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THE TALE OF A LARGE MAP, SMALLMODELS AND THE MEN THAT PLAY

WITH THEMIt’s not what you think, nothing to do withcatwalks and supermodel abduction plots fornefarious purposes. This is in fact the story ofan ongoing Warmaster campaign that was runat the Brent Cross GW store.

Firstly, I suppose I should introduce myself, Iam David Simpson and have been playing withtoy soldiers for about ten years which is almostas long as some of the younger sprogs havebeen alive. Conversely, there are even a fewrare examples of regulars (or GW staff) thathave been playing with little painted men forlonger than I myself have graced this earth, ascary thought indeed!

If you want to look for the history of thiscampaign you must first travel back to almosttwo years ago. At this time there was a fairlysimple Warhammer campaign being run at theBrent Cross store using the campaign rulesthat were in the book but with the addedaddition of a map to represent your actualterritories. Now being the rabid Warhammer

Empire general that I was, I jumped at thechance to show the superior firepower of theEmpire’s artillery and took part with greatgusto and enthusiasm.

Well anyway, so as not to veer too far off thesubject I have always loved map basedcampaigns and when I saw the first previewpictures of Warmaster in White Dwarf I startedgoing a bit loopy with visions of masses oftroops stoically marching over the massacredbodies of their foes conquering all opposition.When I finally got my hands on a copy ofWarmaster I realised just how perfect a game itwas to be integrated into a campaign. So mymate Dan and I started to pester Dean, thestore manager, for a Warmaster campaign. Hisresponse went something like this: “sure guys,if you come up with the rules for it I’ll makethe map”. So sure enough Dan and I sat downaround the painting table armed with paperand a pen (Dan had the pen, my handwriting isillegible even to myself) and we startedthrashing out the basic ideas and aims of thecampaign system.

Several years ago I tried to run several MightyEmpires campaigns with a group of friends soI had a fair idea about what that particularsystem’s major weaknesses were. Chief amongthem in my opinion is that in order for thecampaign to progress, a player must concludeany combats before the next player can taketheir turn, thus the system we devised wouldbe flexible in this aspect.

Another major problem in campaigns is whenpeople can’t turn up for a campaign night orend up dropping out for one reason oranother. Since I knew that several of thepeople that would be taking part woulddefinitely have these kind of problems Idecided to make it flexible in this aspect aswell.

However chief among the design aims of thesystem was that it would be a no paperworksystem. What this means is that everything isrepresented directly on the map, there are noarmy rosters, unit experience or anything likethat. After all this was meant to be a campaignon a grand scale, not a Mordheim tournament.

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WARMASTER CAMPAIGNBy David Simpson & Friends

The author enjoying a game...

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So, once these basic rough notes were writtenup by Dan, put on a floppy and then publishedon the Internet by me, I started the process offleshing out each individual section. Whilst Iwas doing this, Dan and I also started to carryout some play test experiments to see if what Ihad already written seemed balanced, or forthat matter if it worked. These initial sessionswere extremely useful as it brought up a majorflaw in the system as it stood then. Everythingis carried out with Action checks in a similarway to Command checks in Warmaster.However, in the first draft of the rules each racehad a separate command value equal to thegeneral’s command value in Warmaster.

The weakness of this quickly became apparentwhen the High Elves were marching across themap at breakneck speed whilst the Ork &Goblins were hardly moving at all. In the endwe decided to leave racial differences out ofthe system until a later date (I’m starting onthat phase of the project about now).

After almost a month of some quite intensivewriting on my behalf and testing by both meand Dan the rules were ready for use in theactual campaign, however we still had no map!Dean had promised us that he would producethe map if we produced the rules. However Idoubt that he took into account the fact thatwe would need the map at about the sametime as he needed to make stuff for Games Day.

So in the end I ended up making the mainbody of the map myself. The map is a mainisland surrounded by several smaller island,most of which are player’s starting islands (seeabove). Each player had to produce their ownstarting islands and counters. This is a great tipto anyone else considering setting up acampaign as it means that people actually haveto invest some time and effort to even actuallystart playing which should mean that they aremore likely to stick to it.

You can check out more stuff on the Internet atmy website:

http://www.stomm.com

The site is linked to from almost all the otherWarmaster sites that I know (and a few that Ionly found out about a couple of days ago) sofinding it should not be too hard so long asyou persevere. If you want to ask me anyquestions about almost anything (including mycampaign system and Warmaster in general)then feel free to email me at:

stommstommson@redhotant.com.

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THE RULES

1. Maps and TerrainTerrain consists of three basic types. These areland tiles, coastal tiles and sea areas. All ofthese types of terrain or territories are basedon a hex grid system. Land tiles and Coastaltiles take up one hex each, whilst sea areas cantake up anywhere from two to twenty hexes,with the average being around ten.

When explored, each land and coastal tile hasa value assigned to it which gives you a numberbetween 0 and 5. Each player’s starting tile isan exception to this as it has a value of 10.These values are an abstract grading of anarea’s worth. It does not specifically representtowns and villages, merely a land’s potential.

It just so happens that the old Citadel paintpots are hexagonal in form, so guess what youcan use as a template for your campaign map?The old Mighty Empires map tiles could alsobe used, but I think that the major flaw withthese is that they move about too easily. Whatwe have done for our campaign is to use thepaint pots as a template for the tiles, then tocreate a three dimensional map on foam cardwith textured water, hills, deserts, forests andso on all-moulded onto the actual map boarditself.

The type of terrain does not affect its value orrating in any way. The only effect the type ofterrain has is that it modifies the difficulty ofmoving armies into that particular terrain. Sowhen making your campaign map, bear this inmind, try to equalise the types of territory inrelation to player’s starting positions. It wouldbe unfair to have one player’s start positionbehind a load of virtually impenetrablemountains, with another located in easy tonavigate plains.

The table shown below is the table used forestablishing what a territory’s rating is whenyou enter it. Needless to say you use 2D6 whenrolling on this table, and as you can see thismeans that there is a heavy slant towardsfinding a Level one territory. These values canbe altered by player actions such as pillagingand improving. These and the use of this tableare described in more detail in the movementand actions sections of the rules.

Exploration Table2D6 Result Territory Value

2 53 44 35 26 17 08 19 210 311 412 5

2. Campaign Turn SequenceEach campaign is divided into years, seasonsand then campaign turns. There can obviouslybe pretty much any number of years in a singlecampaign, indeed the passing of a set numberof years may mark when a campaign ends.Apart from that, what year the campaign is indoes not really matter that much.

There are four seasons to each campaign year(spring, summer, autumn and winter). Atpresent the only effect of a season is to markwhen each empire rearranges its forces toaccount for gains and losses as far as the totalterrain value and thus army size of an empire.This is calculated at the end of each season

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before the next campaign season begins. Anyplayer who does not do so will be unable tobenefit from any changes in his or her totalterritory value and if there is a negative changethen they will lose whole armies to balanceout, starting with the furthest ones from theirrespective capital tile moving inward. I dointend to add some seasonal modifiers oncethe rest of the rules have been confirmed asworking properly. Such modifiers wouldprobably be in relation to moving and actions,they might even be race specific. I mean theUndead won’t be slowed down by coldweather, whilst during the summer monthsmost races should find it easier to improve atile’s rating.

There are three campaign turns in everycampaign season. These roughly representmonths, so if a campaign is running one turnper week, then a whole campaign year shouldpass in roughly twelve weeks or three monthsof real time. This can be altered if necessary, ie,you could have four or six, even one campaignturn per season rather than the standard three.This could be done to either speed up or slowdown a campaign, I suppose the excuse youcould use is that the campaign is being foughtover smaller or larger territories.

A campaign turn is when every player makeshis or her moves and actions, moving aroundthe campaign map and doing any actions. Ofcourse if they fail their Command checks theymay end up doing nothing, but that’s the wayof things. Each player takes it in turn to do alltheir actions before moving onto the nextplayer. The order in which this is done shouldchange every campaign turn, a method ofdeciding the order might be to roll off withdice, highest choosing to go first or last, butany method which is acceptable to the playersis fine.

The reason that the order can be important isthat whoever goes first obviously will havemore freedom of movement and at thebeginning of the campaign may be able to gofor strategic territories before anyone else.Whilst the players who do their turns after theothers will be better able to react to theirenemies’ movements and to force them tobattle, possibly ambushing smaller forces withtheir own larger ones.

Once everyone has done their campaign turnsit should be established which battles need tobe fought before the next campaign turn. The

relevant players have until then to fight thebattle. When and how battles are fought arecovered in a later section, but basically a battleis fought if two opposing armies are in thesame terrain tile at the end of the turn.

3. Armies and Fleets Armies: The size of a player’s army is limitedonly by the size and number of his territories.However, the size of individual armies has aminimum of 500 points and a maximum of2,500 points, this is calculated in blocks of 500points. This allows you to have armies of 500,1,000, 1,500, 2,000 and 2,500 points.

As explained earlier, each land map tile has anassigned value to it. This value translatesdirectly to the total size of an empire’s armies.This relationship is that every point of terrainvalue is worth 100 points of army value. So forinstance, when players start the campaign theyhave one terrain piece which represents theircapital with a value of 10. This translatesdirectly to 1,000 points as the starting armysize.

As players search the map and discover andclaim more terrain, or increase the value oftheir existing territories their total empirevalue will go up, meaning that the totalamount of troops they can field will also rise.Conversely, the actions of enemy empires maycause a player to either lose terrain or its valueto be reduced through pillaging, thus theirtotal empire value and army size would bereduced accordingly.

You may form new armies and add to existingones on territories, with a value of 5, with theexception of your capital where you can addany number of points or create new armieswithin the limits that are imposed by yourempire size and the army size and compositionrestrictions outlined earlier.

If you have any points left over (you most likelywill) you make a note of these excess pointswhich forms your reserve forces. I find that acounter with the relevant number placed onyour capital tile is ideal for this purpose. Theway that these reserve forces work is that theyallow you to ignore up to the size of yourreserve forces from casualties in a campaign

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season. For instance if you had a reserve forceof 400 (the maximum) and you had a 500points army which fought a battle and suffered300 points worth of casualties (which wouldnormally cause the army to disband) you coulduse 300 points of your reserves to replacethese casualties. You would then have 100points of reserves that you could use later onin that campaign season. Obviously yourreserve forces will most likely change from onecampaign season to another, sometimes youmight not have any reserves at all.

If for any reason you wish to reorganise thesize composition of one or more armies, youmay do so before the relevant armies havetaken any actions at the beginning of theirmove. This basically means that to reorganiseseveral smaller armies into one large army, allthe armies involved must already be in thesame territory at the beginning of thatparticular campaign turn.

Once reorganised, all the armies involved maythen act as normal. It is even possible to turn a500 point army and a 1,500 point army intotwo 1,000 point armies if you so wish, so longas both armies started the campaign turn in thesame territory.

A little tip on how to represent your armies.Since they are organised in blocks of 500points – from 500 to 2,500 points, it gives youfive steps of army size. The old square Epicbases have five slots in them and are ideal forrepresenting your armies with

Fleets: Ships are used for only one thing in thisparticular campaign system, transportingarmies. Fleets, like armies, are organised intoblocks of 500 points, although in this case the500 points is 500 points of transport capacity(500 points of transport capacity = 500 pointsof army that can be transported). However,fleets of ships are different from armies in thatthey only come in 500 points blocks, you may

never combine fleets into larger fleets or forthat matter split them up.

Fleets are made by using a build action whichis explained later as are the transport rules.

4. Movement and Actions Land Movement: Everything in this particularcampaign system is achieved through the useof actions which are performed by the armiesof a player. This section includes everythingfrom moving armies around the map toclaiming territories and building ships.

There are two basic types of action. The firstand most commonly used is the movementaction, the second is special actions. Specialactions are covered in more detail in latersections but they are further split into twogroups: territory actions and build actions.

Each different action is assigned a difficultyrating. To successfully complete the action youmust roll equal to or under the difficulty ratingof that action on 2D6. The funny thing aboutthe difficulty level of the commands is that theyget easier the higher the Difficulty rating (Ihaven’t been able to think of a better name forit yet). You also have to apply all the relevantmodifiers to the Difficulty rating for eachaction attempt that you make, this includes acumulative -1 modifier for each successiveaction. Also, unless specifically noted, allmodifiers are also cumulative.

For instance, moving has a Difficulty rating of 9which means that to move an army you mustroll 9 or less on 2D6. However, there are quitea few modifiers to this basic roll including a -1per 500 points of army size and the +1 formoving into unowned territory. Thus if youtried to move a 500 point, army and there wereno other modifiers you would need to roll a 9or less on the first move, 8 or less on thesecond move, and so on. In most instancesthere would be other modifiers to this roll for

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Land Movement, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating – 9

Territory moving to is not owned +1

Territory moving to is owned by same player +2

Size of army being moved -1 per 500 points

Territory moving from contains enemy army -1

Territory moving to contains moderate terrain -1

Territory moving to contains difficult terrain -2 (+ may only move 500pt armies)

Territory moving to contains extreme terrain -3 (+ may only move 500pt armies)

Territory moving to contains impassable terrain cannot enter

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terrain and so on. This is a rather complicatedway of going about things (taking a point thenadding a point), but it has been done this wayto make moving larger armies more difficult.

As you can see there are a lot of differentmodifiers with regards to terrain types for theterritory that the army is moving into. Exactlywhat terrain on your map corresponds towhich grade of terrain is something thatshould really be decided before the campaignstarts. A basic guideline would be that forests,small rivers, light marshes, hills and so on, aremoderate terrain. Larger rivers, rapids,mountains, dense forest, moorland, cliffs,desserts, stretches of water and so on, aredifficult terrain. Extreme terrain would includedune seas, glaciers, ice sheets, volcanoes andall that sort of stuff. Whilst impassable terrainwould ideally only be impassable from acertain direction, such terrain might includelava flows, canyons and all sorts of really nasty,possibly magical, terrain.

Terrain modifiers are always applied formovement into the particular territory thatcontains them. For instance if you weremoving an army from a plain tile into onewhich contained a normal forest (moderateterrain) then you would apply a -1 to theDifficulty rating. However if that army was tomove from that territory with a forest back intothe plain territory then there would be noterrain modifier added (remember to add orsubtract other modifiers though).

Terrain modifiers are only taken into account ifat least half of the area of the territory iscovered in the appropriate terrain type. Theonly exception is rivers and cliffs. Rivers arealways taken into account unless there is onlythe most insignificant length of river involved,whilst cliffs are only considered if the entirecoastline of that particular territory is cliffed.Any beach area means that you ignore the cliffs(the relevance of this is explained a bit later).

Another thing to take into account is that youonly ever apply the worst terrain modifier, theyare not cumulative. For instance, a territorythat is entirely forested and has a river runningthrough it would only apply a -1 penalty, not acumulative -2. Whilst a Mountainous territorywith a river running through it would have a-2 modifier rather than -3. Remember however

that all the other modifiers including thesubsequent action modifier are still applied ontop of terrain modifiers.

Water Movement: As well as moving armiesover land it is also possible (and sometimesmore desirable) to move armies over bodies ofwater. Whether these are the sea, a large riveror lake does not really matter that much. As hasbeen explained in the maps and terrain sectionthere are effectively three types of water. Thefirst are rivers, which are part of a land tile, andcrossing them is covered by various modifiersin the land movement section. The secondtype are coastal waters. These are the watersections of the land tiles that are strangelyenough coastal. The third and largest type aresea territories, these are already covered in themaps and terrain section, but suffice to say thatthey can be very large indeed. The one thing toremember is that moving through any sea tileis exactly the same, but the large sea territoriescannot be owned by anyone.

Water Movement, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating – 9

Territory moving to is owned by enemy player -1

Territory moving from contains enemy fleet -1

Territory moving to is owned by same player +1

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Before you can move your armies by sea youmust first of all get them onto ships. Fleets onlyever come in 500 point transport capacityblocks, thus if you want to transport a 1000point army by sea you would have to have twofleets to be able to do so and you would alsohave to split your army into two 500 pointarmies before even trying to board the ships.

For an army to board a fleet requires twothings. Firstly both the army and fleet must bein the same territory at the beginning of thatcampaign turn (obviously the fleet in the waterpart and the army in the land part). Secondly itrequires a successful movement action checkon a difficulty of 9 with no added modifiers.Once the army is successfully boarded the fleetmay move as normal.

If you want the army to disembark the fleetmust obviously be in a coastal territory. Prettymuch the same procedure is used as forembarking, except that modifiers forsubsequent actions and terrain modifiers suchas cliffs and forests must be taken into account.Basically embarking and disembarking countas a land movement action. Remember thatembarking counts as an action whencalculating the roll needed for subsequentmovement by the fleet. Also once a fleet hashad its transported army disembark, the fleetmay no longer move and neither can the army.It is assumed that the off loading of supplies,establishing a temporary harbour and so ontakes quite a while, besides your soldiers willmost likely be feeling more than a little sea sickso won’t be too happy with being ordered tomarch as soon as they get off the ships.

There is one slight exception to theembarkation and disembarkation rules. Whenattempting to do so in your capital tile theaction is always an automatic success. This isbecause it is assumed that your capital territoryhas a well equipped dock facility to helpfacilitate the loading of troops and cargo

aboard ships. However, although this makes itan automatic action, it still counts as an actionas far as consideration for subsequent actioncheck modifiers.

When it comes to actually moving a fleet it iseffectively treated as an army that cannot go onland. The base difficulty rating for watermovement is exactly the same as for landmovement, that being 9. However, as youmight expect there is a completely different setof modifiers for water movement which aregiven in the table below.

The one main thing that you must rememberwhen calculating the action check required forwater movement is that the large sea tiles cannever be owned by anyone. The only seaterritory that can ever be owned by a particularempire is the water section of a coastal tile.

If players really wish to do so then it is possibleto add further modifiers to this table to includethings such as ice flows, treacherous rocks,coral reefs or sand banks. However I think thatadding this amount of detail to sea movementin a normal campaign is a bit excessive.

5. Special ActionsSpecial actions are just that, special. There aretwo types of special actions, territory actionsand build actions. Special actions are used toachieve all the other things in a campaign otherthan moving troops, such as claiming newterritory, building new ships and so on.

Like all actions they are carried out byindividual armies, however there are twothings that makes them most different frommovement actions. Firstly, only one specialaction may be attempted by an army eachcampaign turn. Secondly, an army may notattempt any further actions after attempting abuild action, obviously if the attempt was afailure then it would not be able to carry onanyway.

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Pillage, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating – 6

For each adjacent friendly territory +1 per territory

Size of pillaging action +1 per 500 point

Claim Action, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating – 6

Enemy territory- 1 per level

For each adjacent enemy territory- 1 per territory

For each adjacent friendly territory +1 per territory

Size of claiming army +1 per 500 points

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Territory Actions: Territory actions include allthe actions that involve a Land territory tile,from claiming the territory, through pillagingan enemy’s territory to raising the rating of oneof your own territories. Like every action thesuccess or failure of the action is dependent ona successful action check taken against theDifficulty rating of the action (in this case it’s 6)after all modifiers have been taken intoconsideration. The other thing to rememberwith terrain actions is that unlike movement,each army is limited to only a single terrainaction per campaign turn and that once anarmy has tried to perform a territory action itcannot attempt any further action thatcampaign turn. Also, only one territory actionmay be attempted in a territory in one turn.Thus you could not have one army claim aterritory and use another to improve it.

The first type of territory action and at thebeginning of a campaign probably the mostcommon, is the claim action. As its namesuggests this action is used to claim territoryfor your empire, whether that territory ispreviously unowned or is part of anotherempire does not have any bearing other thanin the difficulty of the check and the end result.

A previously unclaimed piece of territorysuffers no detrimental effects when you claimit, whilst a piece of territory which previouslybelonged to another empire will have apermanent -1 to its territory value. Thus a Level4 territory which is previously unowned willstay a Level 4 territory once you claim it, whilstif it belonged to another empire it will becomea Level 3 territory. This degradation is causedby the battling and scorched earth policy of thedefenders. This damage can of course berepaired with successful actions later on.

The requirements for being able to do a claimaction are that there are no enemy armiespresent in the same territory, the tile is eitherdirectly linked to an existing territory ownedby your empire or through a maximum of twosea tiles. And of course that the army trying to

make the claim has not done any other terrainactions in the same campaign turn.

If a claim action is successful then the territoryis added to your empire with the differingresults shown for whether it was owned or notoutlined above. However if the action fails, ithas no effect if the territory did not previouslybelong to any empire, the actions for that armyend, just like with any other action. However ifthe territory belongs to another empire then abattle must be fought against the garrisonforces present there, if the attacker loses thentheir army is bounced back to the territory theypreviously occupied, if they win then they mayadd the territory to their empire but theterritory value will be reduced by -2 rather than-1. This is more fully covered in the battlessection. The Difficulty rating and modifiers to aclaim action are given below.

The other two types of terrain action are ineffect the opposites of each other. These arethe pillage and terrain improvement actions.The pillage action uses exactly the samemodifiers as a claim action with the exceptionof the negative modifiers for enemy territory.The effects of an unsuccessful pillage action isthe same as for an unsuccessful claim action, abattle is fought. However the effect of asuccessful pillage action are quite different tothat of a claim action.

If the pillage action is successful, then theterritory value is reduced by -3 points to aminimum of zero. If this would otherwisebring the value below zero the tile becomesunowned. In addition to this, a successfulpillage action will automatically upgrade thenearest territory of the same empire as thepillaging army by +1 point. If there are severalterritories equally distant from the pillagedterritory then the pillaging player may choosewhich territory is upgraded.

The only restrictions as to what territories youcan pillage is that they are owned by someone.If you wish to pillage your own territory and

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Build, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating -1

Level of territory +1 per level

Forests in same territory +1

Size of building army +1 per 500 points

Improvement, Difficulty Rating and Modifiers

Criteria Base Difficulty rating – 6

Territory level trying to achieve -1 per level (-5 for trying to reach Level 5 territory)

Size of improving army +1 per 500 points

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fail, you will have to fight a battle against thedefending militia. This represents a peasantuprising or some such, basically your subjectstrying to resist your actions with force (theyobviously don’t like their crops being burnedand livestock slaughtered). One of youropponents or a neutral person shouldcommand the opposing forces, not an ally(don’t get someone to lose for you). This is aperfectly viable tactic for quickly fortifying oneof your territories at the expense of thesurrounding territories, in fact it is the onlyway that you can upgrade a territory, otherthan your capital, beyond Level 5.

The territory improvement action basicallyrepresents your army spending time to buildroads, bridges, forts and maybe even temples,pretty much in the same way that the Romansoften did. This obviously improves thepotential of the territory opening it up tofurther trade, mineral exploitation, farmingand so on. The restrictions on this action arethat it can only be tried on a territory once percampaign turn (you cannot have several armiesupgrade a territory multiple times in a singleturn) and obviously that the territory is ownedby your empire.

The effects of a successful improvement actionare that the territory’s value increases by onepoint to a maximum of 5 (with the exception ofcapital tiles). This is an extremely powerfulaction and can be used to fortify areas ofstrategic importance to your empire such asmountain passes and islands that border onseveral sea territories.

The Difficulty rating and modifiers for takingthis action is shown in the table above,remember the cumulative -1 for successiveCommand checks.

Build Actions: Build actions are quite similarto territory actions with a few fundamentaldifferences. Whereas territory actions affect a

territory directly such as claiming it, pillagingand so on. Building actions are quite literallywhat their name implies, it is an action used toallow your armies to build things such asbridges, temples, forts, ships and so on.

As with territory actions each army is limited toonly one building action per Campaign turn,that is one territory action or one buildingaction, not both. Also only one building actioncan be attempted in the same territory eachcampaign turn in the same way with territoryactions, although you can do both a territoryand build actions in the same territory with

different armies during thesame campaign turn. Buildactions may also only beattempted in friendlyterritories.

At present the only thingthat can be built with abuilding action are ships,these are built in sets of 500points of transport capacity.If the action is successful aFleet counter is placed inthe water section of theterritory the action wascarried out in. This fleet maynot be used until the nextturn.

As usual there is still the -1cumulative command modifier for all actionswhen trying a build action. The difficulty ratingand modifiers for which are given earlier.

6. BattlesWhen battles are fought, how they are foughtand what effect the result of a battle has on anarmy and the campaign as a whole is coveredin this section. In addition there is a section ongarrison and scouting armies.

When to Fight a Battle: For most (if not all)people the whole reason for taking part in acampaign of any description is to fight battles.The main thing that a campaign has over justfighting a load of one off battles is that you canoften find yourself fighting much moreinteresting battles than you would normally.For instance a 500 versus 1,000 points battlewould be very challenging indeed for theperson with 500 points.

As far as this particular campaign system goes,there are several different circumstances whena battle must be fought. In all cases the criteriafor whether a battle must be fought isestablished once everyone has finished theircampaign turns (not after each person).

The two basic rules of thumb whenestablishing whether a battle must be fought or

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not is if there is an army in enemy territorywhich can sustain a garrison at the end of thecampaign turn. If so, a battle must be foughtbetween the army and the garrison forces. Alsoif there are two opposing armies in the sameterritory then a battle must also be fought.Obviously you can get a combination of thesetwo circumstances if there is an enemy army ina territory which can sustain a garrison andalso contains an army.

Garrisons: Each territoryowned by an empire hasgarrison forces, neutralterritories do not. The sizeof these garrison forces isequal to the territory levelmultiplied by 100 points.Thus a Level three territorywould have a garrison forceof 300 points.

Garrison forces only fight ontheir own if they are 200points or more in size. Thusan enemy army will neverhave to fight a battle againstthe garrison forces of a Level0 or Level 1 territory unlessthere is also an enemy armypresent as well.

As you may have figured out,strictly speaking, a Level zero territory does nothave a garrison whilst a level one territory’sgarrison only ever comes into play if there is anarmy from the same empire in that territory.This is not because there are no troops there,just that at such a small size they just don’thave the organisation and leadership to be ableto muster any substantial forces on their own(plus a 100 points army just isn’t practical).

Thus whenever these campaign rules talksabout a territory capable of sustaining agarrison, it refers to level 2 territories ownedby a player.

The Battle Itself: When it has beenestablished that a battle must be fought, thenext stage is to figure out the forces that will beinvolved in the battle and possibly also thescenario that will be fought. The simplest wayis to add up the armies and garrison forces oneach side and to fight a straight battle usingthese forces from the standard army lists fromthe races involved. However this almost nevergives an accurate depiction of what ishappening on the campaign map so you maywish to use the rules I have written below.

Armies are grouped into three general types:defenders, attackers and reinforcements. Adefending army is the army that was in theterritory before any enemy armies showed up

in the same territory, the most common wouldbe a garrison force. An attacker is an army thatmoved into a tile with an opposing army in it(this also includes moving into a tile with agarrison force). A reinforcement is an army thatmoves into a tile that already contains anattacking enemy army as well as a defendingarmy from the same (or allied) empire as thereinforcement.

When two or more attacking armies enter a

territory from the same or adjacent territories(the ones they came from were next to eachother), then those forces can be automaticallycombined into a larger force using the army listrelevant for that force. An example would betwo 500 point armies attacking the sameterritory combining into a force of 1,000points. The main advantage of combining inthis case is it allows you to access a full armylist instead of two scouting lists. However,keeping it as two 500 points forces allows youto field two generals, meaning that Commandchecks should be easier to pass.

If attackers do not come from adjacent tiles,then they may only combine with a successfulaction check taken at the end of that player’scampaign turn. This is taken against a difficultyof 9 modified by -1 for each territory (halved,rounding up) that the forces had to travelthrough to get to the territory the battle isbeing fought in, ignoring the move from theadjacent territory to the one being attacked.Thus if two armies attacked but they were bothin a territory next to the one being attackedand had not moved, it would be a straight roll.whilst if the same two armies attacked and onehad to move once to become adjacent and theother had to move twice, it would be a -2modifier.

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A close-up on the action

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Defending armies can also combine theirforces in exactly the same way. In the case ofcombining a garrison force with a scoutingarmy (500 points), use the normal list for thatparticular race with the restrictions for a 1,000points force.

Reinforcements follow exactly the same rulesas attackers as far as combining withthemselves is concerned, however they maynever combine with defending armies forobvious reasons. They are not deployed at thebeginning of the battle but instead turn up in alater turn on a table edge or cornerdetermined by the relation of the attackers. Forinstance, if the reinforcements arrived from thehex immediately to the left of the attackersthen they should arrive on the left corner onthe attacker’s deployment zone.

The time they arrive will always be the secondturn of the battle or most likely a bit later. Thisis determined by rolling a D6 from the secondturn. On a score of that turn number or lessthat particular attacking force turns up and canbe deployed 10cm into its deployment area,they may not charge and Command is at -1 butmay carry out all other functions such asmoving and shooting as normal. This D6 roll ismodified by the total number of territories thatthe attacking force has travelled to reach theterritory that the battle is taking place in (usethe highest number in the case of a force thathas managed to combine), giving a +1 to theroll for each territory in excess of the adjacentterritory. Thus if it moved three tiles, includingthe move from the adjacent territory, to thebattle, it would give a +2 to the dice roll,making it impossible for them to turn up onthe second turn but turning up on turn threeon the roll of a 1.

In addition to this basicattacker/defender/reinforcement, I have alsothought a little about ambushes. Now it ispossible in the rules for an army to try to moveout of an enemy tile. If they fail to do so (byfailing the Command check obviously), thenthey count as being ambushed by whateverenemy forces are present in that tile at thattime and remain there to ambush the army.The way this is set up is that the enemy sets upin a column stretching down the centre of thetable 40cm in by maybe 20cm (obviouslyadjusting for table and force size) with theambusher’s setting up down one or both sidesof the table, possibly in the standard set up

areas, or maybe closer (I have not tested this,that is why I am not sure about deployment).The victory conditions for this game aresimple, the attacker must get his army off theother side of the table before he is forced towithdraw. If he is successful in moving half ormore of his units off the opposite table edge orforces the ambusher to withdraw then he wins,if he doesn’t then the ambusher wins. If theambusher wins, the enemy army is totallywiped out, not even reserves will help.However if the ambushed force wins then thearmy moves into the territory they wereattempting to get to.

Reinforcements are actually eligible for bothsides, thus you might find a situation where anambush is effectively counter ambushed andthat reinforcement is then flanked again byforces from the original ambusher. I hope I getto fight a battle like this as it would be veryinteresting.

Just one point, if one side withdraws beforeany reinforcements arrive, then the battleends. Reinforcements from the winning sideend up in the same territory as where theywere originally moving to (the one where thebattle was fought obviously), whilstreinforcements from the losing side end upback in the territory they were in immediatelyprior to moving into the battle territory, or arandom adjacent friendly or neutral tile if thatwas an enemy territory. The reason for this isthat it is assumed that the beaten army collideswith the intended reinforcements and causesthem to panic, withdraw or whatever. Thismeans that there is a definite advantage towinning a battle as soon as possible if youknow that enemy reinforcements are sure toarrive.

The Effects of a Battle: There are threepossible outcomes for a battle. The attackerwins, the attacker loses or it’s a draw.Depending on where the battle was fought willdetermine exactly what happens as far as thecampaign map is concerned, however the issueof resolving casualties remains the sameregardless of where the battle is fought.

The way you calculate the casualties for eachside is that you take the Victory points scoredagainst you by your opponent and if you wonround down to the nearest 100 Vps, or roundup to the nearest 100 Vps if you lost. If thebattle was a draw then whichever sidewithdrew is counted as the loser for calculatingcasualties (but only for calculating casualties).If none of these criteria are met (a scenario forinstance) then both sides round up Vps.

Once you have established the amount ofcasualties that you have suffered in Vps, then

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you just convert that figure into army points tofigure out how much damage you have actuallysustained. You then remove these points firstlyfrom any garrison forces that you were using(they are more expendable) and then from anyof your armies involved. Once you haveestablished how much damage your armieshave sustained you may decide to use some ofyour reserves to negate that damage (reservesare explained in the Armies section) if you wishto do so. You are under no obligation to useyour reserves at all, especially since in somesituations it would be utterly pointless. Forinstance, using a 100 points reserve to negate100 points of 300 points damage or if youknow that an army will get destroyed becauseof a lack of anywhere to retreat to.

Which brings me to the next bit, what happenson the map. Basically, the victorious armiesalways stay in that territory whilst losing armiesretreat to the territory from which they camefrom previously or an adjacent friendlyterritory. If there are no friendly territories toretreat to then the armies involved aredestroyed. This includes an army that enteredan enemy territory by landing from the waterwith no friendly territories adjacent to theattacked territories.

In addition to this, if the battle is a draw thenboth sides retreat to the territories they camefrom just as if they had lost with the sameresults if there is nowhere to retreat to. This isassuming that the battle takes place in neutralterritory, however if the battle takes place inone player’s territory then that player counts aswinning as far as retreats are concerned.

If as a result of casualties (after modificationfor reserves) an army no longer conforms tothe army size restrictions then it must bereduced in size so that it does conform to theserestrictions. This might result in the totaldestruction of a small army but that’s the riskyou take with fielding these smaller forces,they are easier to move, but are not designedfor waging a full scale war.

Garrisons are immediately restored to theappropriate level for the territory as it standsafter the battle (the level might have changed).In addition, if the attacker wins a battle inenemy territory (not neutral) then the territoryimmediately becomes his, if slightly damaged(usually a -2 to territory level).

Fortifications and Siege Battles: The rulesfor fighting a siege battle are relativelystraightforward. You use exactly the samescenario restrictions as with a normal battleincluding defenders, attackers andreinforcements. However, any defendingtroops can be set up in fortifications and may

use some of their points (I would suggest amaximum of 15% of total points) on siegedefender equipment. Equally the attackers mayalso purchase siege attacker equipment (againI’d suggest a maximum of 15% of total points).

Defending reinforcements may buy no siegeequipment and neither can attackingreinforcements (although they are stillassumed to be carrying ropes and ladders).The reason for this is because it is assumed thatthey are rushing to help their respectivefriendly forces and don’t have time to eitherconstruct or transport any siege equipment.

A territory counts as fortified if it is of Level fiveor above. This will include all Level fiveterritories as well as each player’s Level tencapital. A Level five fortification has a capacityof 1,500 points, whilst a level ten territory hasa capacity of 3,000 points. That equates to 300points per territory level (for if you have aLevel 6 or 7 territory for some reason). Theway that the fortification capacity works is thatthis figure is the number of troops that can beset up inside the fortification at the beginningof a siege battle, any excess defenders must beset up outside the walls of the fortifications.

For instance, say you had a Level five territorywith a 1,500 point army in it that is attackedby enemy forces. This gives you a total of 2,000points of defending troops including thegarrison forces. 1,500 points of those troopsmay be set up within the fortress wall whilst500 points must be set up outside the walls. Ofcourse there is nothing stopping you fromdeploying some of your forces outside thewalls anyway, even if you can deploy them allinside.

As a side points an enemy army that enters afortified territory must fight a battle, there is nooption to try to claim or pillage a siege battlemust be fought. This makes Level 5 territoriesquite important to an empire’s defence as theycan be guaranteed to halt an enemy’s advance,for how long is an entirely different matter.

Scouting Armies and Garrison Forces:There are two types of army that will mostlikely fight battles at some point in a campaignthat are below 1,000 points in size. These twotypes of army are scouting armies and garrisonforces. Because these two types fall bellow the1,000 point level the normal army lists don’treally work for them since the army list

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restrictions are for every full 1,000 points.Since there are no full 1,000 points in a 500 or200 point army then some specialconsiderations must be made.

The simplest would be to just take therestrictions for a 1000 point army, however thiswon’t work for most races for smaller garrisonsizes (200 and 300 points) as the minimumrequirements usually exceed these points.

I will hopefully be producing a set of specificarmy lists for garrison forces and scoutingarmies, but until then use the followingrestrictions when fighting armies with theseforces.

For scouting armies use the restrictions for a1,000 points army with these alterations. Youmay only have one character in addition to thegeneral (Orc armies may have two), you arerestricted to a maximum of 20 points of magicitems (can be more than one item adding up to20 points). Minimum troops are halvedrounding down. Empire, for instance, musttake one Halberdier and one Crossbowregiment, whilst High Elves must take oneSpearmen. However, Chaos has a minimum ofone Marauder unit (rather than nothing). Inaddition you must also take at least one unit oflight cavalry. This is Reavers for High Elves,Pistoliers for Empire, Skeleton Cavalry forUndead, Wolf Riders for Orcs, MarauderHorsemen for Chaos (not Hounds, these arealso restricted to one unit) and Rangers forDwarfs (I know it’s not cavalry, but it seemsappropriate). In addition to this no warmachines, chariots, heavy cavalry or monstersmay be taken, this includes Ogres and Trollseven though they are classed as infantry. Thisalso applies to character mounts. Also Orcsmay not take Black Orcs, Empire may not takeFlagellants or Handgunners and Dwarfs maynot take Slayers.

Garrison armies are tricky. If it’s a 1,000 pointgarrison (your capital territory) then use thestandard army lists. In addition if it is agarrison combined with any army use thenormal army lists (if it’s below 1,000 pointsjust use the 1,000 points restrictions).However it’s when you get garrisons fightingon their own that it gets tricky.

Basically follow the standard army lists asclosely as possible. If there is insufficientpoints to purchase a General then a Hero maybe used instead (although he still has therelevant Command rating and Commandradius of 60cm), in the case of Undead thenobviously a Liche Priest may be used. The onlyreal restrictions are basically exactly the sameas scouting armies in what you cannot take (noheavy cavalry, monsters, Slayers and so on).

However artillery may be taken as normal andonly one unit of light cavalry may be taken (thisincludes Chaos Hounds). The basic thing isthat garrison armies are usually made up ofmilitia forces or whatever happens to be thereat the time. I think this covers most things,however, as I stated earlier I am hoping towrite some specific lists for scouting armiesand garrison forces.

EPILOGUESince my campaign rules have been publishedhere’s some of my experiences regardingsetting up and running a campaign using thissystem. I suppose the first stage of setting upany campaign is to try to recruit potentialcampaigners. The most obvious source is thegroup that you usually game with, althoughputting a poster up in the local store or clubmight not be too bad an idea. To start with youreally need around four players, three beingthe absolute minimum. If you are doing aninvasion scenario with a small map you can ofcourse just have two players.

Once you have your players, the next thing todo is establish what sort of campaign theywould like. This can range from a simpleslogging match (no objectives or pre-arrangedalliances) to something resembling a Chaosincursion or a crusade. This might includeimportant objectives in certain territories suchas cities, Chaos altars, necropolii and so on.The side that holds either a pre-set number ofobjectives or the most at a pre-determinedtime wins. I’d recommend something similarto the latter, certainly including objectives asthey help to determine when the campaignactually ends.

Once you have decided what type of campaignyou want, you need to start thinking about themap. The map is the central and mostimportant part to any map based campaign,apart from the battles themselves of course. Sousing the right map is essential.

There are two basic forms of map, land basedand island based. The first type of map placesmost of the players (possibly all) on the samepiece of land or continent, whilst the second isisland based with players fighting over lots ofsmall islands, possibly with one main islandthat’s the focus of the campaign. The later isthe type of map that was used in the BrentCross campaign.

Land or continent based maps give nice cleanand possibly faster campaigns as the elementof water movement is more or less sidelined.However with these maps it’s much moredifficult to introduce new players once thecampaign has already started without majoralterations to the map.

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Island based campaigns are basically thecomplete opposite compared to land basedcampaigns. They are ideal if you know that thecampaign group is likely to change over timewith people joining and leaving at varioustimes as all you have to do is just stick extraislands in the sea. However the extra elementof sea movement can make the campaignslightly less predictable, especially with regardsto defending borders, when reinforcementswill arrive and so on.

So, once you have decided what map you wantthe next stage is to actually make it. You havethree basic choices when producing a map foryour campaign. You can produce a relief maplike we used at Brent Cross; you can draw amap using pen, paper or computer; or you canuse an existing map that someone else hasproduced. There are quite a few examplesalready available through several sources,including on my web-site (www.stomm.com)and the old Mighty Empires hex tiles.

However, assuming that you’ll be making yourown map bear two things in mind: coastlineshave to be continuous – they must connect ona side of the hex so that ships can trace a directpath from one coastal tile to the next; andfeatures such as rivers should ideally be placedin hexes rather than on the borders.

A little tip (which I’ve actually put in the rules)when making maps, especially island basedones, is to get the players to make their startingislands (or something else in a land basedcampaign). This means that they havecontributed something concrete towards thecampaign and will be less likely to drop out orlose interest, at least that’s the idea anyway.

Next, the counters. Ideally it should be up toeach individual player to come up with theirown counters for their empire, making them as

individual as they like. Good things to makecounters from are the small round shields fromthe Undead and Night Goblin Warhammerregiments. They make great territory markerswith a flat area of colour with a numberpainted in a contrasting colour.

For army counters, left over Warmaster figuresmounted on the old square Epic bases orsomething else of a similar size (2x2cm) withone model representing 500 points, two 1,000points and so on (artillery or chariot crew areideal). You can use cavalry to represent 1,000sas well if you like. There is no hard and fastrule, just so long as it’s easily recognisable toeveryone.

So that’s about it with regards to setting up acampaign, at least the map and countersanyway. Obviously you’ll need to organise acampaign day or evening when everyone in thecampaign can make it in to do their turns andpossibly fight their battles if time permits. Thebest way to organise this is to have a campaignnight once a week (or at whatever interval yourgaming group can get together), then all thebattles resulting from the campaign turns needto be resolved before the next campaign night.

One of the great things about this system isthat the players don’t have to hang aroundwaiting for the previous player before them toresolve all their battles before taking their turn.What battles need to be fought is established atthe end of everyone’s turn.

Well that’s it from me for now, happycampaigning and may the dice gods favouryour rolls. If you have any questions regardingmy campaign system or Warmaster in generalthen please feel free to either email me at:stommstommson@redhotant.com. You canalso send a letter to Fanatic; they have assuredme that they will pass these onto me.

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The Warmaster campaign group – what a picture!

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