Campaign Ideas for AoS

[Threejacks]

Wondering about how a campaign would work for AoS.It can certainly play very fast and with its "flexible" army building system(lol,yeah I know) I think it could lend very well to a narrative campaign either using a set of scenarios or even adding a macro layer like the old Mighty Empires system.

 

Ive only read of players "working" on their groups campaigns but have yet to see any particulars on one.

 

Any ideas?

[Gorgosaurusrex]

I think a Mighty Empires campaign would work very well with AoS. The terrain, army construction, and mission objectives could be based on what map tile a player is attacking (Castle, village, river, etc). I'd try to incorporate some sort of experience system for each player's General, allowing the player to invest in stat points (+1 to hit, +1 bravery, +1 save, etc). While this could create some broken characters it adds another layer of interest to keep players involved in the campaign.

 

I've been thinking about this a great deal as I aim to start an AoS Mighty Empires campaign with my game group once my 40k Warbands campaign has run its course.

[Brother Glacius]

map campaigns are always fun. Not sure how easy it is to categorize the war scrolls so that they can be attached to map location types.

[Threejacks]

A map campaign would indeed be fun I think.Ive only played the 40k map game once and haven't tried the fantasy one,but one thing about them and AoS that comes to mind straight away is how the new setting is fragmented with all but Chaos being still in hiding or retreat.Plus the land masses themselves can be larger than a planet or nothing more than just a small island with most all of them having a Realmgate.

 

So as far as the map for an AoS campaign goes I think it would be really cool if we had access to a series of custom Hexagons,maybe just mounted on cardstock or something,with which to assemble the map.Of course each hex would have the designation of one of the elemental realms with an accompanying battle effects table.Then cities and other magical foci could be added to each tile.Then give a realmgate to each of the elemental areas created.Not sure how well this would work but basically in order to move between each elemental realm one would have to use a gate as they wouldn't have land borders.

 

Or the other approach would be to scale the campaign down to something along the lines of the original Mighty Empires game and just make it a fight over a single continent or realm.

 

Either way there would need to be some sort of comp system used be it OrdoComp or Azyr or perhaps as basic as SDK builder.From this a player would put together a "Grand Army" of scrolls from which to draw from for the battles that they fight.I can envision wins awarding an extra scroll to be added to their army total or perhaps a roll on a bonus table for a hero.Loosing a battle/tile could add a defensive bonus that could be added to a tile or perhaps a roll on a defensive boon table with results like having a native tribe come to the defenders aid giving a base warscroll of troops to the defenders army.

 

Also for these kind of campaigns I think it would be a good addition to have some sort of unit damage/wounding effect.This way scrolls that have been destroyed in a battle may have to sit out a round or two while they are rebuilt,this should help to keep a player that's playing a strong aggressive army from running the board to easily.

[savion47]

Are you trying to make me want to play AoS? If so, you are doing a great job!

[Threejacks]

More thoughts on this,

 

Im leaning toward a regional/continental type map campaign that could include other,secondary regions/continents through use of realmgates.Probably not more than one or two though.It would be cool if the regions/continents could be of specific and different mortal realms but im not sure how that would effect balance for armies that are not from those realms.May be best at first to just make the main map that has the objective on it to be "mixed" or neutral.

 

Would like to use a set of map tiles (hexagonal) like in Mighty Empires as this seems to work best for varying size player groups and would help to assemble a map from a center objective hex outward.Getting a copy of Mighty Empires seems to be pretty tough now..anyone have any ideas for printable maps for something like this?.,,something that can be printed and mounted on heavy card or something like that?.

 

Along with building the map players would place a set number of nodes on the map in either their tiles or an unoccupied tile.Im thinking these would be a base/capital,armories,apothacaries,Wizard Towers,ceramonial sites.Controlling each of these would give a player a once per battle bonus in their army,,example for the apothecary would be something like a swiftness potion so that a unit could add 2 to a regular or run move.In addition to this I would like to add a chart for each node making its effect random,reason for this is I want to have a garrison system in place for each army.If the zone with the node is garrisoned then the random chart could be modified favorably,were is if its not garrisoned then the chart would be effected adversely using the example above,the unit would then loose 2" off its movement for that phase.A roll would be made at the start of a player turn and would be effective until their next hero phase.I can see these nodes ranging in power from very minor to giving a unit rerolls to hit or wound or possibly healing D6 wounds...or causing D6 mortals too,heh.

 

AS for garrisoning I can see having players choose to place a Warscroll from their army in zones they control at the beginning of each strategic turn.In addition to gaining a bonus to zones with nodes,they would also help to "maintain peace" in border zones that I would likely make subject to rebellion and going neutral through a random table roll..thinking 1 in 6 chance or something like that.

 

 

As for victory conditions,I think I would just use an achievement point system as those seem to be the most fun to play for.

[Threejacks]

Since the Path to Glory system was released for AoS recently,it got me thinking about how to adapt it to a sort of campaign like system for the game that would encompass all of the factions in the game rather than just Chaos.

 

After looking it over I can see that creating a starting army involved choosing or rolling on some random tables.These tables show what specific warscrolls are to be used.Basically what im doing to both build and add in after each battle,is to take those tables and substitute a SDK pool number value in place of the warscrolls listed.I can also add in restrictions on values such as "No cavalry or ranged" with a pool value of 1.0 being the lowest(1 on d6),going up to a something like a 2.0 with no restrictions for a 6 on d6.In between I can have the 1.0 value with no restriction,or just a "no ranged Restriction..then the 1.5 results both with restrictions and without.I basically do this for the 4 charts,those being Troops(No monsters or Heros),Hero,Monster/Warmachines and a Mercenary chart.The Mercenary chart allows a maximum of one roll choice at army start and has a place on the random reinforcement chart(that also has a "Choose any" result).Mercenaries must be chosen from your main factions(Chaos,Death,ect..)

 

The other charts I pretty much copied over and removed some of the results that were focused on Chaos only and replaced them with results that were more universal..for instance the result that gives the general the effect of subtracting one from bravery for enemy units within 6" ..I make that be an "add one to friendly or allied bravery within the same range if they are Order or Destruction.

 

The end round charts like lessor glories stays pretty much the same,though I added a chart to randomize the reinforcement choices as to which of the 4 warscroll types to choose from(though a 5-6 result allows a choice).

 

The Ascension system would not work at all with what im doing here so I had to make a new system.This consists of a d6 table of buffs to the General,some being substantial such as "Gain d3+1 wounds",or gain a -1 reduction in your save number(to a min of 2+)..gain extra attacks to one weapon,things like this.Im thinking 2 rolls on this table and one roll on the reinforcement table to add another Warscroll.Im also thinking of allowing players to forgo the above and instead receive a Monster mounted version of their hero if their army has that option..they would then loose 3 of the previous buffs gained in the game as well(don't want more Archaon`s and Karl Franz`s running around,lol).Anyhow..lots of testing needs to be done on how this end campaign chart would work.

 

The Path to glory system calls for a valor total of 10 needed in order for a player to "Ascend" and gain their final abilities then fight to win with their new form.My son and I are two rounds in right now and it seems to be going ok,both games have been close (we are 1 and 1 right now) but I can see that this could take a bit too long to complete as the armies grow by one scroll each round,so im thinking of shooting for a 6 or maybe 7 valor target.

 

Right now its looking like a fun sort of escalation/campaign system:)

[Guest]

It would be pretty fun to do the American Revolutionary War, but with an AoS theme. I'm not a huge history buff, but I think many of those battles would translate well to AoS. Plus, there are lots of history buffs and online resources regarding the topic. Plus the maps are already made. Granted, ours would be very basic and then made silly (so VC, orcs and such would make sense).

 

The Battle of Bunker Hill would make a great scenario, in example. 

[Threejacks]

Im really hoping that something for AoS campaigns comes out of the new Specialist games wing.Something along the lines of Mighty Empires,also a AoS version of TnT would be most excellent!

[Norrad]

There is rumor of an AOS supplement coming. It is a campaign based on Archaons assault on the All-Points Realmgates. If he succeeds he will have access to all realms at any time. The Free People's will have to band together to stop him! This sounds extremely cool. I've done a ton of WFB map based campaigns in my time. If this doesn't come to fruition then I might just draw up a map and kick this one off!