My Fantasy, erm, Fantasy....

[Mr Mystery]

Afternoon all.

Inspired in no small amount by films I've been watching recently, I've been thinking about my absolutely ideal Fantasy Campaign, and how it would play out on the table top.

First up? Map Based campaign. Has to be map based. Nothing gets my hobby juices flowing like being able to plant my flag on a newly conquered territory. Just works for me!

Next up....the prospect of genuine, final defeat for players. Should by absolutely no means be an easy achievement, but it should be a constant concern for all players. Ideally, would require the destruction/overrunning of the player's capital. From a real world campaign logistics position, that is typically a deathblow to any founding nation. And should be conducted via a siege. Ideally, there should be precisely nothing preventing a fast march across the map and besieging from the start. The art would involve ensuring your opponent's realm is suitably weakened, either by wiping out sufficient banners, or cutting supply routes.

Also, banditry! Small raiding forces of PC and NPC brigandly warbands. From skirmish to 750 point games, these would strike at things such as mines and stores.

Outset of campaign would involve picking a tile for your capital, and the random generation of what is there already, including your primary Castle. After all, some could be long abandoned Dwarf keeps, Elven ruins from before the War of the Beard, or perhaps a slipshod Human encampment, with rules to reflect. Dwarf keeps I envisage to offer serious defences, in both terms of wall resilience and anti magic enchantments. Elven ruins? Extra income from artifacts uncovered. Human keeps? Pretty average, with no real bonuses. In a long running campaign, I see no real harm in some sides having a home field advantage, as it can be wrested off them, meaning opponents would more readily ally against them in order to seize it.

Regeneration of army banners would be seasonal. Suffer enough catastrophic defeats, and you could wind up with piddly little armies, and have to react accordingly.

Man, I need to see if I can arrange a weekend based Campaign!

[Chronowraith]

I'm certain you are aware of this, but in the off case that you are not, a great deal of this is captured in the Blood in the Badlands supplement for WFB. I don't think you can get it from GW in hardcopy though but I haven't looked through their digital catalog. If nothing else it would give a solid foundation and allow you to tweak what you wanted.

I like the idea of raids. Maybe something like, every season a player may pick a territory owned by another character to raid. Raids are set at 1000 points with no warmachines allowed (it's a raid!) The benefits of successfully raiding a territory depend on what is in the territory (forest, plains, marsh, hills, castle, wizard tower, etc).

Damn it.... this makes me want to play a Fantasy campaign but sadly my friends are spread too far out (between an hour to 4 hours car ride) :-(

[Learn2Eel]

I'm certain you are aware of this, but in the off case that you are not, a great deal of this is captured in the Blood in the Badlands supplement for WFB. I don't think you can get it from GW in hardcopy though but I haven't looked through their digital catalog. If nothing else it would give a solid foundation and allow you to tweak what you wanted.

I like the idea of raids. Maybe something like, every season a player may pick a territory owned by another character to raid. Raids are set at 1000 points with no warmachines allowed (it's a raid!) The benefits of successfully raiding a territory depend on what is in the territory (forest, plains, marsh, hills, castle, wizard tower, etc).

Damn it.... this makes me want to play a Fantasy campaign but sadly my friends are spread too far out (between an hour to 4 hours car ride) :-(

This is what my LGS Veterans are doing at the moment, actually! It is great fun, if a little unbalanced - the free magic item and special rule can lead to some truly broken combinations, i.e. a Loremaster of Hoeth with Teclis' War Crown of Saphery (Level 3 Wizard) and the Loremaster special rule. He basically becomes super-Teclis plus combat abilities and minus two wizard levels. Seriously though, a Level 3 with every single spell in the main rulebook....*shudder* so many combos! The one I'm using for my Vampire Lady (Lord choice) is Count Mannfred's Armour of Templehof (heavy armour with +2 wounds) and the Multiple Wounds (2) special rule. Combine all that with the usual "blender lord" setup and wizard level four, and my Vampire Lady is basically an "I win" button against nearly anything. In a test game for the campaign, my Vampire Lady kill 5 Mournfang in one round of combat!

Actually now that I think about it, I'm not sure if the free magic item and special rule are part of the standard campaign rules or not. It might just be the case that my LGS owner thought they would make cool additions to our Generals. Basically our General alone can take a free magic item from either the main rulebook or any magic item in our own army book, even if it is a special characters' magic item. Our General, of course, has to be a generic character such as a Prince - no taking Tyrion with the Wizarding Hat, for example! We can't take more than one of the same magic item "class", i.e. my general can't pay for a Dispel Scroll then take the Book of Hoeth as a free item. The special rules we got to choose from a list, some of the notables were Always Strikes First, Multiple Wounds (2), Regeneration (5+) and Eternal Hatred.

Whatever the case, we are seeing some really fun character combos. Mine or that Loremaster build are probably the strongest, but we are seeing ones like a Slaughtermaster with the Scepter of the Titans (Strength 10) and Loremaster (Lore of Beasts), or a Beastlord with a Wizarding Hat and Loremaster. A lot of hilarity and fun indeed!

[Tomgar]

That sounds really awesome! I'd love to be part of something like that and lead lightning raids with my Wood Elves against enemy supply lines and such.