So, this is yet another theory crafting thread. If you have seen some of my others, or my posts in general you would realize I am a fan of these

I have to admit, I got this idea from watching miniwargaming and their Fate of Fayoom and Snagabogs Greed for Warhammer 40k, and it got me thinking about a story campaign for Diskwars. Rather obviously it really wouldn't work until Dwarves and Undead come out, but really it might not work until the others do as well and all of the armies are large enough to favor something like that so it could have the customization and be able to have a third/fourth regiment.

Regardless, what I was thinking was something similar to what they can do. Obviously it would require more work to make it truly enjoyable or workable. To give an example of what they do, one set of missions would be 1500 points, which would be equal to two regiments for a standard game of diskwars. But now and then they can make a choice, where one mission has 500 less points, and one game has 500 more. To represent this for something like Diskwars where the numbers and units have less flexibility in their own way I was thinking either the addition or loss of a regiment, but that might tip the scales too far to one side if the default of the campaign was 2 regiment games. The other idea was that each general would have a bonus/penalty of a quarter of their regiment size, so with the penalty, a 34 regiment hero would only be able to bring 25 or 26 points, but with the bonus, they could bring 42-43 points.

The other problem I am running into is terrain. In Warhammer 40k, terrain placement has less of an impact and less of a tactical aspect, but with a campaign story for Diskwars, the second player is losing one of their major advantages to being second, and I am trying to figure out a suitable benefit to replace it.

Thoughts?

So, this is yet another theory crafting thread. If you have seen some of my others, or my posts in general you would realize I am a fan of these

I have to admit, I got this idea from watching miniwargaming and their Fate of Fayoom and Snagabogs Greed for Warhammer 40k, and it got me thinking about a story campaign for Diskwars. Rather obviously it really wouldn't work until Dwarves and Undead come out, but really it might not work until the others do as well and all of the armies are large enough to favor something like that so it could have the customization and be able to have a third/fourth regiment.

Regardless, what I was thinking was something similar to what they can do. Obviously it would require more work to make it truly enjoyable or workable. To give an example of what they do, one set of missions would be 1500 points, which would be equal to two regiments for a standard game of diskwars. But now and then they can make a choice, where one mission has 500 less points, and one game has 500 more. To represent this for something like Diskwars where the numbers and units have less flexibility in their own way I was thinking either the addition or loss of a regiment, but that might tip the scales too far to one side if the default of the campaign was 2 regiment games. The other idea was that each general would have a bonus/penalty of a quarter of their regiment size, so with the penalty, a 34 regiment hero would only be able to bring 25 or 26 points, but with the bonus, they could bring 42-43 points.

The other problem I am running into is terrain. In Warhammer 40k, terrain placement has less of an impact and less of a tactical aspect, but with a campaign story for Diskwars, the second player is losing one of their major advantages to being second, and I am trying to figure out a suitable benefit to replace it.

Thoughts?

I think the regiment size bonus/penalty is about right. In the 40k game you are talking about a 3rd of the army size as opposed to half if you did a full regiment bonus/penalty in Diskwars. I think in this game a 3rd is still a bit too much as the armies are still smaller unit-wise in Diskwars. 1/4 seems like it could work, need's playtesting though.

I'm not sure what you mean about the terrain though, what would the campaign do to terrain that is limiting the benefit to the second player? Is terrain being determined by the story? If it is, then maybe you also want the initiative to be determined by the story. Maybe set things up to heavily favor one side, but then the other side could bring their extra disks to that battle. If you want to play with the terrain rules due to the campaign rules, your fix will need to come from there too.

Also, in a campaign, I think it's ok for a single game to favor a specific side, what's important is that the campaign as a whole give each side an equal opportunity to win. Maybe points for doing well/winning in battles you should have lost or something.

That is what I meant with terrain, depending on the situation I see it being dictated by story as opposed to random draw and placement by players on either side. This really is all up in the air until I get my second core set and the Dwarves and Undead expansions, and go from there, terrain and addition to each faction.

I do think that your idea with the terrain might work well for one of those either/or things, such as you can fight them on terms of their choosing, but you might be allowed to bring that 1/4 bonus or something similar depending on how playtesting works out. In theory, that is only one more basic squad, though that can be per regiment, which can give a definite advantage. And yes, campaign won't necessarily be balanced, it is impossible to balance for narrative.

Really until I have the disks to look at things and playtest, it would be hard to balance. I think a campaign game would be interesting, but until we see what each expansion brings it will be hard to say what will work or won't. Might really not be viable until the next set of expansions come out, or equipment or something like it if they decide to allow that sort of thing.

It wouldn't be hard to do 'pre-written' lists for a campaign.

I would rather see two heroes on both sides, but have one be a couple of units short. Not having at least 4 command cards massively undercuts the 'poker' element of choosing your strategy, which is a sizeable chunk of the skill.

I would consider leaving the terrain rules as they are, but mandate specific terrain piece X be added in addition/as one of a player's choices (so a Watchtower in the defender's deployment zone, or a hill in the centre of the board, or whatever.

Ultimately, what's the story of the campaign? I'm sure a couple of narrative missions are easy to do - after all, the game already includes mechanics for 'mission special rule' and player objectives - all we have to do is identify how we want to change or add to these; a mandated hand of command cards, for example, significantly changes how a player commands his forces.

To be honest, given that it's a card token, specific campaign cards and campaign-specific heroes aren't unreasonable. Campaign packs by FFG would be quite cool!

You could do, for example, a siege warfare one with a couple of "fortress walls" sections that could only be chosen by the defender and used to surround his deployment zone (i.e. the inside of his 'castle'), plus a few suitable "siege equipment" discs - mortar, siege giant, siege tower, spider riders, tunneler weapon teams, etc and appropriate command cards.

I would love to see campaign expansions. I mentioned this before in a wish list thread before they announced the expansions. I'd like to see them fully flesh out the various armies that they are introducing in the new expansions first, and of course Tomb Kings. (I really hope that someone at FFG is tallying the number of times I mention the Tomb Kings

I like the idea of siege based games, but I worry about it feeling slap-dash. Currently the game has a very skirmish sort of feel too it. Siege warfare might be hard to lay over the top of that. That said, I trust FFG could find a way to make it work and to make it very cool. The nice thing about Siege in this game is that it would be pretty easy to make terrain such as castle walls that were destructible. So thing like mortars would be able to destroy them and let your army in. I'm half thinking of doing some siege rules myself. I'd also like to see cross board terrain, like rivers and roads.

Indeed. Thoughts on big terrain pieces:

Rivers - pobably in 6 x 6" sections with at least one bridge section. Given that we've got rules for a lake, the rules pretty much write themselves (the bridge is an exception, obviously)

Fortress - as stated, one 'gatehouse' section the size of three deployment zone cards, two wall sections running out to medium range and a couple of 'barricades' for outworks and you have your fortress. Destroyable walls are easy enough to manage - just give the walls a "Fortress" keyword and some items a "siege" keyword and you're pretty much done.

You've sort of got it with the 'stronghold' scenario - you just need to push it up so you've got a definitive 'attacker' and 'defender' and some way of creating impassible-but assaultable walls and allowing the discs to 'hold the line' (possibly a defending disc controlling a wall counts as occupying the whole wall section?) plus a few towers suitably sized for siege artillery pieces.

Village - literally, have two or three 'hamlet' pieces - a story campaign need not be massively epic - how about a lone hero (with a few extra command cards) defending a village from a marauding bunch of goblins?

You could resurrect Grom's invasion of Ulthuan with relatively little change to the starter scenario - a river, an elven village, Eltharion the Grim as a hero (pretty much Karl Franz reskinned), some goblin infantry units, and a mission which requires the goblins to break into and sack the village. Some "'gold" or "loot" tokens might be nice.

Starting to sound like Descent 2 to me but with units instead of individual models. But the idea of a campaign style format with narrative is pretty cool. :-)

I was looking at reviews of their X-wing miniatures stuff, more specifically the Imperial Aces and Transport boxes, since I already had an idea on what to expect from the Falcon. They are good at releasing small flavor missions alongside some of the stuff, and I really would love to see that trend carry over in Warhammer Diskwars.

As was said, it really isn't necessarily that hard to do, just have certain pieces of terrain and tokens that are mission specific. I would also like to see magic items that can be attached to regiments or heroes at some point, though that would be harder to really do neatly, since it doesn't have cards like X-wing.

With a narrative campaign as Mecha said, terrain should be dictated by the story, rather than something the player has control over. Narrative story is never balanced, but the mission might change to represent that. Using the invasion example, the goblins might have more units but be limited to smaller disks, their objective isn't to overwhelm the defenders, but to make off with loot.

As was said, it really isn't necessarily that hard to do, just have certain pieces of terrain and tokens that are mission specific. I would also like to see magic items that can be attached to regiments or heroes at some point, though that would be harder to really do neatly, since it doesn't have cards like X-wing.

The "magic item" is something which could be doable reasonably easily. Make the item a potent one-use effect and make it a zero-value command card with an associated token (so magic armour is a 'super- Shield Of Saphery' ) that you can place on a hero who turns out to be carrying it.

The magic item is bought for points, but goes in your hand as if it was a command card. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, though, even if you have unactivated units. Once used, however, you don't retrieve it in the end phase.

The main problem with magic items is a more fundamental one - All the heroes are named ones, so the only magic items they carry are their own. Magic Standards could be added as command cards for non-hero units, though, like the Griffon Banner (increase the disc's stamina by 1?) or Blasted Standard (Gives the unit a magic scores)

As was said, it really isn't necessarily that hard to do, just have certain pieces of terrain and tokens that are mission specific. I would also like to see magic items that can be attached to regiments or heroes at some point, though that would be harder to really do neatly, since it doesn't have cards like X-wing.

The "magic item" is something which could be doable reasonably easily. Make the item a potent one-use effect and make it a zero-value command card with an associated token (so magic armour is a 'super- Shield Of Saphery' ) that you can place on a hero who turns out to be carrying it.

The magic item is bought for points, but goes in your hand as if it was a command card. You don't have to use it if you don't want to, though, even if you have unactivated units. Once used, however, you don't retrieve it in the end phase.

The main problem with magic items is a more fundamental one - All the heroes are named ones, so the only magic items they carry are their own. Magic Standards could be added as command cards for non-hero units, though, like the Griffon Banner (increase the disc's stamina by 1?) or Blasted Standard (Gives the unit a magic scores)

For things like a banner that have lasting game effects, I think it might be more likely that they create alternate units later that have magic items as part of their disk. For instance, a black orc unit with a banner that ramps their stats or grants a radius buff to other orc units.

As for single use magic items, I think you are on to something. A command card and token are easy to use in the game, and it's already set up for it. You just need to have a rule for a command card type that doesn't count against your hand total, and that can be added with little to know trouble.

There was what looked like a special scenario card in one of the Legions of Darkness photo's. I think it was called Stratagems, or something like that. So we may be seeing more themed scenarios in the future that could make a campaign much easier and more interesting. Obviously the special scenario from the core book already covers a sort of 'king of the hill' niche.

I'd like to see break out and last stand themed scenarios too. Break out, where one player scores points by exiting the field through his opponents deployment zone, similar to one of the objectives currently available, but with mismatched forces. Perhaps the army breaking out would have to have 1 and 1/2 regiments, but also receives an extra movement.

Last stand, where a much smaller force plays against a larger one that surrounds them (deployment zones on all four sides). They should either gain points for the number of rounds they last, or the number of enemies that they take out. Perhaps a combination of the two. They get to set up the board however they like, and can't be defeated by being tabled.

Scenarios like this would make campaign building easier, because they would be playtested for balance, and you could just string them together as they make sense within the confines of your campaign.

Ah~

I actually thought kind of hard about this at work today, slow day at work means time to think. I had a thought that each Regiment you field gets 1 Tactical point to spend however you want. Since I had been thinking about campaigns and slightly stronger/weaker armies for different benefits it mainly ran into number crunching and preventing cheating. Anyway, this is what i came up with.

You can purchase a detachment/reinforcement that has 16 recruitment points and gives 1 additional command card. Restrictions: No large or elite disks, cannot start deployed and must be reinforced onto the board. Having lower than 16 points spent does -not- add to initiative

The problem I had with this was that it would be a little tricky to prevent cheesy number/disk play by your opponent with what is in their main army.

OR you can buy 2 Banners/Enhancements for 1 tactical point

Banners give permanent non stacking Empower

Stealth

Poison

Stalwart

Fear

+1 Movement

Mobile

Impact 1

Guard 1

Restrictions: Large and Hero disks can not have banners

Nominate a disk to have this banner, only one banner per unit.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Cake?

Edit: And of course if there is a campaign sort of thing, you can do your own thing, but maybe +1 tactical point per mission won, or +1 tactical point for the next mission.