Yet another campaign style

[jodokast]

I have made a campaign for 2 players. I don't know how well it will work since I haven't tried it yet, but here it is anyway.

Starting: First the two players roll a d20 to see who chooses their general first. After each player chooses their primary general, they each select a secondary general that they can also draft from. The two players draft 3000 point armies, at least 70% of which has to come from the primary general. You can draft more or less points if you like, but try to stick to the 70% from the primary general. Write down all the units of your army on a single piece of paper.

The world: The world map consists of 10-12 hexagonal regions. Feel free to make this larger or smaller if you would like. Each region is a battlefield that may or may not be hexagonal. Each map can be as large or small as you like, and each map size is independent of its neighbors’ sizes. At the beginning of the game, your entire army starts at one end of the map, while your opponent’s army starts at the other end. Initiative is rolled and the winner can move some of his or her troops to an adjacent space. 500 points is the maximum size army that can be moved at one time. After both players move, battles take place anywhere both players have troops. Then initiative is rolled again and the process starts over again.

Sub divide: At any point you can subdivide any army and spread them thinner. Also, you can join two armies by moving them onto the same map. The best way to keep track of this is by writing down armies on note cards and moving the cards around a mockup of the world map. If you subdivide, scratch off the names of the separating units and make a new note card.

Retreats: A couple of special rules were devised for more realistic troop movements. The first is that at the beginning of any round during a battle, you can choose to retreat your army, so long as you can flee to an adjacent map that is either unoccupied or friendly. However, you cannot retreat the way your opponent came, even if they left the space empty.

Starting zones: The army that gets to a map first gets to choose its starting zone first or take the high ground if they want. The attacking army can never start on the high ground unless that is all that is left to them. The defenders (first army on a map) place their entire army on the map first, then the attacker places their army.

Delayed move: The next rule is the delayed move. This would be used if I have two different armies both adjacent to a single map, but their total points is greater than 500. This is useful for attacking a well defended castle. One of my armies declares a border encampment. That means they have moved into the area, but not close enough to attack. Then, on my next turn I move my other army into the area and my first army joins them in the battle. This causes another issue for the defender. The defender has the opportunity to chase off the camping army. They can send a portion of their army after the camping army, and the battle takes place on the map the camping army left. However, to keep a 50 point squad from chasing off a 500 point army, the chasers have to last 3 rounds or the camping army goes back into encampment automatically.

Health: One additional special rule involves health. All wounds carry over from previous battles. If a hero who has one or more wounds is not in a battle for two rounds, and one of those rounds is not spent moving, remove one wound from the hero. Also, remove an additional wound from him or her for each additional round after that during which the hero does not enter a battle, though any of these rounds can include moving. (Entering a battle and fleeing still counts as a battle). When squad figures die, they are gone forever. If two partial common squads of the same troops meet, they can form a full squad and a remainder (if there is extra).

Castles: If you have a castle map in the middle of the board, the set of troops who get to the map first are the defenders of the castle. If both armies enter the map on the same turn, the castle door (if there is one) starts open and the defenders can only start on the first level of castle walls (if there is more than one level). Hypothetically, if there are five levels of castle walls, the defenders can start on the level equal to the number of turns they arrived before the defenders +1.

Victory conditions: There are a couple of ways you can choose to determine victory. First, you could play that whoever owns the most territories after X number of rounds is the winner. Second, you could play a total annihilation of your enemy. Third, you could try to capture your enemies starting map. If you play the third way (my favorite) then the starting maps should be castles or something that is well defended.

Territories: If you enter a territory and abandon it, it is still considered your territory until your opponent enters it. This is so you can push all your troops to the front line and leave territories empty but available for falling back.