Scenery Showcase & Campaign Ruminations

And here we have the board set up for my next game, utilising the Games Workshop Walls & Fences, GW trees and a bunch of armature and lichen trees I made myself from parts bought from Hobbycraft and a railway model shop.

The idea is that one force is making their way up this sunken road when they are ambushed by another faction.

I’ve been thinking of dropping the campaign plan and replacing it with something completely different.

I’m going for a model that will see the factions working through several levels t5o get to the centre of the island. They will need to be successful at one level to push toward the standing stones at the centre. 

Basically at Level 1 the factions be at the edge of the island and will fight one another to gain a beachhead. At subsequent levels, they will battle inland.

The idea is that the focus is on gaming and character progression (through Warjack bonding) rather than on too laborious in terms of map movement or story.

As per usual I will tend to use narrative scenarios to keep it varied and interesting, tweaking them depending on how far into the island the forces have reached.

And I remembered the most important rule of planning a campaign:

Getting playing is the first objective!

I can come up with the detail as I go.  

So the first game is going to be Cryx versus Khador and should be starting off tomorrow night. My wife and I tend to play our games over a day or three.

Meanwhile I should be able to post pictures of my newly painted Cygnar warjacks in a day or two.

Stay tuned!

The Developing Campaign Map

I didn’t have much time last night but this is the next stage progression of the map.

As you can see, the realms have expanded and I’m now at the critical point where I have to decide how the detachments will appear on the map, how they’ll move, how they’ll attack, how many will there be for each faction, how many hexes need to be captured before another army is earned, etc.

It’s a tricky decision.

I’m leaning toward having each army possess a “front” that extends to either side of it – a zone of influence. Within that zone they will be able to attack or defend but the distance away from the actual army itself will have an impact on the mission.

In the War Machine campaign book I was reading it suggested the idea of having game length restrictions, scenario deployment and restrictions depending on the “Proximity” of the enemy army. I might purloin a bit of that.

This will mean that I don’t need loads of different armies on the map, but though they occupy a single hex, they still can’t be snuck past too easily.

Comments and suggestions would be very gratefully received. 

I’ve also placed the standing stones and central volcano. I’m feeling the standing stone locations are a bit unfair at the moment so I might tweak them to space them out more evenly.  

The Campaign Map and Initial Ideas

Allow me to present the basic starting campaign for my War Machine and Hordes campaign.

Blood Mount Isle!

Blood Mount Isle is a mysterious island that has suddenly been discovered rising from the mists of the sea. It is wild and dangerous, pock marked with volcanic activity but also inhabited by human beings long disconnected from their brethren on the mainland. 

There are mysterious ruins and dense jungle; and dotted around the island, four terrifying and gargantuan standing stones throbbing with arcane power. At the heart of the isle is a lake of fire, at the centre of which is a temple where the energy from the standing stones can be focused.

All indications show that if a single faction could take control of all four standing stones and the central temple as well then a ritual could be performed that would change the entire world.

Unlike my Last Chance War and Conflict Valorax campaigns, I decided to go with a Hex based map though apart from that I plan to run it in a similar way to Last Chance War.

The factions are deployed in the different zones around the island and will spread out, gaining additional detachments depending on the number of hexes they control. I haven’t decided yet how many hexes will warrant a new force.

The objective of the campaign is going to be to take control of the standing stones and temple.

For each standing stone controlled, that faction will gain an extra FOCUS or FURY point for all their Warlocks and Warcasters. When one faction finally controls them all (which could take years of playing time – if it ever occurs) then the campaign will be concluded as that faction remakes the world in their image.

I plan to have story-based terrain-specific games and an ongoing plotline of sorts.

I’m NOT planning to go into the same detail story-wise as I did with my other campaigns. It is VERY time consuming to keep up with.

The campaign (and blog) are here to keep me and my players focused and interested and to showcase the miniatures and terrain used.

Let’s see how it develops…