The Empire Responds to the invasion of the Uruk Hai

Campaign

It’s a re play of the last big game. We wanted to put it on at BOYL to show off our pal Doctor sporks terrain. He did the dwarf hold that I inserted in polystyrene in various ways. Check out his stuff! It’s ace!

We explained the game as being an alternate universe, it’s Jeff’s fault. Jeff failed spectacularly last time so he wants to try again in an adjacent universe and hope no one notices. But.

I wanted to try something new. This campaign was done entirely on discord. People were split into two groups: Evil and Good. The two groups are private so each player base cannot see the opposing teams feed. They are blind to what’s happening on the opposite team unless they scout, bump into or assault enemy positions.

I act as DM and coordinate the whole thing over the maps.

Each battle and mission has an effect on the gigantic game at the end of the campaign.

Can enough food be foraged, materials for siege equipment, outmanouvreing of enemy positions, can reinforcements be called upon! What skulduggery can occur?

Well, a lot apparently.

First off, the evil dwarves with massive hats got into a submarine and sailed the underworld to get to the ancient dwarf docks in the underhold. They assaulted without warning.

The Skaven kept things quiet, they tried to steal all 3 steam tanks left on the field of battle at barrow downs. One blew up in their faces destroying one unit of clan rats outright on the big day.

The second tank they stole and converted into a Skaven steam tank doom wheel.

The third tank was much harder, it was the super tank the ‘Cromwell’. They couldn’t move it. So they elected to keep a skaven assassin hidden in the tank, waiting for a new empire engineer to be appointed to it.

Many thematic moments happened over the campaign, too many to recount in detail. Magic weapons found. Eggs of the star child  discovered. Blood pool keep burned. Manlingville sacked and burned. Not enough food found by the defenders or attackers. The green knight stolen by dark elves and his spirit given to the undead to use for their own ends!

The truly different thing about this open world campaign is there is no limit to what you can do, it is truly a role play campaign. The games played where games from any and all systems the players had to hand. Even if it was video games! I don’t care what they played so long as they played. I put up polls on each channel for people to vote in the results of their games and then I can compare the results to inform the campaign of who’s ‘won’ that mission. Some

Missions where so secret that no comparison had to be made, it was either won or lost based on the aggregate result.

The beauty of having a DM.

This all means I can coordinate a group of people anywhere in the world, playing whatever game they want to play and have it represent and contribute to a game of Warhammer fantasy in Nottingham at an event they may not be able to attend. Very cool.

The game itself went very well! Fun all ove.

The magic changed slightly, I put a timer on it. Players had 20 seconds to hand out their teams winds of magic cards and whatever hands they where in at the end of the 20 seconds is where they lay. Magic could then happen in a frenzy across the board as all the players had to do was pick an opposing player that the spells would effect and have that opponent play against them. This allowed all players to do magic simultaneously in a rapid fit of carnage! Much quicker, much more fun to watch everyone panic in deciding what they want to do and trying to rush the cards to each other! Play could continue with much greater speed.

And it did!

Highlights of the game:

Dwarven collapse in the hold! The king died, was resurrected and died again!!!!

Jeff, got trapped on a roof and turned the queen into a duck. He then got attacked by a skaven assassin trying to steal his power into the soul orb which caused Jeff to jump to the next game and escape!!

Hellblaster antics at the gate.

The green knight tabling everything in its path!! No one had a magic weapon in range to hurt it!

Then the true fun began. The Skaven revealed their assassin in the steam tank. The assassin put a blade to the bollocks of the commander in the hatch and told him to do as they say or they will chop off his bits with a warp blade. The tank was now in skaven command. For a while. As the tank did immense damage on the empire reinforcements the tank was damaged to a point that threatened its hull integrity. Caught between castration and blowing up in a cloud of steam the engineer finally found his spine and attacked the assassin, and did unbelievably well! Wounded the creature and threw it off his happy sacks (the engineer came from a noble family and was a bit inbred, think Austin powers Dr Evil counting his bollocks. There was more than two. Thinking on it, that’s a point. After several hours being exposed to a raw warp blade, one bollock is probably sentient now and forming an ugly little face to hurl insults at him every time he unbuttons his trouser).

The tank went randomly berserk during the scuffle, lurching all over the place and fire its weapons randomly causing immense damage to all sides.

It then lurched and landed on the green knight. Being ethereal, the decision was made that the knight would just appear inside the tank and the two count as charging him. He cut them both down, the tank slewed to a halt and the green knight continued to cut a bloody swathe through the now fully retreating empire relief force.

The evil side had won the day and was now sacking the town and the Karak itself.

What a game.

Two further changes will be made for the next warhammer fantasy mega games.

Marching will now be banded. Band one is normal march rules. Band two is March at the double, 8 inch march can now be 16 inch as an example, band 3 will be March at the triple. 8 inch then being 24 inch for example. Band one is for models 18 inch or less from an enemy. Band two 18-30 inch and band 3 is for models 30inch plus from an enemy.

Secondly, all war machine firing ranges will be doubled and mega war machines will be tripled.

Potentially missile weapons in general will be doubled. Best test it though.

We must also get an effective force sheet or player aid pack made up for all players to aid quick reference.

Finally, the next game! We will return to universe one where the queen was kidnapped by a dwarf blimp piloted by black orcs. The blimp has randomly drifted into the mountains of cathay. Kind of like the Tibetan mountains but warhammer style!

The playing area will be massive, on white bed sheets instead of playing mats with the odd mountain top poking out. This will simulate mountain peaks poking through cloud cover. The only way for players to participate is to bring flying units. Or skyships to carry their troops and rescue or capture the, by now thoroughly PTSD ridden, Queen. Players can let their imaginations go berserk, dwarf blimps, cathayan lanterns, halfling balloons, Tzeentchian discs, floating wizards towers, araby flying carpet teams, flying empire galleons, sky chariots, orc platforms on a super giants head (as in only the forehead of a mannequin dummy can be seen with orcs on a wooden platform above the clouds, doom divers and orc gliders launching off the platform! So cool.), skaven  doom wheel drone platforms??!? What else could people bring!?!?

Tell me your ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Looking forward to the January game now!