New Campaign Brainstorming

[Pip]

With The War For King Ogbert's Crown over, my mind has turned to future campaignitude. If the club is still going to be running after Ol makes the move to York, then I'd be very willing to keep on organising campaigns and other fun stuff to keep the WFB scene alive and fun.

My first sketchy thoughts on how it could work are laid out below.

CAMPAIGN 2 - CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD

Free for all
As opposed to having two teams (and therefore often requiring subs to balance the numbers), the campaign would be every man for himself.

Two streams
The campaign would have two parallel sets of games available to play:

• Minihammer/Mordheim on weekdays.
  
• Bighammer/Triumph & Treachery on OG Saturdays.

The skirmish games would follow a similar structure to the Ogfort campaign, with every participant needing to play regularly. The small size of the games would make it easier for people to keep their forces at the club, and pick up and play a campaign game even if they're also down for tourney practice or similar.

The big weekend games would be less structured, and run with whoever is available that weekend. This way, we avoid splitting the Fantasy crowd on weekends between campaign and T&T.

Narrative
Each player's faction would be one side in a treacherous scramble for gold and riches among the jungles of Lustria, looking to sail back to the Old World much richer than before. The skirmish side of things would let us amp up the narrative element a little more.

• Warbands would accrue experience and petty territory, similarly to Mordheim (or possibly cribbing directly from the old Mordheim campaign rules.
  
• There would be a map showing both warband bases and the large, "critical" territories over which the Saturday battles would be fought. This would be a visualisation aid, not a game board - there'd be no finicky moving around of armies to slow down campaign play.
  
• There'd be a thread/threads on this forum for people to write about their heroes' misadventures.
  
• Named heroes from the warbands could feature in the Saturday battles.

Lustria
The campaign would be set in Lustria, and the usual assumptions of a nice flat field with some forests and hills off to the sides would not apply.

• Most games would be fought in or around jungle - I have boxes of it in the attic, and we have a whole drawer full of unused trees at the club.
  
• We would use (or adapt slightly) the rules from the old Lustria campaign book. These include both extended rules for manoeuvering regiments in deep forest, and also Events and Encounters, which are dangerous terrain effects that you try to use tactically against your enemy - a bit like the cards in T&T.
  
• As organiser, my Lizardmen would be a "neutral" faction that showed up when people tried to loot the big temples, or started to overshadow the other players. If your leader starts to make a name for himself, the Lizardmen start to notice him too!

All these ideas are provisional, so I'd very much like to hear which of them people like, which of them people don't like, which of them people don't understand, and what other ideas people have to add.

[fatolaf]

One huge warning, you have to massively change the rules for Mordheim to balance the gangs when someone plays a gang who has levelled up a few times, after Lee's lustria campaign a few years ago, the in game balance mechanic for when a gang plays a higher rated gang DOES NOT WORK...
It is the single biggest problem with that game and I have seen 3 Mordheim campaigns collapse over 2 clubs and 8 years down to the fact that people will miss games, gangs will be different levels and the rewards / balance rules do not work...
IMO avoid that system all together , use border patrol rules instead IMO.....

[roland murat]

Some kind of border partol rather than Mordheim is a good idea - could be interesting and I'd provisionally get involved

[underscore]

There's also the rulepack for that Regiments of Renown event GW did last year:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m3080051a_Regiment_Pack_(2).pdf

And if T&T games are going to be a regular thing then I'll bring down my set to leave at the club at some point - at least then you'll be able to play even if Steve and I can't make it.

[Pip]

I think it was never going to be straight Mordheim - we want people to be able to play using models that fit into their pre-existing collections, and with rules from books they already own. Thanks for the Regiments of Renown link, Pete - that looks like exactly what we're after.

What I'd like to lift from Mordheim would mainly be the campaign rules. I know that territory, gold, experience and injuries bring with them the whole positive feedback problem, where the winners can keep on winning - but they're also what gives people a narrative investment in their warband, and what gives them an incentive to personalise the models, etc. That's very much what I'd want to get out of the skirmish side of the campaign - a strong narrative thread that'd tie the big games together.

There'd be several countermeasures to prevent the rise of uber-warbands:

• Like the last campaign, this campaign would run for a set time and then finish.
  
• The rules for advancement and persistent assets would be simplified and toned down.
  
• Warbands that ended up dominating play would end up drawing the attention of the Lizardmen more often (I think Necromunda did the same thing with Arbites?)

We could also discuss multiple warbands ganging up if one warband became a threat to all.

In summary, what I'm suggesting is core-based skirmish, not Mordheim - but with simplified Mordheim-esque rules for the stuff that goes on between battles. I'd really like to see people putting some hobby effort into their warbands (like the photos in that link!) and I think campaign mechanics would encourage that.

[cunningmatt]

I would definitely be interested. Sounds fun, I am slightly tempted to make a mini-skirmish group of an alternate army to one I have. Or would the intention be to have large armies as well? Definitely sounds fun. Enjoyed the last campaign immensely!

[Pip]

There'd be no persistent large armies as there were in Ogbert - each Saturday you could bring whatever you like. So you could easily have a warband that was a different faction from your main army - you just need to come up with a good/funny explanation why they're working together!

[Crompton]

I think you could also run some of the warband games on a weekend as multiplayer scenario types. There will prob be hundreds of mordheim or necromunda scenarios that can be adapted easily for 4+ people to play around with for some quickish multiple games.

Oh and I'd def be interested in playing :-)

[Pip]

Alright - so that we have something more definitive to comment on, here is my first draft of a set of campaign rules. C&C very welcome!

PLAY STRUCTURE

• Each player has a warband.
  
• Each warband belongs to a faction. One faction can contain multiple warbands/players, but doesn't have to. You can set up as a lone wolf, or you can gang together for protection.
  
• Weekdays are the time for warband battles. Each warband must play one game per round. One round is two weeks.
  
• Open day Saturdays are the time for faction battles. These are played with whoever wants to come that Saturday. Only those factions with players present can reap the rewards.
  
• The campaign would run for a limited number of rounds and then stop.

WARBAND RULES

We use the Regiments of Renown rules (linked earlier in this thread by Pete), with just a few modifications:

Advancement

• The model who rolls for advancement at the end of the game is not always the leader, but instead whichever model had the highest kill-count.
  
• If that model is the leader or a Dog of War, they may roll on the advancement table as normal.
  
• If they're a regular joe, they are instead upgraded to a Dog of War, and can immediately choose a piece of Veteran's Kit for free.
  
• Possible idea (still haven't fully thought this through): to encourage narrative play, each player gets to choose a personality trait for their leader. If they play up to it during the game, they get some kind of bonus.

Injury

• Any model "killed" during play must roll a D6 at the end of the game. On a roll of the 1, that model really is dead! Remove it from the roster.
  
• Leaders taken out of action may re-roll if they roll a 1.
  
• If this takes the value of the warband below 100pts, the dead model can immediately be replaced by a new recruit, chosen as normal to fill the points deficit.

GOLD

• Gold will be earned both during play (many missions will feature treasure as an objective) and by rolling on a Mordheim-esque exploration table after each warband battle.
  
• Gold is what determines who wins the campaign. There will be both a winning faction (the faction with the highest total gold), and a winning warband (the warband with the most gold all to itself).
  
• Taking a cue from T&T, gold can also be spent in the following ways:
  
  • To bribe other warbands to assist you in your next mission.
    
  • To convert directly into starting gold for your faction in Triumph & Treachery games.
• Gold cannot be spent to upgrade your warband members or buy new warband members under your direct control.

FACTION BATTLES

• Faction battles would vary from weekend to weekend. Possibilities are:
  
  • Triumph & Treachery games
    
  • Regular WFB.
    
  • Warband free-for-alls.
    
  • Warband mini-leagues.
• For the warband possibilities, I've got some Warhammer Quest tiles sitting in the attic at home, and the image files to print out as many more as we require - we could possibly use those for an "explore the pyramid" kind of round.
  
• Faction battles would come with larger rewards than warband battles - both in the form of gold, and possibly other special bonuses. These would be split between all members of the winning faction.

LUSTRIA

• I would print out a list of Lustrian terrain rules to be used in all games by default, laminate it, and stick it to the club door.
  
• The Lizardmen would show up from time to time, both to curb the power of warbands or factions that became overbearingly dominant, and also just for fun.

That's a very sketchy list, but it's at least a starting point. What do people think?

[roland murat]

Sounds pretty decent to be honest - I'm not sure the personality trait would work that well for bonuses