Historical wargame · iPhone · Beta

Line& Column

A column is how an army travels. A line is how it fights. The whole game is the decision of when and where to turn one into the other.

Take the field Read the doctrine

15:00

Match clock

Contact radius

400

The Gates

Cilician Gates · 333 BC ✦ Column travels · Line fights ✦ Contact at 78 ✦ The Gates · 400 ✦ Supply is shared and never returns ✦ Form or walk in unformed ✦ Horses starve first ✦ Fifteen minutes. No sitting at home. ✦ Cilician Gates · 333 BC ✦ Column travels · Line fights ✦ Contact at 78 ✦ The Gates · 400 ✦ Supply is shared and never returns ✦ Form or walk in unformed ✦ Horses starve first ✦ Fifteen minutes. No sitting at home. ✦ Cilician Gates · 333 BC ✦ Column travels · Line fights ✦ Contact at 78 ✦ The Gates · 400 ✦ Supply is shared and never returns ✦ Form or walk in unformed ✦ Horses starve first ✦ Fifteen minutes. No sitting at home.

Chapter I · The name

Travel as a column. Fight as a line.

Both sides start in their own camp at opposite ends of one theater and manoeuvre for position. Contact happens when the two columns come within seventy-eight world units — usually the consequence of a march given a minute earlier, not a decision made at the moment of contact.

When the buzzer goes, the higher score wins. Holding your own camp is worth nothing. Sitting at home is a losing strategy by construction.

Campaign map of the Cilician Gates with the column on the road — Cilician Gates · supply, fatigue, formation, the clock

Chapter II · Theaters of war

You do not play a battle. You play a country.

Each campaign is a painted theater: a graph of named ground laid over roads, rivers, ridges, and camps. You choose the war. Then you choose where on that map the blood is worth spending. The prize is never the same twice.

336–323 BC
Alexander
Greece to the Cilician Gates. The only playable war. The pass is the centre of gravity.
331 BC
Mesopotamia
The road to Gaugamela. Painted. Not yet a match.
330–327 BC
The East
Beyond the Zagros. Satrapies that do not stay quiet.
329 BC
Jaxartes
The river at the edge of the known world.
327–325 BC
India
Hydaspes and the army that finally said no.
323–281 BC
Diadochi
The successors tear the empire apart.
49–45 BC
Caesar
Civil war. The Rubicon is a decision, not a river.
218–201 BC
Second Punic
Hannibal across the Alps. Rome across the sea.
1189–1192
Third Crusade
Kings on the road to Jerusalem.
Late Bronze
Conquest of Canaan
Hill country, fords, and walled towns.
1274 BC
Kadesh
Chariots in the Orontes bend.

Chapter III · Doctrine

Six facts that decide a match.

March

Tap a place or tap open ground. The column paths the terrain. Roads are cheaper than they look. Rivers block. A line on the map is an order not yet carried out.

Form

Column travels. Line fights. Forming takes ten seconds standing still. A halt is not a line. An army that never formed is as exposed as one still walking.

Feed

Stock is finite and shared. What you eat is gone for them. Cut from a depot and the drain jumps to twelve. After forty seconds empty, cards start dying. Horses first.

Rest

Freshness is effort. Heavy troops bleed on slopes. Camp recovers faster — once the tents are up. A camped army cannot hold a line. That is the price.

See

A scout is a horse detachment. They report on return, not live. Last-seen fades. Villagers tell the truth in Vs AI. You see the enemy column only at three hundred and sixty.

Close

Contact fires at seventy-eight. Neither side chooses it. The way to decline a battle is to be faster. The fight you get is the march you ordered a minute ago.

Full doctrine →

Chapter IV · The clash

When they meet, the field opens.

Tactical battle field with unit cards — Eight cards. Morale, not hit points. A clash clock.

Both armies deploy on their own baseline with a killing ground between them. Caught marching, you deploy in column — a handicap — and start a little closer. Still not in contact. The fight opens on the approach.

Balance of power is locked before anyone moves: supply, fatigue, terrain, weather, approach. Clamped 0.50 to 1.40. Casualties do not rewrite that number. You already paid for this fight on the road.

The clash layer →

Heavy

Hoplites · Hypaspists · Camp guard

Strength 0.85 – 1.30

Slow. They win by grinding. A dressed clash is a couple of minutes, not an eight-second melt. One block of hoplites holds back an army of cavalry.

Missile

Peltasts · Archers · Javelins · Agrianians

Strength 0.88 – 1.20

Limited ammunition. They skirmish: retreat while shooting to keep range open. A visible sheaf, then reload. Archers outrange javelin troops by half.

Horse

Companions · Light horse · Thessalians

Strength 1.05 – 1.35

Fast. Hits hardest. A charge into new melee dumps shock. Peel one troop and they become your scout. No horse means no eyes.

Chapter V · The wars

Alexander is live. The shelf is not empty.

336–323 BC

Live

Alexander

Greece to the Cilician Gates. The only playable war. The pass is the centre of gravity.

331 BC

Coming

Mesopotamia

The road to Gaugamela. Painted. Not yet a match.

330–327 BC

Coming

The East

Beyond the Zagros. Satrapies that do not stay quiet.

329 BC

Coming

Jaxartes

The river at the edge of the known world.

Every theater →

Army list

Gates holder

Five heavy · three light

Three hoplites, hypaspists, camp guard, archers, two peltasts. Built to take ground and keep it. The climb to the pass is expensive — heavy troops tire fastest on slopes.

Army list

Light flanker

Five light · three horse

Three peltasts, javelins, agrianians, archers, light horse, companions. Fast, sees further, works the coast road or raids the hinterland. Loses a straight grind.

Chapter VI · How you play

Four ways onto the field.

Tutorial

Cilicia, 333 BC

FaceToast teaches by giving you the same orders you will keep. No lecture overlay. Six beats, then the live game.

Story

Alexander is live

Greece to Issus on the first plate. Mesopotamia waits on the next. Diadochi, Caesar, Punic, Crusade, Canaan, Kadesh sit on the shelf.

Vs AI

One column. Fifteen minutes.

Aggression is a single number. Easy raids the flanks. Hard goes for the pass, forms on sight, and hunts a column it can see.

PvP

Two columns. One theater.

Host and join on the same Wi-Fi. The host simulates. The guest commands. No pause. No AI.

Command

The clock is already running.

Native iOS. No third-party stack. Fifteen minutes, one theater, eight cards. Open the project, pick a list, and march.

Walk with Alexander lineandcolumn.com