Hello everyone!
It is with great pleasure that I present this beginning campaign blog to you, for I have finally found a small group of guys to play through a campaign of Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition with. It'll be a territory-driven campaign where our four armies battle to conquer the riches of an unknown land.
As it stands there will be the Empire, Lizardmen, Orcs & Goblins and me with Undead. The plan is to begin playing near the end of this month and then keep to a gaming session once every two or three weeks. In this thread I intend to give a large scale report on how the campaign is progressing for me. I don't think I'll cover any of the battles in great detail unless they are of extra importance.
You may be wondering why we've chosen the 5th edition? Well, not only am I hugely nostalgic for it since I grew up reading my brother's army books, it has a couple of pros that I really love. For one, most things cost a lot more points so armies are smaller than in later editions, which I've come to appreciate as a good thing this late in life. Secondly, the army building is less restrictive: like 8th edition it also uses percentages but unlike 8th it doesn't separate between Core, Special and Rare but instead lumps most things under Regiments which is what you need to have at least 25% of. Thirdly, the Undead of 5th edition (or 4th, to be accurate) is just the definitive Warhammer undead army, complete with skeletons, mummies, wraiths, chariots, catapults and vampires that are quite a big deal. I could go on but I'd just get long-winded!
The Campaign
The campaign rules we'll be playing with are inspired by the ones in the official Battle Book that came with the 5th edition starter box. It goes a long way towards limiting the insane character setups that 5th came to be known for, at least when we're starting out, and it will also be good for my playmates who don't have their own armies yet to collect things incrementally. I'll give you a quick summary on how it works.
Every player will begin the campaign with three territories randomly generated from a chart. There are quite a few different territories all with their own benefits and values. Whenever a game is played, each player stakes one of his territories on the outcome of the battle and the winner gets to pick from either the loser's territory or one that is newly generated. The loser will get the new territory in case the winner decides to take his, with the outcome being that the winner gains an additional territory while the loser keeps the same number he had before the match.
A new army is built before each match and the random nature of the territories will mean that we all have slightly different conditions to work with. Before the benefits from the territories are added, these are the baseline restrictions that all players have to abide to on top of the normal percentage limits for each army.
600 points total
1 General
0-1 level 1 wizard
0-1 magic item with a max cost of 50 points
0-1 warmachine
0-1 large monster
We decided to go with 600 points to give us small and quick battles starting out, but since it's actually pretty rare to find a territory that increases a player's total points to play with we might increase it to a base of 1000 points about 6 battles or so into the campaign to simulate an escalation.
At the moment we don't have a clear campaign goal in mind but the rules suggest that the first couple of players to reach 12 territories will fight a final battle between themselves to crown a victor. We'll probably go with that just to keep things simple.
It is with great pleasure that I present this beginning campaign blog to you, for I have finally found a small group of guys to play through a campaign of Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition with. It'll be a territory-driven campaign where our four armies battle to conquer the riches of an unknown land.
As it stands there will be the Empire, Lizardmen, Orcs & Goblins and me with Undead. The plan is to begin playing near the end of this month and then keep to a gaming session once every two or three weeks. In this thread I intend to give a large scale report on how the campaign is progressing for me. I don't think I'll cover any of the battles in great detail unless they are of extra importance.
You may be wondering why we've chosen the 5th edition? Well, not only am I hugely nostalgic for it since I grew up reading my brother's army books, it has a couple of pros that I really love. For one, most things cost a lot more points so armies are smaller than in later editions, which I've come to appreciate as a good thing this late in life. Secondly, the army building is less restrictive: like 8th edition it also uses percentages but unlike 8th it doesn't separate between Core, Special and Rare but instead lumps most things under Regiments which is what you need to have at least 25% of. Thirdly, the Undead of 5th edition (or 4th, to be accurate) is just the definitive Warhammer undead army, complete with skeletons, mummies, wraiths, chariots, catapults and vampires that are quite a big deal. I could go on but I'd just get long-winded!
The Campaign
The campaign rules we'll be playing with are inspired by the ones in the official Battle Book that came with the 5th edition starter box. It goes a long way towards limiting the insane character setups that 5th came to be known for, at least when we're starting out, and it will also be good for my playmates who don't have their own armies yet to collect things incrementally. I'll give you a quick summary on how it works.
Every player will begin the campaign with three territories randomly generated from a chart. There are quite a few different territories all with their own benefits and values. Whenever a game is played, each player stakes one of his territories on the outcome of the battle and the winner gets to pick from either the loser's territory or one that is newly generated. The loser will get the new territory in case the winner decides to take his, with the outcome being that the winner gains an additional territory while the loser keeps the same number he had before the match.
A new army is built before each match and the random nature of the territories will mean that we all have slightly different conditions to work with. Before the benefits from the territories are added, these are the baseline restrictions that all players have to abide to on top of the normal percentage limits for each army.
600 points total
1 General
0-1 level 1 wizard
0-1 magic item with a max cost of 50 points
0-1 warmachine
0-1 large monster
We decided to go with 600 points to give us small and quick battles starting out, but since it's actually pretty rare to find a territory that increases a player's total points to play with we might increase it to a base of 1000 points about 6 battles or so into the campaign to simulate an escalation.
At the moment we don't have a clear campaign goal in mind but the rules suggest that the first couple of players to reach 12 territories will fight a final battle between themselves to crown a victor. We'll probably go with that just to keep things simple.
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Everything was going great until his General made a diving charge at my crossbowmen with the Vampire. Vampires in the 4th edition Undead book are not immune to psychology and does not cause fear so I had to take a terror test. I failed it and rolled 11'' on the flee, taking my general off the table and ending the game in a victory to the Empire since my army crumbled. Boom, just like that. And my Count was pretty sure to beat the General in a challenge, too. My opponent was rewarded with a Trade Route, giving him one more 0-50 points magic item.