Congress has a President, who has but little power. Instead,
elect members of four committees to decide most Issues. The War
committee appoints generals and recruiting. Marine manages the
navy. Finance keeps the money flowing to the army. Secret
appoints envoys and approves treaties.
But as in real life, every member of Congress can only serve 3 years out of
every 6 so there are frequent changes to the power structure.
Beyond that, create ad hoc committees as the need arises. Eventually you can
approve the Articles of Confederation and explore the efficiences available
via executive offices.
If you decided to write a constitution, each of your Statesman
can make the proposals he historically made and all players vote on
whether to accept this plank.
Once the constitution is approved, your Statesmen go home and use their
Abilities and Influence to try to get their States to ratify.
Then continue to the base game using the rules of the constitution
you have created, taking only your most Popular Statesmen along.
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Finally, you can use Military Ability of Washington by appointing
him to one of the three General positions: General of the North, General
of the South or Commander-in-Chief. But you may not: it's up to Congress.
Besides that, there are also three Brigadier Generals who can help their
commanders.
Army regiments in the form of cubes reside on their commander's cards while
their corresponding pawns roam the map. There can also be up to two British
generals with their armies as well as Rochambeau and the French army.
British armies can strike anywhere along the coast based on
an invasion table dice roll. They move and attack based on their current
situations according to a thoroughly-developed strategy flowchart.
The British benefit from much larger forces, fleet support, fleet redeployment,
high quality generals (for the most part), the mystery of not knowing where
they will strike next, and with what general.
In addition Loyalists often appear to aid their efforts.
On the other hand, the Patriots benefit from interior lines in the form of a
special redeployment phase, more reinforcements, militia, the element of
surprise in the form of special cards, the ability to retreat into the
hinterlands, and a terrain bonus in the wilderness.
Armies, fleets and artillery are all represented separately. Resolving combat
is a matter of calculating each side's advantages based on commanders, force
sizes, terrain, supporting fleets and cards and having each side roll a die,
to determine the side with the higher number, which can become a major victory
if the amount is high enough.
There is also fighting at sea, in the West – George Rogers Clark – and in Canada (should Congress approve).
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In real life Congress had no solid source of funding, but were reduced to
pleading for help from individual States, which could raise taxes. So they
resorted to simply printing money. This went okay at first, but after a
while the money started to depreciate until eventually Washington wondered
if it was going to take a wagon full of paper money just to buy a wagon
full of supplies.
Over time, Congress can try to get more funds in the form of grants and
loans from France and Spain. While more from this source is always welcome,
it is seldom enough.
The main use for money is to maintain regiments in the field, plus some
administrative expenses. Each year the finance team must decide exactly how
many regiments they want to maintain. Because the more money they print,
the faster it loses value. If some regiments are not to be used
in the coming year, it may be better to stand them down. On the other hand, bringing them all back might take more than year. It can be a delicate balancing
act.
At some point the printed money is likely to all become worthless. At that
point Congress will be forced to rely on whatever grants and loans it has
managed to secure and hope that that will be enough to secure a victory,
sooner rather than later.
They can then also switch to raising money directly from the States, but
this is a fluctuating source that is rarely fully reliable.
If continuing to the base game, the current revenue and indebtedness levels
convert into the base game Revenue and Reserve tracks.
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