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Warmaster => [WM] Warmaster Fantasy Discussion => [WM] Battlereports => Topic started by: vincent on February 16, 2010, 11:31:32 PM

Title: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on February 16, 2010, 11:31:32 PM
I'm running a Warmaster campaign in France. Since campaign material is in french it is probably useless for most of you I guess.
I promised somewhere else in this forum few weeks ago to give an overview of the campaign nontheless. I'm late, but here it is :)

Goal

Historically, Warmaster players in France have always been geographically scaterred. There have been several minors communities, and 3 major one. One in north, close to England. One in Paris. One in south. With SG giving-up the game half the community slowly moved to other games. And a lot of remaining players shifted to Warmaster Ancients few years ago mainly because they really prefer the rules. The last is especially true around Paris.

Back last autumn only the south community was active, that is actually doing more than speaking of the game: playing battles.
As a new Warmaster player I'm strongly convinced this game is one of the best of its kind and deserve better than that.
So I decided to run a Warmaster campaign for Paris-based players to bring the local community back to life. Or at least try to ;)

6 player agreed to participate. Not bad.

Background

Long before the Elven a mighty and advanced civilisation rules the sea south Ulthuan from the sacred island of Atlantis.
This island was engulfed by sea due to mystic reasons implying a plot from the Chaos Lords, utterly destroying its civilisation.

Tens of centuries later, a mad sorceress found this island and a century-old ritual to bring it back out of the sea. So he did. But the ritual partially backslashed and he died. Every major empire sent scouts to this new island. They found sunken treasures and lost knowledge. Soon each empire sent a military force to seize control of the island, its gold, artifacts and secrets.

The campaign start with each empire landing on Atlantis. Each player control and empire and will try to claim supremacy over the island treasures over a 6-month campaign.

Rules

The campaign is more an excuse to incite playing Warmaster. So I decided to keep campaign rules light and simple. Mighty Empires  (ME) was a perfect fit. There was only 3 problems.

First, ME rules require player to meet at the start and end of every turn. Most player living 40-50km from others that was not an option. So I first adapted ME rules to remove this aspect. This required to remove all dice roll with fixed values, change phasing a bit and re-design events.

Second, ME rules require a lot more turns and/or battles than we could afford since my player agreed to play at average a battle per month for 6 month. So I modified the rules to speed campaign a bit.

Third, I had to adapt ME to to Warmaster. This was the easiest part since other guys over Internet already did that job and that was a major inspiration.

In addition to that, I spiced the campaign up by adding a special character and an elite unit per player. Each have special rules and could be bought using PE. I converted and painted special characters for every player. To this date I'm finishing painting the last character. You can have a look to the greens and terminated minis here: http://www.sg.tacticalwargames.net/forum/index.php?topic=960.0

Battles

We play 2000pts battled, plus gold. Rules are agreed between players.

But in practice, all players play with what we call WMMF (WarMaster Medieval Fantasty). It is basically and fantasy-extension to Warmaster Ancient, adding monsters, flying, magic, artillery and machines. We use unmodified official Warmaster armies, but play them with Ancient-based rules. This makes us far happier than Warmaster rules since we believe Ancient rules are far more mature, fun, interesting and balanced.

To this date, quite a lot of WMMF battles have been played and we are happy with them and to this date most Warmaster players use them instead of official rules. That was a major reason for player to get back from Ancient to Fantasy.

Empires

Races played:
* 2 Orcs
* 1 Chaos
* 1 Kislev
* 1 Dwarf ("Nain" in french)
* 1 Lizardmen ("Hommes-Lézard" or "HL" in french)
* 1 Dark Elves ("Elfes Noirs" or "EN" in french)

Progression
We played turns 1 to 3 and are playing turn 4.
Until now, Kislev, Lizardmen and Dark Elves have gain total control of half the island unchallenged.
One Orc has been swapped out of the board (he's back with reseted empire).
Dwarves are fortified in mountains mining gold (as is ought to be).
Chaos and Orcs are loosing every single battle.

But turn 4 is seeing big changes with Orcs and Chaos starting winning.
Maybe turn 5 and 6 will see major changes. Who knows.

For those interested in having a look to the board turn-by-turn, here it is:
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour1.jpg)
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour2.jpg)
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour3.jpg)
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour4.jpg)
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour5.jpg)
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tour6.jpg)

Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: The Dog on February 17, 2010, 12:31:49 AM
Great map tiles, great figures, good ideas, you "painted" a mighty spell to catch your campaigners!
Keep us posted.
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: spiritusXmachina on February 17, 2010, 12:13:35 PM
It's very interesting to see how you organised a ME campaign.

An idea I used at our internet campaign for doing the maps was that I just put a bunch of my painted ME tiles into a scanner and scanned them. Then I tucked the scans together in a photoshop program to form a whole map. Worked quite well - only the mountain tiles are a bit tricky.

Maybe have a look? Unfortunately the site is in german...
http://warmaster.spassbuero.at/?cat=1

I was thinking of organising a worldwide campaign based on the ME rules. Maybe I could come back to you?

When having a look at your map... Is'nt it a bit unfair for an empire to begin campaign at a mountain tile? Mountain tiles (imo) are the most valuable in ME. U can put mines on them and they are very hard to be conquered by the enemy.

The Elite units and special characters are very interesting. Did you make extra rules for every empire? Could you tell us those rules?

Greetings,
Gerald
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on February 18, 2010, 12:09:40 PM
Quote from: spiritusXmachina on February 17, 2010, 12:13:35 PM
It's very interesting to see how you organised a ME campaign.

An idea I used at our internet campaign for doing the maps was that I just put a bunch of my painted ME tiles into a scanner and scanned them. Then I tucked the scans together in a photoshop program to form a whole map. Worked quite well - only the mountain tiles are a bit tricky.

Maybe have a look? Unfortunately the site is in german...
http://warmaster.spassbuero.at/?cat=1

That is a good idea, probably a huge time saver and the end result is pretty nice.

Quote from: spiritusXmachina on February 17, 2010, 12:13:35 PM
I was thinking of organising a worldwide campaign based on the ME rules. Maybe I could come back to you?

Sounds VERY challenging. But yes, has you any question please feel free to ask.

Quote from: spiritusXmachina on February 17, 2010, 12:13:35 PM
When having a look at your map... Is'nt it a bit unfair for an empire to begin campaign at a mountain tile? Mountain tiles (imo) are the most valuable in ME. U can put mines on them and they are very hard to be conquered by the enemy.

The pros are obvious. But there is some big cons as well:
* Being in the middle of the map he has 6 neighbours  instead of 3 for other players. That means a lot more trouble, especialy when you sit on gold mines
* He will have to spend more PE to expand its empire, and won't be able to build cities . That means its empire size will grow slower than others making it much more difficult to rank number 1 and win the campaign.

All-in-all I believe it is balanced. And for now he is ranked #4 out of 7 empires.

Quote from: spiritusXmachina on February 17, 2010, 12:13:35 PM
The Elite units and special characters are very interesting. Did you make extra rules for every empire? Could you tell us those rules?

Each empire has a unique characters and each race has an elite special unit. Each could be added to the army list for 1 PE.
If a character die he is lost forever. Elite units are never lots. I'll give you the details in another post.

I also added two marvels that could be "discovered" for 2PE, from the second turn, only when conquering a neutral hex inside the map. The 1st is a wizard tower granting a free magic item (30pts max). The second is the "illusion circle", an ancestral graveyard the Atlantes used to bury their heros; it adds a special wraith unit to the army selector (same as vampire-count wraith, with 0-1 min/max).
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on February 18, 2010, 12:46:27 PM
Here are the special character rules summary.
Each character is selected in place of an existing character of the same type.

Artmunt Grishal (Chaos)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Artmunt GrishalWizard+2--8-1700-1*

Specials:

Gotrek Gurnisson & Felix Jaegar (Dwarf)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Gotrek Gurnisson & Felix JaegarHeros+2--8-1100-1*

Specials:

Grimgor Iron'hide (1st Orc player)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Grimgor Iron'hideGeneral+4--8-1300-1*

Specials:

Wurrzag Ud Ura Zahubu (2nd Orc player)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Wurrzag Ud Ura ZahubuWizard+1--7-950-1*

Specials:

Vladislav Boukrin (Kislev)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Vladislav BoukrinHeros+2--7-1000-1*

Specials:

Nakai the Wanderer (Lizardmen)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Nakai the WandererHeros+3--6-800-1*

Specials:

Morathi the Ultimate Matriarch (Dark Elves)
NameTypeAttHitSvgCdtSizeCostMin/MaxSpecial
Morathi the UltimateGeneral+3--10-2400-1*

Specials:

Now that we are in the middle of the campaign I feel that some characters are too expensive. It would have ben better to give them less power to make them cheaper. The Kislev character is probably lacking some attack bonus as well.
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: The Dog on March 17, 2010, 07:16:23 PM
Hi Vincent
Any updates on your campaign?
.
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on March 21, 2010, 10:50:34 PM
Yes, absolutely. I've updated the 1st post with the latest map.
Turn-4 has been very interesting with Orcs and Chaos having their first victories.
Turn-5 is the turn before that last one, and since Lizardmen and Dark-Elf are close to victory they will fight for total supremacy. If Dark-Elf win with enough victory-points they will be sure to win the campaign. Otherwise, Lizardmen could seize final victory turn-6!

Turn-5 will be closed this week. I'll keep you updated :)
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on March 31, 2010, 11:09:43 PM
I've added start of turn-6 map to the first post.
Basically turn-5 have seen 2 major events:
* The leading empire (myself, playing darf elves) have defeated its challenger (Nicolas, playing lizardmen), making final victory almost certain since only 1-turn is still to be played.
* Because 2 low-rank players have won battles and 2 high-rank players have lost battles the same time, 2nd and 3rd ranks are now accessible to 4 players our of 6, causing last turn to be very uncertain regarding final ranking for all ranks but 1st one.

I'll keep you updated with the final results!
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: jchaos79 on April 02, 2010, 12:26:16 PM
yes please, keep more pics coming!

(it could be great see some pictures of the armies "in action" too)
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on April 05, 2010, 10:38:53 PM
Here is a battle report of the only battle I've lost so far. I played about 2100pts of Dark-Elves against about 2100pts of Marc ADDA's Kislevites.

Initial placement:
(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk010.jpg)

Dark Elves:
* 4 Cold-One Knights
* 4 Dark Riders
* 6 Spearmen
* 1 Harpies
* 2 Crossbowmen
* 2 Heros, inc. one mounted on a Manticore
* 2 sorceress
* 1 general

Kislevites:
* 2 heavy chariots
* 4 mounted archers
* 6 archers
* 6 spearmen
* 3 heavy cavalery
* 2 Bears
* 2 Shamans
* 2 Heros
* 1 General

1st turn:

Steady advance from Kislevites (chariots are tough, but not that mobile...).
Dark Elves run on left flank to prepare flanking. Dark rider show confusion in infantry.
(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk012.jpg)

And ho yes, my 1st order what a blunder :( Fortunately my wise general had a soverainty staff :)
(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk011.jpg)

2nd turn:

Steady advance from Kislevites cavalry. Mounter archers luckily destroy one stand of dark rider within two units :(
Druchii prepare flanking and avance heavy cavalery to prepare an assault of the infantery.

(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk015.jpg)

Hum, I almost forgot: another blunder. This time the heros get executed  :-\
(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk014.jpg)

3rn turn:

Kislevites moved bears and mounter archers only.
Druchii charge both in center and left flank. In center, a full brigade of infantery charge two units of mounter archers, and loose two stands and the battle  due to unlucky dices :( In the center, 3 units of cold-ones, with a heros on manticore, charge 2 units of archers. Those archers are denfended because of the heavy chariot. Lucky counter-charge (5 hits on 6 dices, only one saved hit...) and less-than-average combat result cause a equality event with all attacks concentrated on those fragile archers ??? My cold-ones are now alone on the center of the table, with ennemies all around :(

4th turn:

Kislevit heros and general suddenly wake-up. Lot of successfull order combined to Marc's good strategy cause my cold ones to be flanked everywhere. They do excellent saves though, delaying their death a bit.
Druchii dark riders try to rescue cold ones, without much success. Infantry refuse to move (they probably hope to avoid being slaughtered).

(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk018.jpg)

Final turn:

Basically, Kislevites continue to flank Druchii cavalry and exterminate it, causing army break to be reached.

(http://i64.servimg.com/u/f64/09/04/15/28/devsk111.jpg)

While I had been quite unlucky with my charge with cold-ones, I feel like it has been rushed. I should have prepare it a bit more, to make sure to combine cold ones charge with other units and ensure victory. It was my 1st battle against Kislev, and I did not expected heavy chariot to have that much impact on battle :o Basically, 2 chariots cause 8 infantry units to be in defense, and this a HUGE problem...
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: jchaos79 on April 05, 2010, 11:25:54 PM
Hey thanks vincent. Excited battle!

you had bad luck with the dice, and luck have no mercy in this game.

Love your desert battleground
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: Lex on April 06, 2010, 08:19:45 AM
Quote from: vincent link=topic=1177.msg7281#msg7281
I should have prepare it a bit more, to make sure to combine cold ones charge with other units and ensure victory. It was my 1st battle against Kislev, and I did not expected heavy chariot to have that much impact on battle  Basically, 2 chariots cause 8 infantry units to be in defense, and this a HUGE problem...

heavy chariot = Warwagon, and it needs some orders to become effective, so not sure if it was played correctly ??
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on April 06, 2010, 07:01:41 PM
Believe me, they have been played properly. Marc knows how get the best out of them :'(
As a proof: 10 stands of charging cold-ones plus a manticore mounted heros failed to break a line of archers with no save even though I concentrated all attacks on them and avoided attacking the chariots themselves :o
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on May 02, 2010, 12:50:40 PM
End of campaing:
(http://www.brimarx.com/pub/Atlantis_carte_tourfinal.jpg)

No major change in final podium though.
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: pw on May 07, 2010, 04:30:56 PM
This looks like it was a great campaign. What's next? Will you run another campaign? New rules? etc etc... And, did your plan to get a lively Warmaster community going work?
Title: Re: French Campaign: Atlantis
Post by: vincent on May 10, 2010, 07:56:04 PM
Yes, it was great :)
I'm now working on a narrative campaign for next autumn/winter.
More info when I'm ready ;)