding enemy ships or repelling boarders were the point and edge weapons available to the crew. While most useful for repelling boarders, the boarding pike was also a formidable offensive weapon.

In the Ottoman Navy, and since the 16th century, seamen and navigators had been mainly Greeks who were no longer trustworthy once the rebellion started. In 1821-1822, the insurgent Greeks formed a type of piratical navy that harassed Ottoman trade. The ships of the three "naval islands", Hydra, Spetses and Psara, formed a battle-worthy force that was placed at the disposal of the struggle for independence. A large part of the merchant marine and fishing fleet turned into an armada of the revolution, and the Archipelago became the naval base for a new type of naval asymmetric warfare. A swarm of five hundred small Greek ships and twenty thousand sailors continuously attacked Turkish vessels and blockaded Turkish ports under the leadership of Andreas Miaoulis. Other fearless naval commanders and fire ship captains, such as Sachtouris, Tsamados, Sachinis, Kanaris, Kriezis, Bouboulina, Pinotsis and Pipinos, were at the forefront of the naval struggle of the Greeks. 

A particularity of the Greek War of Independence was the extensive use of fire ships by the Greeks that allowed them to counterbalance in part the Turkish naval superiority in terms of ship size and guns. As the small fire ships were much more maneuverable than enemy ships of the line, especially in the coasts of the Aegean Sea where the islands, islets, reefs, and straits restrained big ships from being easily moved, they were a serious danger for the ships of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets. Naval battles of the Greek war of independence were won mostly through the use of fire ships (battle of Samnos and Gerontas, 1824; battle of Andros, 1825) and the selective targeting of Ottoman flagships. The successful use of fire ships required the use of the element of surprise. It became an important landmark in Greek naval tradition.

As the war went on, the naval power of the Greeks diminished rapidly and the Revolution was threatened. Piracy and anarchy wreaked havoc in the Eastern Mediterranean. Following the intervention of the Ottoman eyalet of Egypt in 1824, the far superior Ottoman-Egyptian fleet under the command of Ibrahim Pasha gained the upper hand and successfully invaded Crete and the Morea.

In the end, without the battle in Navarino Bay, on October 20, 1827, Greece, would probably not have won its independence. The decisive victory belonged to the allied naval forces from Britain, France and Russia that defeated the Ottoman and Egyptian armada trying to suppress the Greek insurgency. The British and French gunnery in particular was vastly superior: Within a couple of hours about three-fourths of the Turkish and Egyptian ships had been sunk or set on fire by their own crews to avoid capture. The fledgling Greek state was saved. The interests of Britain, France and Russia were as important to the outcome of the War of Independence as the Hellenic spirit and the sacrifice of so many Greeks. 

Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli

You are a great community to work with. Thank you for that!

Michal & PHALANX Team

Fire your guns! Now!
about 5 years ago – Sat, Apr 06, 2019 at 12:46:41 AM

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for your ongoing support. With 90% mark crossed, we are almost there. We can see there is a large following on this project, over 2 thousand people ‘liked’ it while the conversion rate is still quite low, compared to the other campaigns. That means there is a lot of potential for the campaign not just to fund but also reach the stretch goals.

The moment to act is now! If you are reading these words, and are yet not a backer, don’t wait until the last moment, for you are risking not getting onto the boat. Additionally, as a community, we may not see the game funded at all. Also, apart from the above, you are not going to get the Kickstarter offer: the free miniature and solo play expansion, not to mention a really good price. Only the backers will be getting the offer, even at the later stages. Last but not least, you will be getting the game before it goes to retail AND as such you have an option to enrich your collection with a game on really unusual subject, not another overdone theme.

Third Social Goal

In order to help the game funding, please share the following links in your social media channels:

Facebook post is here:  http://bit.ly/2VuKDkV

Twitter post is here:http://bit.ly/2TYszxP

Instagram post is here:http://bit.ly/2WGsiRY

Provided above posts get a total of 100 interactions we will upgrade the game tokens to the linen paper finish to everyone's profit!

Dice Trays

Thank you for your kind words about the add-ons. Here are some bigger photos of the dice trays. This is a really useful component for all games that contain dice. You can have them both for just £15, with no additional shipping costs! Please check the Add-ons section for details. 

Siege Warfare

We know the outcome, but do we know the method? Let’s ask Eric G.L. Pinzelli for description of early nineteenth-century siege methods. 

At the turn of the 19th Century, there was a widespread distinct shift from slow, methodical, siege focused warfare to actively seeking and engaging decisive battle. Fortresses commanding lines of communication could be bypassed and would no longer stop an invasion. Focus was on rapid maneuver and defeating the enemy in pitched battle. Those were classical set piece battles: The forces engaged were rather small compared to those of World War I a century later. Infantry weapons were slow to load and inaccurate beyond short ranges, so in order to achieve any sort of volume of fire, soldiers had to be "massed". The cannons in those battles couldn't fire where they couldn't see, and the whole business was concluded when the massed forces on one side flanked the other and cavalry streamed in to harry the fleeing survivors.

Nevertheless, in the early 19th Century, siege warfare remained an essential tool and the struggle in mainland Greece between the Ottomans and Greek rebels, particularly at Missolonghi, provides appropriate illustration. Greek topography dictated that fortified town and castles could not be bypassed in the prosecution of the country’s reconquest. Moreover, Turks and Greeks alike had a reputation of killing and pillaging regardless of a surrender, leading to redoubled defensive efforts since the garrison had nothing to lose.

In the 1810-1820s a siege was a complex operation, a science refined a century and a half before by the famous military engineers Vauban and Van Coehoorn: The attackers would begin by blockading the fortress usually by constructing trenches and defenses facing in both directions. The outermost lines, known as the lines of contravallation, would surround the entire besieging army and protect it from attackers (relief forces). With this completed, trenches would have to be dug in order to allow the assault force to move close to the fortress in cover. The first trench, known as a parallel because it would run parallel to the walls of the fortress, would be dug 600 meters from the fortress. In a similar fashion, French and American sappers lead by Washington and Rochambeau started digging the 1st parallel 1000 yards from Yorktown the night of October 5, 1781. 

Zig-zag trenches would then be dug in order to advance closer to the wall and another parallel constructed 300 meters from the fortress. A third might have to be dug before the attackers were close enough to the wall to assault it. Mine trenches were dug and mines laid, when necessary and possible.

The digging would take place at night as digging in daylight in view of the fortress would be suicidal. The siege guns would bombard the wall in order to create a breach in it. The attackers could concentrate their fire at one part of the wall, but they would also have to launch diversionary attacks or else the defenders would reinforce the defenses of the point to be attacked. Aggressive defenders would launch sorties in order to disrupt the attackers. As well as causing casualties and trying to damage siege works, they would steal entrenching tools and nail the guns. At the end of the 17th Century, mortars started to be used to fire explosive shells directly into the fortress from above. The professional Venetian army lead by Doge Francesco Morosini had made a successful use of those weapons during the reconquest of the Peloponnese in 1685-1687.

In the 18th and early 19th Century Europe, and during the French and Indian Wars in North America, the custom was that once a practical breach had been made in the wall (one that could be successfully assaulted) the defenders would request the «honors of war». In that case, the people and property of the inhabitants of the city would be respected, the defenders would be allowed to march out of the fortress flags flying, drums beating. These honors of war were rejected by Sir Henry Clinton in charge of the British troops when Charleston surrendered in May 1780. Consequently, at Yorktown George Washington firmly refused to grant the British the honors that they had denied the defeated Continental army the year before: British and Hessian troops marched with flags furled and muskets shouldered, while the band was forced to play British and German march. It is said that the British bands played «The world turned upside down» as Cornwallis’ troops marched out to surrender.

According to the rules of war, a garrison’s refusal to surrender once a practical breach had been established was considered a legitimate cause to sack the town should the attackers succeed in their assault, precisely the fate of Bajadoz in 1812 during the Peninsula War, when British troops pillaged the city and committed atrocities during a full 72 hours. 

If an assault was to be made, then engineers would place a mine to detonate in the breach just before the attack. The defenders would fill the breach with obstructions such as chevaux de frise, fascines, sandbags, explosives... etc. When it came to that, the last stand was always a desperate and very gruesome one. 

Rules of war had less tendency to apply to non-Europeans though: At the siege of Jaffa in 1799, the French commanded by General Bonaparte massacred the entire garrison, including the 3,000 Turks and Albanians who had eventually surrendered.In July 1821, the Greeks did not respect the terms of the Turkish garrison’s surrender at Navarino and slaughtered everyone. In September 1821, they acted the same way when Tripolitzza, the Ottoman capital of the Peloponnese surrendered: the Greeks pillaged and killed 32,000 people in the city and its surrounding during three days. Consequently, the Greeks and Philhellenes defending Missolonghi during the 4th  siege of 1826 knew perfectly what to expect with their prolonged and stubborn resistance, since the Ottomans had already sent them various ultimatums that they had rejected...    

Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli

We’ll be back on Monday, hoping to be in the realm of already funded game!

Best wishes,

Jaro & PHALANX Team

The Fall of Missolonghi
about 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 09:34:54 AM

Hello Everyone,

We have entered the final week of our campaign. We still need to collect the remaining 15% of the funding goal, to place our banner on the walls of this fortress. Will you be able to take it? Let’s ask the Sultan for some reinforcements!

Add-ons

And here they are! 

A set of two dice trays (20x20 cm), designed especially for Freedom! They are fully foldable, made from quality printed neoprene. The plastic snaps on the corners will let you to pinch the edges to create a tray. Undoing this will let you to store the trays inside the game box.  

Like in every campaign, we are going to offer you some game add-ons, letting you to acquire other titles from our publishing house, that aren’t available in wide distribution.

To include add-ons in your pledge, please click on the Manage Your Pledge button. To include any items you would like to receive, simply increase your total pledge for the amount of the add-ons (i.e. +£15 for the Dice Tray Set). You will be able to let us know in the Pledge Manager (after the campaign ends) which items you have added to your order.

The estimated shipping cost of The Magnates is +£8 per item; Germania Magna, Days of Honour, and HUNGER is +£5 per game. Dice Tray Set do not increase your shipping costs. 

You need to purchase at least one copy of Freedom! to be able to include any add-ons in your pledge.

Golden Geek

We are proud to announce that our previous title - HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR - won a Golden Geek 2018 title in WARGAMES category. Thank you for your votes!

The Third Siege 

Now it's time to let Eric G.L. Pinzelli to write about the decisive moment of our story. 

«Without freedom, what would you be Greece? Without you, Greece, what would the world be?» - Wilhelm Muller, Greece and the World.

Reşid Mehmed Pasha of Yanina (himself the son of an orthodox priest from Georgia) had already attempted to wrestle Missolonghi from the Greeks during the failed first siege of 1822 before moving east to subdue the Pelion region in Thessaly. When he assumed command of the Ottoman forces destined to invade Western Greece in the year 1825, much was expected by the Sultan Mahmud II from his well-known firmness and ability: It was Missolonghi, or his head! The Turks advanced through Acarnania without encountering any opposition. The inhabitants who fled before them with their flocks and herds found shelter at Missolonghi and the men formed part of the garrison which would defend the city.

After leaving some troops to besiege Anatolikon, on April 27th Reşid Mehmed Pasha established his headquarters in the plain of Missolonghi, and two days afterward opened his first parallel against Missolonghi, at a distance of about six hundred meters from the walls. His force then consisted of only six thousand men and three guns. With later reinforcements, his troops eventually numbered 30,000 Ottomans and Egyptians. The defenders were some 3,000 men, mostly Greeks, but a few were philhellenes from all over Europe, some actual veterans of the Napoleonic wars. The captains and chieftains were led by the old Panagiotis Botsáris, an old adversary of the late Ali Pasha of Yanina.  

During the first two months the siege made few victims on both sides. The breaches made by the sappers or the enemy guns were repaired the following night by the Greek civilians to whom this task had been entrusted (women, children and old men). As long as maritime communications were possible, the defenders received provisions and ammunition from the Morea and the Ionian Islands. But on June 29, 1825, Ottoman Admiral Topal Pasha entered the lagoon with about eighty Turkish, Egyptian and Algerian ships, carrying ammunition and provisions, but also more siege guns. Missolonghi was cut off from the rest of Greece.

In July, the Greek admiral Andreas Miaoulis managed to force the blockade and bring provisions to the city. He attacked the Ottoman fleet with 40 ships and fireships. The Ottoman ships withdrew, returning to the port of Alexandria, and the blockade was broken; A few days later, troops commanded by Yeóryios Karaïskákis, military commander of Western Greece, and Kitsos Tzavelas, arrived on the rear of the Ottoman camp; a combined attack against Reşid Mehmed Pasha's camp was organized one night, the garrison making a sortie with a thousand men against the Ottoman trenches, while Karaïskákis attacked from the rear with 500 men. On October 18, 1825, Reşid Mehmed Pasha interrupted the siege for the winter season and withdrew to an entrenched camp, 1 km from the city. Heavy rains rendered it impossible to work at the trenches.

In the fall of 1825, Mohammed Ali the Great, the governor of Egypt sent a new fleet of 135 ships, which consisted of Algerian, Tunisian, Turkish and Egyptian ships to join the expeditionary force already in Greece under his son Ibrahim Pasha. Reinforced with 10,000 new Egyptian troops, Ibrahim Pasha marched through the Peloponnese, destroying everything in his path and joined the siege in January. on 24 February 1826, the Egyptians began a fierce bombardment of the city. Over the course of three days, the Egyptians fired 5,256 cannon balls and 3,314 mortar shells into the city, destroying much of Missolonghi’s houses and buildings but the besieged continued to reject all negotiation with disdain.

Piecemeal the outlying forts and defenses fell, until the garrison, reduced by extreme starvation and disease, determined to hazard all on a final massive sortie to try to save as many as could be. On the night of April 22 to 23, three columns were organized, commanded respectively by Botzaris, Tzavellas and Makris. About 2,000 armed men were in front and behind. In the middle, 5,000 old men, women and children would try to break through the enemy lines and reach the safety of the hills. Some women dressed as men, took up arms and joined the fighters. Those who were too weak and/or too sick were piled into houses packed with gunpowder to blow themselves when the Ottomans would arrive to capture them. However, the Turks had been warned by a Bulgarian deserter.

The Greeks threw wooden bridges over the ditch and charged shouting «Forward, death to the Barbarians!» They were met by heavy fire from the Ottomans and Egyptians in well entrenched defensive positions. As the Egyptian Mamluk cavalry moved forward to cut them down, many Greeks panicked and tried to retreat to the city with the Albanians in hot pursuit. In the ensuing chaos, of the approximately 7,000 people who had tried to flee, about 1,000 men and women managed to reach the hills and would eventually find refuge in Petalas, at Salona, or in the villages of Aetolia. The next morning, on Palm Sunday, the Turks and Egyptians entered the city. A few Greeks left behind (the wounded, elderly, women and children) led by Christos Kapsalis, blew themselves up with the powder magazines rather than surrender. The survivors that were caught were slaughtered, the rest sold as slaves. As a symbol of their grim victory, the Ottomans and their allies placed 3,000 heads on the battered wall of the martyr city.

After the fall of Missolonghi most of Rumeli (central Greece) came under the control of the Ottoman Turks and the provinces there surrendered to the Turks, except for Athens (which would also fall to Reşid Mehmed Pasha on 5 June 1827) and a few surrounding areas.

Missolonghi’s fate was the most moving and inspiring events of the Greek revolution. After this beacon of hope had been extinguished, the reactionary European Great Powers of the Congress system had little choice but to finally get involved and solve the Greek question. In 1827, due to the heroic resistance of its population and the massacre of its inhabitants by the Turkish-Egyptian forces, the town of Missolonghi received the honorary title of «Hiera Polis» (Sacred City). Nowadays, every year the Memorial Day for the Exodos is celebrated on Palm Sunday. The Greek State is represented by high-ranking officials including the President of the Hellenic Republic, and foreign countries by their diplomats: The memory of Missolonghi’s heroic freedom fighters is still alive.

Written by Eric G.L. Pinzelli

Please consider adding some add-ons to your pledge. Such reinforcements will turn the odds on our side and the fortress will fall! :)

Thank you for your support!

PHALANX Team