Reader’s guide
The Three Commands
Three warrants. One month. One war.
First Army
Aulus
Aulus Cornelius LentulusStanding
Great House Cornelia
An ancient Great House claiming continuity from families prominent in the Republic and at the imperial peak.
- Record
- First of the graduating ninety
- Exceptionally educated and disciplined
- Tactically brilliant in the individual battle
- Draft precedence
- Chooses first in every round
Command instinctProven doctrine, precision, and composure — and a willingness to spend strength to win the field in front of him.
Second Army
Camilla
Camilla Domitia LepidaStanding
Great House Domitia
Seated on the ancestral estate outside Narbo. Its device is a rearing gold warhorse on a deep-green field, bordered in gold.
- Record
- Second of the graduating ninety
- Charismatic and aggressive in command
- Ranked at the top of a service that remains roughly ninety percent male
- Draft precedence
- Chooses second in every round
Command instinctInitiative pressed hard and early. Her boldness produces spectacular results and imposes real cost on the people carrying it out.
Third Army
Seb
Sebastian HerreraStanding
Plebeian citizen of Anahuac
A machinist’s son, a citizen because his grandfather earned it in service, and the only nonnoble left among the ninety.
- Record
- Grand-strategic and systems-level judgment
- Reads a small anomaly back to its cause and forward to its cascade
- An excellent tactician who treats tactics as evidence about a whole campaign
- Draft precedence
- Chooses third in every round
Command instinctTask organization over individual prestige: people and formations whose strengths grow in combination. His first selection is Evander Calpurnius Varro.
Declared before the first name is called
Terms binding every command equally
The Annual Games Ordinance fixes the number of warrants, the constitution of the armies, the stages of the contest, and the conditions of victory before selection begins. No command is altered by private arrangement once it has started.
- Three warrants
- The Academy Council issues three command warrants, limited in term and purpose, for the Ludi Troiani. Their precedence and the constitution of the armies enter the public schedule before the first name is called.
- An officer core of thirty
- Three commanders are lifted out of the graduating ninety. The remaining eighty-seven are drafted individually that same day, twenty-nine to each army.
- Twenty formations
- Sixty-six regional formations qualify and travel to Carthage. Over two days each army selects twenty. Sixty enter the Games; six remain outside them and are not reserves.
- Roughly five hundred people
- A finished army is its thirty-person officer core plus twenty formations averaging some twenty-three or twenty-four each. Losses, lost equipment, and eliminated formations are never replaced.
- One month, one war
- Selection, the draft, force organization, and training precede a three-week immersive simulation of an entire war across the secured region from Carthage’s coast into the Sahara.
- Two judgments
- The campaign judgment names the victorious army. The service judgment assesses every commander, officer, cadet, and formation under the duties actually assigned. Neither substitutes for the other.