CAMPAIGN!
Submitted by puddingwrestler on Tue, 30/09/2008 - 08:04.
Just thought that I'd mention this for all our sub-rock dwelling members - we're running a tile-based map campaign using Mighty Empires. Campaigning will start next week. We've got six teams fighting over the map.
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hMmMm
Count me in if there's free space. I'm working this saturday and might not be able to make it down however.
Any chance of joining this
Any chance of joining this campaing? I have been wanting to play one for such a long time. It might just be what I need to get painting again.
Characters
Just thought I'd comment on the characters leading banners situation.
I was chatting with Pete, and I recon the 'necromancers can't lead banners' is a bit restrictive.
It makes perfect sense, to me, that a necromancer could lead a small raiding force of skeletons.
I recon if the overall list (3000 pts) is a valid army, then the fragments (banners) should only have to abide by the 500-1500pts, including one hero. Usual army limitations shouldn't have to apply here, IMO.
Afterall, these are not full combat formations, so I wouldnt' expect them to need everything a full force has.
I don't know what everyone else thinks, and I haven't been present for any discussion so I don't know what points have been put forward to the contrary. I'm happy to play it either way, really, but it just seems a bit restrictive.
[rant over if this argument is old, I missed it, and it's decided already]
I'm slowly getting through the rules. There are many of them, but it looks like it'll be fun.
My bit
Generally speaking, if they've declared that a certain character type cannot lead an army, they have a reasonable reason for it. In the case of necromancers, I think their reasoning is "we've made necromancers appallingly bad, so they're far too woeful to lead an army".
If we start allowing non-standard generals, we then have to make decisions on all sorts of things like Alter Kindred characters etc. Then we have to decide if another character can stand in as a Tomb King Hierophant. And whether BSBs can suddenly assume command. It's all rather confusing.
Players are aware of the need to have multiple army leaders when they're constructing their forces, so I think it's easiest just to leave things as-is.
In terms of extra players, we're sort of restricted to 6 teams of players at present due to the size of map we can make and the number of flags etc. Each team must be of a specific race (as they're actually a properly constructed army walking around - you can't just sub out one race for another). We would rather not have 2 teams of the same race, just so that there is some variety. At present, we have the following:
The main Dwarf player is me, and I'm happy enough to sit this one out (and at the moment Drew has no backup Orc player, so I could easily stand in there). But they would need to be replaced by another different race. Dene, I know you have Empire, but you won't be able to make it each week and we don't really have any backup Empire players (unless you're able to wrangle up one).
The idea is to have at least one player from each team available every single week, so the campaign can progress regardless. We don't want to have to skip people and we're not willing to just run it now and then (or it will never end).
Anyway, I'm still open to suggestions at this point. We want to include as many people as want to play, but only if we can keep things working. Bear in mind that we're trialling a new system, and if it works we will undoubtedly use it again (and then we'll make sure we can include anyone who missed out this time)...
The map
And here we have a photo of what the map looks like. All of the starting territories are in place here except those of the Wood Elves (who were not present at the time).
The colours are:
Seiges
Hey,
So things generally went smoothly on Saturday, with the exception of the seige rules.
There seemed to be a lot of suggestions that we should abolish seiges, or just limit their impact.
I read the rules, and after actually familiarising myself with them, I reckon we should keep them. They don't seem that bad, and they could be a lot of fun. I think we just need people to be familiar with them.
Dragons (and equivalent) do seem a bit overbalanced, and we may need to do something to limit their OTT effectiveness.
Just to clarify:
-You may spend a point of baggage to buy 100 pts of seige weapons?
-Is this the only way of buying them?
I also wanted to mention timing. Did we go fast/slow enough? Does anyone think we did it badly? I enjoyed what we got through, but thought we should have been able to cover more in the time. Perhaps it will run more smoothly this week when we all know what's going on.
It also looks like we'll have our first aggressive front, which should be fun. Gonna smash some girl-elves!
Lastly, has a solution been found for the village crisis? Are we gonn have to get another set and paint some up? Will that fix things long-term? I'm willing to paint some villages this week before saturday if I can get my hands on them.
Sieges
I was aware that sieges would need to be looked at, but I didn't realise it was going to be a problem in the first round. I am looking at the siege rules this week. We will largely be using the rules from the previous rulebook, along with the corrections in WD 256 and a series of our own changes. Things will be a lot better once people have familiarised themselves with the rules.
There is not much we can do about the power of dragons. They are actually probably going to dominate the campaign as a whole, due to the small nature of the armies that they are likely to come up against. People will just have to adapt, I guess. It's true that dragons will be extremely effective in sieges, but they can't be everywhere at once. If they're not followed by troops, the owning player won't capture enough sections of the castle to win the game.
As you're probably aware, we're also using generic Empire army lists for neutral forces in the future. These are more flexible than something like beatsmen and will be better suited to defending castles, as well as offering some consistency for the players who run into them. Otherwise things could get a bit unbalanced.
Yes, we decided 1 baggage point was worth 100 points of siege equipment (as either the attacker or defender). For most of us (thanks to our rolling for baggage), this means siege gear is very steep in the first campaign season. This is fine - it just means we're not ready to attack castles yet.
There is no other way to get siege equipment.
We need some form of turn order tracker, so that we don't forget who won the roll-offs at the start of each turn. We could use one of the whiteboards, or I'm open to other suggestions.
No suggestions yet on what we can do about the great village crisis. Unless someone thinks they can make some in a hurry, we may need to consider buying another set of Mighty Empires...
Hmmm, I think I need to
Hmmm, I think I need to read said corrections from WD 256. That, and could our own seige house rules get put on the parge of campaign rules?
I guess pretty much everyone has a dragon (if you count wyvern as wussy dragons), except for the dwarves who have plenty of organ gun.
I'm happy to not spend my baggage on lengthy sieges at this stage. And peteben will lose (yes, they are now just a signle entity) their bagage at the end of the season. They'd better go seiging quickly!
I thought if everyone put a dice in front of them, that worked. If you like, I can sacrifice some cheap poker chips to make 1-6 buttons.
Possibly we could make some sort of 'barren' markers (I imagine these would be easier to make than scratch-building villages) and then we can just use plain flags as villages (of course, existing villages could stay in place as are, but any new ones just get a flag). I could model up some flat peices (say, 1-2cm wide) with a sandy texture on top, put a hole in the top and a peice of rod in the bottom. Paint it up sandy looking and viola- barren markers.
Game Length
I think the round length is going to vary from week to week. Its in theory possible for a nation to attack as many times as they have banners, meaning that people might have to play alot of games in each 'month' of the campaign.This week we got two turns done because the only games being played were games against independants, but had I not rolled a pair of 'events' when trying to scout Drew, I would have had to play Drew twice before the next turn could be played.
I think as long as people get started on their games as quickly as possible it should be fine, and ideally each team will have both players present to get the games done as quickly as possible.
The actual campaign stuff didn't take too long, and will get quicker when people know the rules better and don't ask silly questions like "what do I need" when rolling events or scouting. Greg can be forgiven because he was under the 'red mist' at the time and couldn't think straight through all his anger!
Barren
Ok, so I decided to make said barren markers.
I'm gonna cast up a few of them. I'm making six variants, and I'll cast a bunch so we have absolutely no way of running out (preparedness makes us powerful!).
So to clarify: If you roll 'barren', stick one of these guys in with your flag in the top. IF you roll 'village', just stick your flag in a bare hole (or use a village if there are some spare). If you roll an angry village, stick a grey flag in the bare hole.
We'll still need to work out how to represent wandering monsters; as they used to be grey flags with no settelment model. As it is, it doesn't really work because when they begin to wander, the grey flags won't be useable.
I make no promises that the barren markers will look *that* good, but should suffice for what we want.
Village Crisis
(No, it's not like a rural version of Time Crisis.)
We're now the proud owners of a second Mighty Empires box, and I painted the 'villages' (aka mines) last night. We should be ok village-wise, at least for this map. Sorry I didn't post something sooner, but I'm sure we can use the barren markers for something - thanks for making them.
Barren
Well, on the (not so) off chance that we run out of villages again, the barren markers will be available.
As is, we can still use them to mark barren stuff. And we can stick settelments in the top of them to denote being razed.