I’m starting a new campaign in early February. The last one ended prematurely due to players dropping out, but it was fun while it lasted. Here is the old campaign: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/a-map-campaign-log-updated-cancelled-5-27-12.9061/ The new campaign has the same GM as the old. It uses the same basic format with a hexagon based map though the rules are simplified substantially. The map is bigger but there are fewer neutral armies with a lot more empty space. Thus there will likely far more fighting versus other players’ armies rather than the GM’s neutral armies. We are competing to garner Renown points. Renown points are earned by controlling territories. Each tile generates a single Renown point each campaign month with bonuses if the tiles have extra features on them. +1RP per territory controlled/claimed +1RP per Fort controlled +1RP per Sacred Grove controlled +3RP per Mine controlled +3RP per Fortress controlled +5RP per Magic Fount controlled Note, nearly every race gets a racial bonus for one or two of these on top of the regular bonus. Lizardmen get additional bonuses for Sacred Groves and Magic Founts. Renown points are also earned by winning battles, defeating enemy characters and unit champions, fighting battles against specified rival armies. Each army has a secondary objective in battles that can gain bonus renown. When Lizardmen are on the attacking side, the table has 4d6 randomly scattered tokens representing stolen artifacts. I get 1 renown point per token recovered. To recover a token I need to have a unit carrying it at the end of the battle or a fleeing unit carry it off the board I’m guessing in the early campaign months, I will get more Renown from these tokens than conventional sources (since I can use normal moves to flee units off the board at any time, I don’t even need to win a battle to claim tokens!). Each campaign turn is split into weeks. Though a typical game “week” takes about two weeks in the real world (week four is usually accelerated because by that point all of our armies are exhausted in numbers and waiting for the next reinforcement phase. Every campaign “month” (four weeks naturally) starts with spending our Renown. Each renown point can build up our army 100 points or five points can built a fort or ten points can build a fortress. Every month, each player can try casting a ritual spell. Every month starts with a few events determined by the GM. Each side has an offensive army that follows the normal BRB rules starting at 1,000 points (and 5 tiles and a fortress to “pay” for our first army). We can’t take more than three Specials or two Rares until our total offensive army passes 3,000 points. We can’t have more than one of a single magical item. We also have a free separate garrison army of 3000 points that can’t leave the capital. If we build new forts or fortresses we have to spend additional Renown to garrison though I was told that our newer garrisons don’t have to be legal armies like our first one so I could garrison a fort with nothing but Temple Guard (not that I would). Special characters cannot be taken now, but can eventually be earned in play (but it’s very difficult). After the very first round, unit champions can’t be bought with Renown and they too must be earned in play (that is not particularly difficult). Our main army can be split into roving forces called Flags. Each Flag must have a unit champion or character leading it. Four Saurus blocks could theoretically be one Flag as long as one block has a Champion. A single skink chief can also be a Flag. Our garrison forces are also technically Flags. We can have multiple Flags with BSBs but if two or more Flags with BSBs share the field at once, only one can be used. No Flag can exceed 3,000 points. Flags in theory can be highly specialized. I could field a Flag entirely of four units of Terradons for instance. I don’t see a lot of incentive for me (or anyone else to go that extreme). When and if my total army gets big enough that I feel compelled to split it into two pieces, I expect my two pieces to be fairly similar in composition. Currently most of the map is empty with a few roving bands of GM controlled orcs (and maybe some other neutrals). Scenarios versus neutrals are all battle lines. Fights between two campaign players are bit more complicated. Both sides roll off a number of dice for a “Scouting Roll” subject to many factors. In a short you get more dice for your Scouting Roll the more units you have with extra dice per each unit that has Fast Cavalry or Scouts (fortunate that Lizardmen have both these things!). A tie or near tie is a battle line with normal rules. If one side rolls better than the other the winning side can automatically choose the table side they start on, adjust terrain placement, and/or choose a special scenarios depending on how well they roll. A fort or fortress results in a watchtower or siege scenario respectively. Scenarios are normally played until the table is empty rather than for a set number of turns (remember units can use their normal moves to flee and live to fight another day if desired) After a battle is over and Renown is awarded, player controlled armies can make recovery rolls. Every non-character wound lost lets the player roll a d6. The roll is modified by many factors. Models get bonuses on their roll for being non-Core, high Toughness, having Regeneration and a penalty on the roll if they were on the losing side of the battle or if their unit was wiped out. A multi-wound model taken below its starting wounds but still alive then it can’t fight but can roll recovery again every week until fully healed. One wound models aren’t so lucky, if they don’t pass their recovery roll they are never coming back (though one can buy a replacement next reinforcement phase. If a unit is taken below its legal minimum size to field it is temporarily out of action. For instance if a Saurus unit is still below ten after a recovery roll, the unit is grounded at the nearest friendly fort or fortress until the reinforcement phase at the start of the next month in which case the controlling player can spend the necessary points to restore the unit to a legal fighting size (or any size bigger). Characters have a more complicated random recovery chart. The chart uses two d6s in an 11 to 66 format with many different possibilities ranging from death to permanent injury, to capture, to full recovery to full recovery with a stat boost (usually Hatred for the side that took him down). The opposing side can roll a d6 to try to steal magic items from defeated characters whether the character recovers or not, if the character’s roll on the recovery chart is “robbed” or “captured” the victorious player automatically gets the magic items. This also lets the winning side capture and use magical items from other army’s books. Hypothetically if I captured a Lucky Shrunken Head from an Orc army, I could equip to a Slann and give his Temple Guard 6+ Ward Saves. I want my army to be balanced with a little bit of everything, basically an all comers list. There are two major additional tactical considerations different from normal army building and one minor one. First, I don’t want my units to be grounded very often. Between reinforcement phase everyone’s army will gradually get smaller. A small number of larger units can handle the attrition better than a large number of smaller units. In a normal game I’d rather have two groups of five Chamo Skinks as opposed to one group of ten. In this format a single unit of ten Chamo Skinks will be able to fight more battles, since they can take five unrecovered casualties before they are grounded while two groups of five can only take one casualty each before all ten are out of commission. This means I’m going to field larger units than I normally would. I normally wouldn’t field two Salamanders together instead of two singles or field more ten Skirmishers in a single unit, now I have a strong incentive to break that norm. Second, I need mobile forces to grab my secondary objectives (artifact tokens). Since they are scattered about the table evenly I need to try to get a unit to every area of the table to get maximum Renown Points each battle where I’m the attacker. This means I’m going to field proportionately more Chameleon Skinks, Terradons, and Skink Skirmishers than I otherwise use. Third, Champions are also useful letting me split my army into smaller parts. If a unit champion beats a hero in a challenge, the champion can get swapped for a free hero of any type. Champions are always the first model to recover so they are hard to wipe out forever. Champions can’t be bought with points only earned with exp points gained in battle except for our starting army. My starting army is going to have a champion on every unit, even units where a champion would normally be wasteful. Admittedly there is a downside, players get 1 free renown point (ie 100 points on their next reinforcement phase) for each enemy champion they defeat but I think the rewards outweigh the risk. Starting army is going to look like this unless my immediate neighbor’s armies strengths and weaknesses suggest I do otherwise. L2 Skink Priest, Plaque of Tepoc, Ruby Ring of Ruin 26 Saurus Warriors, full command 22 Skinks, full command 10 Chameleon Skinks with Brave 10 Chameleon Skinks with Brave 2 Salamanders with 2 extra Handlers The Skink Priest has four spells which should let me use strong Winds of Magic phases quite well until I can afford a Slann. I can even afford to use my dice conservatively to avoid miscasts because if I fail to cast a Heavens spell I can at least cast Fireball from the ring. The Skinks are going to hold back from the fighting and not participate any fighting until next reinforcement phase when I plan to double their size and add Kroxigor. Not only can they bunker the Skink Priest but their M6 should let them get most of the tokens near my starting side. The Sauri are going to do most of the real fighting. I’m banking on my support units keeping their flanks safe. The Chameleon Skinks and Salamanders will rotate between supporting the Saurus in battle and grabbing tokens as circumstances allow. To avoid expensive losses, any unit will flee off the board if put in a tight pot (I can use normal moves at anytime to flee a unit off the table, not only do I get the unit back next campaign turn but they keep any tokens they are carrying). My first priority in future reinforcement phases is to boost my Saurus block to around 35, boost my Skinks to around 40 + 3-4 Kroxigor, boost my Salamanders to 3, and add a Scar Veteran BSB. I’m not going to plan beyond that till I have a better idea of what the situation on the ground looks like. I obviously want a Slann as soon as practical. My Garrison Army is as follows. Blood in the Badlands Siege rules will be used. A minimum of one turn is spent besieging the fortress. Each turn triggers another starvation roll for the defenders. I don’t have any special considerations to make my list different from a regular Siege defending force except that there is no relief force (unless I move an offensive Flag in) and I can’t have any duplicate magical items between all my units so I’m avoiding giving my Garrison force the best magical items. I won my last (non-campaign) defending Siege Battle without a lot of fuss, so I’m basing my defending army on that list. I feel confident about the army but I’m not sure that’s the best set of Siege Equipment possible. Fortunately I don’t think I have to have my equipment set in stone because its chosen right before a battle. I don’t have to set Lore for Slann either. Slann Mage Priest, Two Disciplines: Extra Power Die, Lore Mastery (probably Life), Forbidden Rod, Obsidian Amulet, BSB Slann Mage Priest, Two Disciplines: Extra Power Die, Lore Mastery (probably Fire), Dragonfly of Quicksilver 6 x 29 Skinks, 1 Kroxigor, Musician, Champion (to garrison everything but the gate) 35 Temple Guard with Musician and Champion with Gold Sigil Sword (to garrison the gate) 3 x 7 Chameleon Skinks with Brave (to hunt war machines and run interference) 3 Terradons with Brave (to hunt war machines and run interference) Flaming Ammunition x 10 (one for every single unit except the Temple Guard) 5 Sally Forths 2 Cauldrons of Boiling Oil 1 Hell Gate My garrison force has relatively less popular magic items because whatever they use, my offensive army can’t use (though I suppose I could transfer them later). There are 9 players so far, in theory we could get up to 16, but that seems overly optimistic. Given that our last campaign withered due to players dropping out, I’d prefer a small committed group over a big group that loses someone every other campaign week. I’d prefer to not antagonize anyone right off the bat and grab as many empty tiles as possible, but I get bonus Renown when I recover artifacts as the aggressor, so I wail on neutral Orcs at every opportunity to let me be the aggressor without directly antagonizing another player. The player list is below: Warriors of Chaos x 2: Both these players are quite skilled. I played one guy once in a regular game while we were waiting for our campaign opponents to be ready last campaign. We called off the game early. He was clearly winning but said we should call it a draw. Nice guy. His 2000+ armies all look quite similar. He has a tendency is to lean heavily on large blocks Mark-enhanced of Chaos Warriors supported by big monsters, avoiding the lighter units like Marauders. I don’t know enough about the other WoC player to guess what his army is likely to entail. Warriors of Chaos is one of the few army books I have not read so I’m not super familiar with what I could be facing or what the best way to fight them would be. Chaos Dwarfs: Played this guy once in the last campaign when he represented a neutral Chaos Dwarf realm. I out pointed him 2:1 so I didn’t get a good gage on him there. Watching him play two games with bigger armies. He held his Chaos Dwarf infantry back and used his artillery and magic to take out about half of his enemies and his K’daai Destroyer to take out the other half. I think if I can bog down the K’daai with nice big Skroxigor blocks I should do okay. Vampire Counts: Played this guy twice, lost both times (one was a massacre). He doesn’t vary his 2000+ lists that much. They seem to involve two Terrorghiests and a massive block of zombies or skeletons with ethereal characters and tooled up Vampire Lords making up the most/all front row. This is a hard combo to beat. I don’t want to run out the gate super aggressively, but if HE is my neighbor I may have to attack him early and often to check his growth. I think his usual preferred methods of engagement will be at their weakest in low point games. At low points games my souped up Skink Priest should be able to knock out his flyers, my Saurus should be able to chew up lots of cheap undead. I just have to figure out a way to keep his dire wolves away from my Salamanders. Lizardmen x2 (one of them me, of course): The other player is an unknown quantity. Part of me wants Lizardmen solidarity to make us friends. The other part of me thinks a LM/LM team would be far less effective than LM/anything else and is intrigued by the idea of LM vs. LM battles (though it would be weird to have us liberating sacred artifacts from each other): Wood Elfs or Brettonians: This guy is apparently a fan of under supported armies still using sixth edition books. This player is another unknown quantity. I never played Brettonians before ever, so I hope that’s what he brings. I wasn’t even sure if anyone who went to our local store collected Bretts. Empire x2: Statistically speaking, I probably played one of these guys before. If the players are who I think they are, both will play traditional balanced armies with STANKs, great swords, cheap infantry, fast cavalry, and a unit or two of knights. One will go heavy on artillery, and the other will lean heavily on buff units like warrior priests and the Magemobiles. I liked to get one of these guys as an ally. I won the last doubles tournament I played with dwarves because LM kick ass when fighting with artillery rather than against it! I don’t know who my neighbors will be yet. Everyone is starting along the perimeter and the map is going to be quite large, so there will be armies I’m fairly close to and many armies I’m distant from. Starting positions will either involve players rolling off and choosing, randomized positions, or clusters involving similar armies. We need to discuss as a group what the objective in the scenario will be such as control x tiles, conquer an enemy capital, control x resource improvements, gain x renown. We also need to discuss house rules, requirements for what models are acceptable to field, and how alliances will work. Since the Warriors of Chaos book is supposedly coming out this year, it might be worth discussing how to transition the new book in (or whether to transition it in) if it shows up mid-campaign. I’ll post a link to the rules online when the GM finishes them. In the meantime, here’s my army: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/scalenexs-paint-log-and-fluff-piece-index.10274/ I don’t know what my two color flag scheme should be, I’m open to suggestions. I guess I’m leaning towards blue and green.