TL,DR: what are people’s thoughts on creating a campaign system for Runewars similar to Star Wars Armada’s Correlian Conflict?

So l know this is pretty early in the life cycle, but just been thinking about some possibilities about setting up a homebrew campaign, similar to SW Armada’s Correlian Conflict campaign.

For those unfamiliar, basically its a 2-6 person team campaign (1v1 up to (3v3) of rebels v empire where each person starts out with a bare bones fleet at 400pts, and adds and upgrades up to 500pts through out the campaign. Battles are chosen across a map with various resources and buffs at each location. Winners earn control of their locations which adds to your resources available to recruit and restore units. There is a somewhat permadeath system in that units that are defeated two battles in a row without restoring the unit, named characters are gone forever. Also veterancy is issued to units that survive battles, which gives them a once-per-Battle buff. Your team earns victory points for winning battles, and can ultimately culminate into a large scale multi-army battle.

I think a lot of this system could be applied to runewars for a campaign/league system to build a narrative and make things more than just one-off battles. I’ve broken down the major components as I see them:

1: map

2: setup/armies

3: objectives/battles

4: losses/rewards

5:victory condition

1: Biggest problem I see right now is lack of a unified terrinoth map, so that aspect would be difficult to work on right now besides making something up that isn’t canon. While this does add a lot to the strategic gameplay, I think it’s still doable without, and can be added in later.

2:

Teams: Same 1v1,2v2,3v3 for armies, with players assuming control of however many they wish. Split between “good vs evil” so daqan and latari play together and waiqar and uthuk play together. To do a perfect mirror to SWA:CC would be start with a 200pt army, and can build up to 250pts. I think 300 would be more fun, but might strain realize resources and make for a very crowded final battle. I could also be convinced for a 150/250 min/max, depending on if you allow a start with a hero.

Armies: 0/1 heroes to start, or 2/0 titled characters to start. Make all titled characters unique (lance corporal, necromancer, etc). CC initial limit is one upgrade per ship, at first glance I think maybe no units larger than tier 2 with no upgrades (other than aforementioned champions) included. This would require some experimentation to figure out the best balance, but I’m more for small armies turning into massive armies than skirmish armies turning into regular armies.

3:so for special objectives I have two I’ve thought of:

Ambush- use the “unprepared” deployment and the “break their defenses” objective. Attacker is in the large, defender is in the thin deployment zone. Defender places 4 objective tokens among its units. Attacker scores 20 resources points for every unit destroyed, defender scores 10 for every unit escaped into enemy’s deployment by end of match.

Supply raid- “supply raid” obj, “oblique” deployment, attacker in the small deployment zone, defender places all tokens, place only 6 tokens, defender cannot pick up tokens. Defender gains 5 resource points for every token defended, attacker gains 15pts.

Only one of each special obj can be played per turn, either both sides can choose either, or ambush is affiliated with daqan/latari and raid is with waiqar/uthuk.

Remaining matchups are determined by revealing obj/dep cards equal to number of battles that round, attacker picks obj/dep, defender picks the counterpart until all battles have been paired.

4: special objectives are for resource points, do not reward a victory points for winning. Other battles regardless of attacking or defending reward 1 victory point.

Resource collection based off a map would be determined by territories controlled, otherwise I feel would have to be a fixed rate: 20 points replenishing per army, 40 points rallying/general use per turn. Destroyed units can be refielded for half their point cost. Units not replenished are “wounded” next battle, any wounded units in the next battle lose any unique characters if defeated again are lost forever, any units without a unit upgrade start the battle with a bane of your opponents choosing that cannot be removed until used.

veterancy: once per battle, a unit may use its unique ability without spending the cost of the ability. All other conditions must be met.

If using a map buffs can be assigned to territories, if not, victor recieves one at random, examples:

Bribed captain: when a opponent deploys a unit of more than one tray, you may choose the deployment location. Your opponent still determines unit orientation, standard deployment rules apply.

Advanced scouts: your opponent places two units before you place any during setup, after any deployment differential.

Harassing skirmishers: after deployment, select two enemy units of your choice, they receive one bane token of your choice.

5: I’m thinking 8/12 victory points to win for 1v1 and 3v3, 2v2 can choose either for a long or short game

It should be noted most of these numbers I’ve put in here are just gut reactions and has not had any real critical analysis for balance put into them.

Looking for feedback on whether this is a good idea, things to add/remove, balance changes, etc. I realize there’s a lot more nuance to make this work, but just looking for a bare bones structure so far. Thoughts?

Considering there are four factions I'd enjoy a 4 way brawl for Terrinoth. Might have to go to 1-2 players on a team, and could do anywhere from 1v1 to 2v2v2v2, as getting 8 players could be difficult.

The final battle could be done on a 4x8 table, with a player taking a stronghold on the map triggering the battle. 3 players prepare to attack each other and a castle which the first player is in control of.

First off I'll say it would need to be a lot better than the corellion campaign, which had many glaring flaws.

Special objectives need to be outed, they were poorly executed, one sided, and gave far too many resources (problem 2), the vast quantities of resources available made the progression near meaningless.

I would like to see map based movement, not seeming omnipresence for armies.

I would like more than a very thin veneer for a larger battle size (which is all CC really was).

I would like to see more dire consequences for failure (scarring was near meaningless, back to resources).

I tried to hit the 'like this' button as hard as I could.

Really I think this is a fantastic idea. Yes there's things to be learned from Armada's Corellian Campaign, the 4 armies being present makes for some interesting dynamics for alliances or non-alliances as it were.

There's opportunities for new objectives, new terrain, really this could be pretty great.

@Jukey 4 separate armies could be cool, but I think would be a)very group diversity dependent, and b)a more complicated version of the “good vs evil” campaign? So I’d like to get that system down first, then could expound into a 4 way war.

had been toying around with some way to incorporate strongholds or siege style battles, whether just keep them as a king of the hill style domination or do a true attacker/defender where the defender gets more fortifications, attacker gets regen/respawn, and victory condition is attacker “breaches” a small zone with “x” units by turn 8.

@Darthain Agreed about potential resource disparity, I only had a few CC campaigns so far but I had a lot of polarity where you either had so many resources and few casualties that upgrading was too easy, or a campaign with extremely pyrrhic battles where all the resources in the world weren’t saving either Fleet, and ultimately had little upgrading.

100% with you on the campaign map requiring armies to physically move through territory. Very very rough draft for a campaign map I was thinking something like two simultaneous “tug of war” progressions, say of 7/9 Hexes each, where armies start at the centerpoint, and victories push you in the direction of the opponent’s capital/stronghold. I think this is where special objectives could actually be fun and possibly balancing, ie (for 9 hexes): center tile is open plain neutral territory, next hex in is a small outpost with a small defender buff, third in allows for a special objective “ambush” that moderately favors defenders, another blank hex, and then your final capital with a significant buff.

I say hexes because I like the idea of adding another row above and/or below, to allow for some sort of strategic planning, even if it’s just say an offshoot garrison on the third hex that controls significant resource production. I’ll work on a diagram to make this easier to convey.

i could get behind maybe fixed resources based solely on territory, with additional resources at outposts/garrisons/capitals? And providing a fairly low yield and having a maximum cap? Depends on how long you want the campaign to be.

@tgall I hadn’t thought about crisscrossing alliances, but that could be cool, just not necessarily lore-friendly but ultimately if your group supports it why not! Again I think getting the core 1v1/2v2 elements down first would allow for exploration into cross faction or even 1v1v1v1.

I did something like this for WFB years ago, with 'territories' allowing additional items, you started out with a basic army composition but could get additional upgrades/magic items/max army points with territories. Then, for fights, anyone could fight anyone; we'd generate a neutral territory and each player'd ante one of their territories. Winner got to pick the neutral or steal the loser's territory, so no-one loses too much. At the end, we fought a mothering-great mega battle, with random sides. I might have to look for that territory list...

A couple of notes about the map.

1) The map of Terrinoth was never really established in the past. In Runewars (the board game) the players take tiles and put them together in different ways, so every time you play, it's different. Sometimes the Daqan would start sandwiched between the Uhtuk Y'llan and Waiqar, but sometimes they would be far away on the opposite side of the board. Since that time, we have learned that the Daqan are central, and Waiqar, Uthuk, and Latari are Northwest, East, and South, respectively.

2) I think the most logical way to go about creating a map, would be to focus on the Free Cities. They are central, so all factions can access them, and each one has just enough lore that you could come up with cool rewards for controlling those locations. I would guess the battles would take place outside the cities, so we can use the typical deployments and terrain for the actual conflict. Also, by using the free cities as the objectives, we can ignore the relative locations of the faction home realms, and just set up across from each other and try to push the other army out of the region, taking control of Terrinoth.

Finally, I'm just going to put out my prediction that FFG is going to come out with such a campaign box sometime this year, so I'm probably not going to bother putting much time into designing a campaign like this.

1 hour ago, Parakitor said:

Finally, I'm just going to put out my prediction that FFG is going to come out with such a campaign box sometime this year, so I'm probably not going to bother putting much time into designing a campaign like this.

This year meaning 2018?

1 hour ago, Seawhale said:

This year meaning 2018?

Yeah, I have a pretty good feeling about it. I'm not a playtester or anything, but something that was said in one of the articles early on gave me that impression. Ah yes, it was the quarterly kits

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/1/27/the-next-quarter/

It says they come with novel objective/deployments that are unique to that kit, which gave me the impression that they might include new objectives in a campaign to tell a story. I think I was grasping at straws, but I'm still hopeful.

P.S. There might have been something else, so I'll keep looking and trying to remember.

Yes I would definitely go for a campaign .

With cities and territories giving bonus that give bonuses to armies

Such as the Necroplis, Waguar gain lingering dead on 1 unit, Daquan gain 1 inspiration token on 3 units for their honored dead.

Do we know all the Daqan baronies and the free cities? That could be a good starting point.

Also, I truly feel FFG would be missing out on an incredible game building opportunity if they didn’t make an official runewars campaign, and I do believe they will. However I really don’t see them rushing into it this year (2018), I think this year will be more army building, and hopefully more community building as well. IF they release a campaign this year, I think I’ll be more alarmed than anything. That to me would signal A) no other factions and B) potential limited future support for this game by FFG, releasing a new way to play a little over a year after standard release and before it’s really taken off. I truly hope if that’s the case I’m dead wrong on all accounts.

to come full circle, I think creating a functional community-created campaign would be worth it for now as I think we have awhile for anything official, but don’t need to go SUPER crazy with it.

I believe we know all the free cities (see Runebound and Rune Age), but I don't think we know all the baronies.

Their probable using the lessons from the CC campaign to set up a Campaign.

But they will have to:

1. Create a balanced or asymmetrical map; or we'll play for a region of the map.

2. Balance a Risk and Reward system for the 4 Armies

4. We need more heroes. 2 per side is barely enough for 2 players per faction, which leads into number 5.

5. 4 player campaign will be rather complex. But couid be balanced by having to launch an attack from a player held territory.

Just a few of my thoughts

First, sorry for my EXTREMELY CRUDE maps, I bring shame to the word "amateur" but I wanted to try and get my point across.

I've attached two maps, one is the simplified core concept of how I wanted to build the map, 13 regions for the 13 baronies, and 8 stars for the eight free cities. The second map is built off the map from the terrinoth wikia, as we don't really have a more accurate representation of the land. It is broken up the exact same way, I just tried to more or less follow natural lines of drift to create the baronies. Waiqar was always in the same place, but originally I had (clockwise from Waiqar) Uthuk, then Latari, then Daqan, as I felt that was slightly more flavorful, but I then switched it to what it currently is so that the "allied" factions are across from each other.

I also put together some basic core campaign concepts that I think could work? again this is built around the concept of Daqan/Latari Vs Waiqar/Uthuk. If all 4 factions are not present the other deployment zone is used by the matching army of the same "allied" faction. Theoretically this could work in free-for-all as well?

Anyway, here's the concept I came up with: (PS the center barony is supposed to be Archaut)

Three Phases per turn:

1. Marshalling/ Deploying

2. Battle

3. Rally/End

Factions start in 4 corners, occupying one of the 13 baronies each. Free cities are controlled by a faction controlling 2/3 surrounding baronies. Each campaign turn one player from each team may advance into another barony adjacent to a barony that player already controls. Archaut (center) cannot be taken until a team controls at least 3 surrounding baronies.

Upon an army advancing into a barony, an army of the opposing team’s choosing may march to meet that army on the battlefield. Alternate until all armies are matched. All battles are then fought simultaneously.

An army can only only march to meet an army in battle if it can march through allied or neutral baronies to reach the contested region. If the army must pass through Archaut, “X” resource points are penalized during the Rally/End Phase before reinforcing armies. If a team cannot or chooses not to meet an army, the barony is captured unopposed. Any single army can only advance twice per turn before the army is exhausted. Marching to meet an opposing army does not exhaust an army.

For resources each barony is worth "X" Resources, Free City is worth 2*"X", Archaut is worth 3*"X", or something like that. I think the way the deployments are placed and the back and forth battle should keep things competitive, but haven't figured out a mechanic to prevent snowballing if it starts.

Thoughts? I know the maps are bad...

Also if I did a poor job explaining any of that, let me know too

Also! fun fact there's two unclaimed baronies in that outer ring, so if more factions do eventually come (orcs, dwarves) they already have seats!