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.

Monday Night Mordheim; Map Campaign Startings

Map Campaigns, Starting Thoughts

I've been gathering information about map campaigns for some time now, as those of you who follow this column will know. There's a lot to think about and a lot of things to gather about it. What I want to talk about you for the start up portion.

The first thing that you want to think about is the victory conditions. A map campaign has the potential to last literally forever. That is why it is even more important to set victory conditions from the start then it is in a regular campaign. The victory conditions can vary as much as how your group is. The thing that is important about the victory conditions is that they will help set the length of the campaign. The more difficult the victory conditions, the longer the campaign will last. The problem with that is a long campaign can get causalities, and not the fun 'I killed your Necromancer!' type, but the unfun 'Wow, Jim, so you're moving to Antarctica? Sure, I know it is a once in a lifetime trip to study Leopard Seals, but WHAT ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN!?!'. So you might want to take the one or more of the following victory conditions list;
*A time limit. The good thing about this is you can close it off at a certain time, and then count up map territories and then decide who wins. This is a great condition, because it can keep casual players in a bit longer, hoping for that one last surge of wins.
*Percentage of the Territories: Important to note this is NOT the complete take over of all the territories. That's a different condition. This one is generally something like 50% or 75% of the total number of players. However, it can be discouraging to those who are NOT winning.
*Full Decimation: This is the one where it is winner takes all. Depending on how much territory you have, this can be the longest of all campaigns. I'm not a fan, and it is a discouraging thing. Lots of people get knocked out or just plan old bored when it comes up to round 26.
*Capture Keys: Many map campaigns include a few 'special' or 'key' areas. With this victory condition, you see a lot of action, since capturing all the 'key' territories can mean a sudden win. This is probably the most volatile of all campaigns, because it means that someone can come in and prevent a total victory with a single well place win.
*Set Victories: Someone is declared the winner after X amount of wins. Doesn't matter what the what else is going on, if you win that amount of victories, you win the whole enchilada.

So while victory conditions are the most important thing, the second most important thing in my mind is the special stuff. I love special stuff. It makes a map campaign so much more fun. Now, in different games, these can be a lot of different things. That's what makes different games different. Er. That sounded stupid. Allow me to elaborate. In 40K being allowed to take an extra 200 points over your opponent means something, but in Mordheim it is almost impossible to do the same thing, since you are growing a warband. That's the simple bit, making stuff appropriate to your campaign. The hard part is that the special stuff comes in two parts. The first part is the different conditions of getting something special, and the second part is what to get.

Party of the First Part; Conditions. There are two main ways to get benefits of special conditions.
*Special Territories: These are individual territories that convey some sort of benefit.
*Number of Territories Taken: After a certain number of territories are taken, then someone gains a benefit.

Party of the Second Part; Benefits. There are actually a lot of different things that make the benefits worth something, but they all fall into some broad categories.
*Deployment Benefits: Deployment benefits can range from choice of who sets up first, to special deployment conditions, to even choice of scenarios.
*Extra Forces: Extra forces benefits are great. They allow you to break the normal rules of how many people that you are allow to place on the field and smash them to bits.
*Free Stuff: Free Stuff benefits allow you to take something without cost that you would normally include as part of your cost per game.
*Terrain Benefits: This is by far the most crazy stuff. Terrain benefits are typically tied to a single territory, and typically some sort of unique terrain feature like fortresses, or extra towers, or something like that.

So I've gone over some of the opening stuff to think about, and right now I need to customize it a bit with some of the stuff I thought of for a Mordheim based map campaign.

Special Areas Ideas:
1. Brewery: Bugman's is common.
2. Mercanaries Quarters: 1/2 upkeep on hired swords (except Ogres, Warlocks, and Pitfighters)
3. Slaughter House District: No upkeep for Ogres or Trolls
4. The Gladitorial Pit: Free Pit fighter, no upkeep, but does not gain XP! Can still hire pit fighter as normal.
5. Well Spring: +1 to casting checks for wizards, etc.
6. Powder Magazine: +2 on rare rolls for blackpowder weapons
7. Wharf: Warband counts as three less members for wyrdstone exchange.
8. Assayers Office: +1 die on exploration roll
9. The Tower: There is a HUGE (like 2 foot tall) tower in the middle of the territory, that the defender can ALWAYS set three models in before the game starts.

Bonuses:
+1 to rare roll for every 5 contigious territories.
+1 to maximum warband number for every 10 territories you hold
+1 to maximum heroes in warband for every 20 territories you hold.