Campaigns of Conquest

These campaign rules are based on the rules written by Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson for Mighty Empires campaign supplement designed for 8th edition of Warhammer. The supplement included a map consisting of hexagonal map tiles and variety of markers. Here the rules are adjusted for the Warmaster environment. Though the rules were designed primarily for the original map supplement, it can be used for any map system as long as it is segmented into a sufficient number of fields.

In our experience complex campaign systems tend to stumble and die out rather quickly. Philosophy of this system is to keep it as simple as possible yet still motivating to fight and contest over new territory. In the current digital age it is possible, and even more convenient to control the whole campaign on-line rather than have to arrange for all the players to meet together for the campaign to progress.

You will need at least two – and preferably three or more – rival players compete for territory until one player conquers the others or establishes an empire of such size and power he is declared the victor. During each round of the campaign the participating players play a game of Warmaster and, depending upon their degree of success, they can expand their territories into their neighbours.

The map is used to show the territory that each player controls. Each player begins with one tile marked with a banner in his chosen colour. When games of Warmaster are fought, players are awarded ‘Empire Points’ that are used to take over adjoining tiles as explained below. As a player’s empire expands he places banners on the tiles to mark his territory.

The winner is the first player to carve out an empire of ten tiles – this is a simple way of working out who has won and you can set this target higher or lower as you wish.

In case you don’t have the original supplement with plastic tiles and markers, you will need to create a map divided into sufficient number of fields (tiles). The map needs to have at least seven tiles for every player taking part. There are various tile types. The rules distinguish common wood/countryside tiles, river tiles, mountain tiles and shore tiles. You will also need banner markers in a distinctive colour for each player. Further markers used in the rules are mines, ports, castles, cities and objectives.

Once you have a map, each player must now choose a capital city from amongst the cities on the campaign map. Choose an order in which players pick a capital city available on the map. A capital cannot be chosen next to another capital – there must be a gap at least 1 tile between them. If there are no available capital cities left on the map then the player may add a new city to the map to claim as their capital. Once each player has selected his capital you are ready to play. Note that no others tiles are claimed at this stage – players will get to do that as the game progresses.

It is good idea to put few objectives on a map to motivate players to fight over them (see Objectives). They should be placed and spread in neutral area so all players have similar chance to reach them.

During the campaign players will often need to do things in a certain order depending on the size of their empires. This is determined by counting the number of tiles each player controls. Tiles that contain a city count as two tiles when working out the size of a player’s empire. At the start of the turn, count how many tiles each player controls. The player with the most tiles has the largest empire, the player with the second most tiles has the second largest empire, and so on. If players are tied for the number of tiles, use the number of cities as tiebreak, then the number of castles, and finally a dice roll if they are otherwise identical. This order is for the whole turn, even if circumstances change.

The campaign is fought over a number of rounds. Ideally – all players must be present for each round or alternatively (and most likely) it can be organised online through internet forums. There are also many online dice roll rooms on the internet these days, which are ideal to solve all the required rolls online. A typical group of players will usually work through one round every week, but it all depends on how often you can get together. It is even possible to play a whole campaign over a single weekend. At the end of each round, players must organise and play any Warmaster games that are required the before next round can proceed. In each round all players work their way through the following sequence of play. All the players carry out the event phase, then all carry out the revenue phase, and so on.

A player wins instantly when he claims his tenth tile or if he knocks any other player out of the game by conquering the last tile that player controls. Tiles that contain a city count as two tiles for determining when a player wins the game.

A big advantage with Warmaster is that it has a well written siege system. Because there are fortified places such as castles and cities in the campaign system it would be shame not to include a the possibility of siege battles. To play a siege battle requires lots of special terrain and models are needed (eg. fortress walls, siege towers, ladders etc.). It may also slightly break the flow of the campaign. For these reasons siege battles are considered only as an option for players who want to play it. There is no need to play siege battles in your campaign if you don’t want to. Siege battles are played only when both players agree to do so.

Another option to spice a campaign up is to add ship battles on sea. Main task of fleets in a campaign is to support ground operation on shores. Of course this is only possible when your map includes a sea. The main problem is that ship battles are not included in Warmaster rules and so you would need to play them using some stand-alone rule system with its own models (eg. old Man O’War game or Armada). For this reason the naval operation rules are optional and can be used only when at least two players agree on that.