WRONGHAMMER: Rules of campaign

Sunday, 17 November 2019

Rules of campaign

Thats right, i am almost at that 'go' stage for a new campaign (yay). But before i go into all that....

Quick riddle: What am I?, I am both crunchy and Bouncy and am best enjoyed in roughly half hour bursts?'

......No?.....

....want the answer?.........It'll be this lot:

Right, to the piffle!.

Below are the rules i intend to follow (and then later replace once i actually try them) when doing the 'grandscalebitsbetweenbattles' in my next campaign:

I have almost totally nicked the ideas for the campaign from the rather clever Peter and his ECW campaign hes playing over on his very, very, very good blog. The Campaign will be map based. I have cobbled together a map, here after referred to as ye mappe of the warring crap hole known as Olde Albilande:

A craphole....at war!.

The four shires (and Lamavic) will be the protagonists for the bloodshed to come, each shire is marked on the map with boarders in its own colour :

Crivenshire in blue.

Tuttinghammeshire in Black (their normal grey just wont show up well enough).

Berkshire in green.

Tuttinghammeshire in red.

Lamavic in yellow.

The main boarders between the shires are defined by double broken lines. Each shire is split into regions as shown by the single broken lines. In the campaign the war will be fought to gain regions from the opposing side. The two main opposing sides will be Crivenshire and Tuttinghammeshire, they are the biggest shires which each have 6 regions. Ruckinghammeshire, Berkshire and Lamavic are considered to be minor shires which may or may not join the war and will ally with one of the main shires when (if) they do so. This will allow me an easier ride when trying to actually run the thing!.

The war will be fought over 5 years, each year is split over 6 game turns. The campaign will end when either one of the main shires have no regions left or when the 5 years is up, in which case the main shire (and allies) with the most regions will be considered to be the victor.

The game turn:

A single turn will work as follows:

1: Tuttinghammeshire (as they are said to have started the war by attacking first) roll 1d10, on a score of 4+ they will attack an enemy shire. To do this they will pick 1 enemy shire adjacent to one of their own. A battle will then be fought over the region. If Tuttinghammeshire win the battle control of the region switches to them, if they loose the region stays under enemy control.

2: Crivenshire roll 1d10, on a score of 4+ they will attack an enemy shire. To do this they will pick 1 enemy shire adjacent to one of their own. A battle will then be fought over the region. If Crivenshire win the battle control of the region switches to them, if they loose the region stays under enemy control.

3: The steps detailed in 1 & 2 are repeated by any minor shires that have entered the war. They will do this in the order in which they joined.

4: Any minor shires yet to join the war roll 1d10. On a roll of 8+ they will join the war, this roll is modified by +1 for any battle fought over a region on their boarder that turn. If a shire joins in this way roll 1d10, on a roll of 1-5 They will join Tuttinghammeshires forces, on a 6-10 they will join Crivenshire. This roll is modified by -1 for each Tuttinghammeshire held region on their boarder, and by +1 for each Crivenshire held region on their boarder. Only one Minor shire will join on a single turn, once one joins that's it until step 4 next turn.

Minor Shires

The minor shires of Ruckinghammeshire, Berkshire and Lamavic each have 3 regions that behave in the same way as those of the main shires. Also once the shire has joined a side their armies will be mixed as they re-enforce each other and fight together. This means you can field troops from any allied shire in the same force when fighting a battle (which will allow for some truly epic battles as things heat up!). Once a minor shire has lost all of its 3 starting regions to the enemy roll 1d10. On the roll of 5+ they become vassal troops to the enemy and will now fight along side them!. In such a case they will suffer a morale penalty on the table!. Otherwise they are out of the campaign! (i may try to come up with a way they can become some kind of resistance fighters or something).

A lovely boat trip

If a shire wishes it can attack any enemy held coastal region that is no more than 4 regions away from one of its own coastal region along the coast by sending a war fleet their way!. It will do this rather than attacking an adjacent region.

Heres Ye Mappe at the start of the war with the main shires regions occupied:

The minor shires regions will become active only when they join and cant be attacked until they are active.

Battles

Ah the real reason for doing all this!. Battles will be fought using my hybrid (and still a work in progress) 2mm rules which have been roughly based on these rules. Before a battle is fought both sides will draw up their orders of battle (more details later) and draw a random OFFS* card, once drawn the card is applied in the appropriate way and discarded once the battle is over. The card idea is again borrowed From Peter, his for his ecw campaign are very probably more historically accurate than mine, but i thought i could use the idea to provide another way to flesh out the narrative of the setting and the battle in a quick easy fashion. Some of the OFFS cards will have a large impact, hampering one side or the other but as i am playing solo (and in no way seriously!) it should be ok. Heres the fancy and very posh notatallthrowntogetherbyadichhead OFFS cards:

Also mixed in the deck are some small mercenary and allied forces you may field once the card has been drawn, in which case they will fight for the drawing force for the rest of the campaign (until they don't!). Again they are there to add character to the setting: