Monday Night Mordheim; Map Campaigns; Territory

Monday Night Mordheim; Map Campaigns; Territory

It would seem that I have an over affection for the semi-colon, doesn't it? It just flows off the keyboard much easier then its cousin the colon. I have to SHIFT+; to do it. Just seems to not be worth it for a worthless piece of punctuation. Anyways, back to the action.

Last week I talked a bit about the initial set up sort of stuff. Special benefits, and victory conditions. Now I want to get into the things that make a Map Campaign a Map Campaign- Territories.

There are really two main things to think about when deciding territories, and they both have to do with numbers. The number of territories can make or break a Map Campaign. Too many territories and the campaign gets bogged down and people get frustrated and bored, too few and the campaign ends all to quickly. The other problem is empty territory not held by anyone.

So let me talk this out a bit, because this is not an easy thing to quantify or put down coherently. The first thing that you have to think about is how many territories you want to have, and the other part is how many territories that people start with.

The first part of it is how many territories that you want to have. This where things can get bogged down. There's no real good idea on how to figure out how many territories that you start with. So here are my favorite ways to figure out how to do it.
*The 52 Pick Up; This is a seemingly random amount, but it is the number of playing cards in a deck. I'll get more into this one in a bit. It is best for a non-total domination victory.
*Rounds Method; This is a pretty simple one. Figure out how many rounds you want to play and divide in half. This is a good method if you want to do a total domination victory. It makes for a very quick campaign.
*Times Five: Take the number of players that you have and multiply by five. This can make for a very dense game between a few people, or a very long game with a lot of players.
*District: This is a method where you take a real map, and divvy it up into territories. There are multiple Mordheim maps out there, and then there's always real city maps. However, for a really interesting game, you might want to try and get the Gotham City map. Depending on the map, you can make almost anything out of it.

The second important thing to remember is how many territories to start with. There are two broad categories, what I call the Risk Method and the empty streets method. The Risk Method is named after that old board game chestnut, and all the territories are divvied out before the game starts. The empty streets method is where only a few territories are parceled out before the game starts and then there are empty territories. Now, let me get a bit more into specifics.
*Plus One: In a plus one game, each person starts with one territory for each player in the game, plus one. In other words X+1, where X is the number of players. This is great because no-one can get wiped off the map after the first turn.
*Turns: Each person takes a turn picking out a territory until all are gone. This is a great one, because it makes for some great meta-game tactics.
*52 Pick Up: This one is great for the 52 territories. You assign each territory a playing card value. Then you can deal cards to each person until reaching the agreed starting number of territories or all the territories are passed out. This is an awesome one since it adds a bit of chaos and unpredictability to the proceedings.
*Roll For it: Great for people who are obsessive about dicing. Each player rolls a die, and who ever rolls highest gets the territory.
*All 4 One: Each player starts with four territories placed however they want it. Regardless how many territories there are.

Well, that's about it for now. So far we've talked about the victory conditions, special stuff, number of territories, and how to parcel out territories. Each one of these could evolve into a long winded debate, and I'll probably get around to them at some point or another, but next week, I'm going to go into the two different types of ways to actually run a campaign.