Campaign 2011 - month 6

After the previous few months of activity it was nice to have a break from hardcore GM duties. While there were no special events this month, there were a few changes I wanted to make to the rules.

A digression
There are different aspects of the GW hobby that people are drawn to. I'm drawn to the hobby element - (collecting, modelling, painting) and also engaging creatively with the warhammer universe (through rules development, roleplay and narrative elements, artwork etc).

Some people's favourite aspect of the hobby is the challenge of "how does one win a game of warhammer"; to beat the game as much as beat your opponent. I can't say this side of things has ever really appealed, not even as a young teenager - I've always been more interested in having an imaginative, fun and cool experience than the result of the game itself. I would much rather have a game that was in the balance (no matter who won), than a walkover (even if it was my boots doing the walking).

But I can see how competition is an important aspect of the gaming community, and there are tons of players who find this the most challenging and rewarding part. I'm honestly not getting on any sort of holier-than-thou high horse - the community thrives on competition and benefits from it. It's just that for me personally, it's never really been my bag. And in any case, I'm very competitive in other ways: I want to have the best painted models, and the coolest terrain, and the best campaign rules etc, so I don't escape the finger-pointing.

I would say our gaming group leans more on the competitive side, while I'm the only one in the group who's more interested in how cool the terrain looks or what colour trousers your general's wearing.

Spies everywhere
What's your point, I hear you ask. Well, the rules development for this campaign has been particularly challenging because of the competitive element. When I wrote the campaign rules, I included things to add colour or character or interest. Predicting how well all these things would play out and how balanced they would all be was much harder. As so it was that some rules were mercilessly ignored because they offered the player no advantage, while some of the more game-tipping rules were unscrupulously used again and again and again.

One such example was the event card called "Spies". This allows your opponent to view your army list before the game. Now, I have absolutely no interest in playing this card. Firstly I don't have enough models to tailor a range of different armies to suit a range of opponents. And secondly there's a kind a nail-biting thrill when you watch your opponent put down his army on the table and see for the first time exactly what you're up against.

However, the rest of the gang take these things very seriously indeed. It is usual form in our gaming group to analyse your opponent's army book in detail, and trawl through discussion forums for tactical advice on how to exploit your opponents weaknesses and blast him off the table. And for this reason Spies is an extremely important event card and highly sought after.

So too are the special characters. Again, personally they're not my bag. I simply don't believe that Archaon would even be aware of a 2500pt skirmish on the edge of some forest in the back of beyond, let alone grace the army with his earth-sundering, unholy presence. But if you're a competitive gamer, special characters are game-winners, and therefore extremely important.

And the competitiveness doesn't just effect event cards and army lists. It effects terrain placement and set up too. Why would you go through a forest and risk a dangerous terrain test? You might lose models! Why would you place a mystical monument that might hurt your own troops as well as your opponents? Terrain, though more interesting and interactive than ever before in the game, was still being forced to the edges of the board and avoided at all costs.

Checks and balances
And so the big event this month, was not so much to do with the battles, which went ahead relatively smoothly, it was the extensive changes I made to the rules - a whole series of checks and balances aimed at making the game fairer for all. Check out the changes (in red) here:

campaign rules v7

Remember, the current campaign rules are here:

campaign rules 2011

A summary of the changes was also included in the omens for the month:

Month 6 - The Omens

The fiction was fun to write. I've tried to write about each of the armies equally, so that everyone gets represented. The Teclis vs Cetlis battle was perfect subject matter to write about. Plus it was my gentle way of saying "Teclis is ridiculously powerful, folks!"

Have the measures worked? Well, so far so good. Sure, Spies gets played these days, but with the ability to spend gold on a second card, it's fairly easy to root them out and lynch them before they can divulge all your secrets.

At the end of the month, the map looked like this:

map month 6

As you can see the map was virtually full and the age of expansion was over. Since this game marked the end of the first half of the campaign, I thought to myself what direction it should take in the second half. And with Tzeentch rising in the night sky, a cunning plan was beginning to form....