I think it would be very cool, and could have multiple factions at war.

Maybe if it actually had consequences and wasn't a completely inadequate veneer it could work, but ffg has a long way to go in making a decent campaign. CC was just a resource Monty haul and thin battle backdrop.

2 hours ago, Leowulf said:

I think it would be very cool, and could have multiple factions at war.

It would be so very very amazingly cool. What a great way to keep the game moving in interesting directions. Win by 100 points, gain a hero, role a dice to determine their special ....

A CC type map where each side is playing for strategic positions. There is a lot of fun possibilities there.

2 hours ago, Darthain said:

Maybe if it actually had consequences and wasn't a completely inadequate veneer it could work, but ffg has a long way to go in making a decent campaign. CC was just a resource Monty haul and thin battle backdrop.

It seems like it would be very difficult to design a campaign for a game like this. The rewards for victory must be significant without unbalancing future rounds in the campaign. I'm curious what miniatures games have pulled it off well?

10 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

It seems like it would be very difficult to design a campaign for a game like this. The rewards for victory must be significant without unbalancing future rounds in the campaign. I'm curious what miniatures games have pulled it off well?

Nothing I've played.

WFB pulled it off well in the past. Campaigns and battle maps where confrontations were over hidden/secret objectives, strategic positions, and resources. There were enough armies out that everyone could play something different and it wouldn't feel lopsided.

The trick really is getting people to last through the majority of the event, so objectives can't solely be about getting something extra. An escalation style is better if you use it to get access to more material. Something where everyone starts with their respective Cores and gains access to additional units/upgrades through victories and pulling off secret objectives.

22 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

It seems like it would be very difficult to design a campaign for a game like this. The rewards for victory must be significant without unbalancing future rounds in the campaign. I'm curious what miniatures games have pulled it off well?

My take away from your statement is how can you prevent the run-away-leader syndrome?

I wonder if you compartmentalize the campaign, that you could make this work well. Travel would be slow in Runewars, so without breaking lore you could split your forces across the map. At the beginning you could have separate regions with fresh armies with no overlap. Then once some sides win or lose, you can start to merge them together into the final battles. So even if you lose right away, you have a chance of winning the other regions etc. IF you lose all, well then you could have a mercy rule, or go into the final battles with not much of a chance -- but that would be OK -- you lost repeatedly

The best system I've ever seen was a battletech setup. You start with X battle value (points). Usually enough for 5-10 armies.

You start with a straight up match, standard army size. There is a system in place where the winner gains some capacity to repair, but faces worse odds. If you can win so many in a row, you win the campaign. Alternatively, if your opponent drains your reserve so that you can't field the minimum needed, you lose.

On 17/08/2017 at 10:24 PM, Darthain said:

Maybe if it actually had consequences and wasn't a completely inadequate veneer it could work, but ffg has a long way to go in making a decent campaign. CC was just a resource Monty haul and thin battle backdrop.

It sounds like you're chasing a white rabbit if you think CC was a thin backdrop or too forgiving. Great design is achieved not when you have no more to add but when you have nothing left to remove.

8 hours ago, Leowulf said:

It sounds like you're chasing a white rabbit if you think CC was a thin backdrop or too forgiving. Great design is achieved not when you have no more to add but when you have nothing left to remove.

By round 3 you can easily have a full fleet, and 100ish resources in the bank, it didn't have consequences. Other flaws include being extremely boring with tournament players as everyone builds very specialized lists so matches end up on repeat.

It needed the map to matter, maybe some movement mechanics, about 1/2 the resources, and to make losing ships a realistic possibility (again, way too many resources). Failing that the pre clarification hyper lane raid meant extreme preference to Imperials (they lost to us though), and making only hitting bases immediately for the rebels viable to taper that.

If you want a dead simple 500 points back drop, yeah, that's all CC is. The progression is too abrupt to be noteworthy or monumental.

14 hours ago, Leowulf said:

Great design is achieved not when you have no more to add but when you have nothing left to remove.

I did not expect to find Saint-Exupéry quoted on this forum, you just made my day

I do agree that a campaign system would be great. Maybe it's up to us to get the ball rolling... @Darthain what's your suggestion since CC is inadequate?

14 minutes ago, Corto said:

I did not expect to find Saint-Exupéry quoted on this forum, you just made my day

I do agree that a campaign system would be great. Maybe it's up to us to get the ball rolling... @Darthain what's your suggestion since CC is inadequate?

I'd like to see some positional game, a more gradual progression, about it really. Unfortunately these are best done by single players (1v1, multiple armies) as coordinating 6 players was ****.

Yes, coordinating multiple players is really tough, and with the runaway leader problem it makes building a campaign system really hard.

But we're a community, we can come up with something

What if instead of winning more points to build a bigger army, new unit types and upgrades were given as rewards? I'm imagining a kind of draft system where the winner claims cards they can then use in future rounds. Army point totals would increase by a set amount each round, like an escalation tournament, but your options are limited based on what cards you were able to win.

Edit to add: Here's another thought. Are you familar with worker placement board games, like Agricola or Caverna? Each round players take turns choosing an action from the menu, and you cannot use an action that was already claimed by someone else. Actions could be things like unlocking a new unit, upgrade, terrain, etc. Turn order could be determined by MOV.

22 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

What if instead of winning more points to build a bigger army, new unit types and upgrades were given as rewards? I'm imagining a kind of draft system where the winner claims cards they can then use in future rounds. Army point totals would increase by a set amount each round, like an escalation tournament, but your options are limited based on what cards you were able to win.

I'm liking this. Every army is 200 points, so they should be able to stand a chance, even if the opponent has more points in upgrades.

As an added bonus, what if you could take artifacts from fallen units in combat? Like, there's only one Shield of Margath in the entire campaign, and if you defeat, for example, Lord Hawthorne, you can take the shield from him for your own forces. Just brainstorming here.

I think the heroes would have to be able to be used again. Maybe if they are defeated in battle, they cannot participate in the next round of battles because they are healing from their wounds. If you had a bunch of people playing, though, you might never get to use a hero, since there are currently only two heroes for three of the factions. But for a two-player campaign it might work. You might run into the problem of runaway wins, where if a hero is defeated then that team has a really hard time the next round, but you get them back the following round, so it won't be indefinite. My only problem is that I can't run 200 points of Waiqar without both heroes in my army. Guess I'd need to buy more skeletons.

I'm not familiar with the CC campaign, but one thing that wouldn't sit right in Runewars is random terrain, objective, and deployment cards. I'm envisioning each battlefield having pre-selected combinations, and the player who's faction has more victory points gets to choose the deployment card, and also be first player for that battle. Is that too much of an edge? It might get boring, so maybe each time you set up the campaign, the various villages, dells, and hills are randomly assigned objectives and deployments.

I just think it helps immersion and theme when the armies of Waiqar aren't able to bring a graveyard into the middle of the Aymhelin, you know? You'd have one site on a hillside strewn with rocky outcrops, and another area with a pond and a mill/tavern nearby. If the Daqan press the attack towards the border of the Mistlands, blighted ground becomes more common. I'm not sure what to do about spikes. Those make sense to be available at any time to the defender. OK, thanks for letting me brainstorm!

17 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

I'm not familiar with the CC campaign, but one thing that wouldn't sit right in Runewars is random terrain, objective, and deployment cards. I'm envisioning each battlefield having pre-selected combinations, and the player who's faction has more victory points gets to choose the deployment card, and also be first player for that battle. Is that too much of an edge? It might get boring, so maybe each time you set up the campaign, the various villages, dells, and hills are randomly assigned objectives and deployments.

I just think it helps immersion and theme when the armies of Waiqar aren't able to bring a graveyard into the middle of the Aymhelin, you know? You'd have one site on a hillside strewn with rocky outcrops, and another area with a pond and a mill/tavern nearby. If the Daqan press the attack towards the border of the Mistlands, blighted ground becomes more common. I'm not sure what to do about spikes. Those make sense to be available at any time to the defender. OK, thanks for letting me brainstorm!

It makes sense to me for the attacker to be first player and choose the objective, while the defender chooses deployment and terrain.

2 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

It makes sense to me for the attacker to be first player and choose the objective, while the defender chooses deployment and terrain.

You have to be somewhat careful with terrain. If I'm a defender and I see you have a 3x wide unit, and we are doing careful approach. I can pretty much guarantee to make a wall of terrain that you cannot fit through.

Just now, Glucose98 said:

You have to be somewhat careful with terrain. If I'm a defender and I see you have a 3x wide unit, and we are doing careful approach. I can pretty much guarantee to make a wall of terrain that you cannot fit through.

You would still have to follow setup rules as normal, so you wouldn't be able to cheese that hard. I'm just saying the defender would choose the deployment card and use their terrain cards to simulate that the battle is taking place on their home turf.

The grander a game is, the harder it is to balance.

I'm not saying I wouldn't love to see some fun, fluffy campaign system given to us, but I'm with Darthain when it comes to my hope for it being a competitive one.

The competitive game is 1v1 at 200 pts. Anything much more complex than that has to just be fluffy fun where you don't worry about balance.

So because this game is rank and file -- it makes me wonder if having an 'inventory' of trays for your army would be interesting. You'd have to calculate a decent cost per tray / per unit (probably based off the smallest formations). You then could allow the inventory to store more 300-400 pts or something of the sort, so when you build a 200 pt list it's only using 50-75% of your inventory. Now one hard loss doesn't completely cripple you, but your inventory is going to take a big hit and affect you long term. You could do the same for upgrade cards as you do for trays. I think you make heros 'generic' in the inventory -- so you can have multiples. You cannot deploy more than one hero however -- uniqueness still applies when building a list.

28 minutes ago, Contrapulator said:

It makes sense to me for the attacker to be first player and choose the objective, while the defender chooses deployment and terrain.

I guess that makes sense to me. I was trying to find an alternate way to give the winning faction a bonus. But you're right that the defender really should choose the deployment card, while the attacker is first player - if Waiqar is in the Latari Elves' realm, it makes sense that they can establish Blighted Ground by adding it to their terrain deck. The Graveyard...that's a little bit more of a stretch. I guess the thing is that when playing on mats, terrain is the only thing that gives a hint at where you are fighting, and if all terrain is available at any location, it loses the feel of a campaign, and starts to feel like a glorified tournament.

As with terrain, I think objectives need to be addressed to take it out of "tournament mode". If Greyhaven is known for it's magics, it makes sense for Confluence of Magic to be played there, where as Nerekhall may be more suited to Volatile Runes (or whatever the name of that objective is).

But here's a question for you. Do you think in a campaign players should be able to build their army for the objective? One of the fun challenges about a tournament is that your army needs to be able to face a variety of forces under a variety of conditions. In a campaign, a commander knows the objective before the battle starts, and will likely deploy the right units for the task. Otherwise changing up your army is arbitrary, and people will play with the same tried and true tournament armies over and over. Of course, losing units from your barracks helps to change things up.

I like Glucose98's idea of an inventory of trays. That would probably work well.