Since The Old World's release a little over two years ago I've attended a bunch of different events in the UK ranging from small one day events to big two day serious events and I've really enjoyed the vast majority of them. Singles events, Double Events and Team events have all made up different ones I've been to and alongside a more recent Narrative event I think I've come to appreciate them for what they bring to the table. Not all events are built to be the same and they shouldn't be; they shouldn't try to appeal to everyone, because not everyone's the same and not everyone who usually likes a certain type of event wants to do the same style all the time, at least not in my experience.
Outside of events gaming clubs and FLGSs tend to be the best way to play games for those who don't have the space at home and at my FLGS we tried to run a campaign last year which fizzled out after about 4-5 months but it was some of the best theming behind a reason to play games I've had in Warhammer: The Old World. With that in mind and the fact I love events, I've decided to take the plunge and run a weekend event myself at my local FLGS. This isn't going to be your simple 5 games of 2000pt Warhammer though; a lot of people do that already and do a damn fine job of it, so I needed to decide what I felt I could do well to make an event standout and just give people a different weekend away.
With that in mind, and leaning on the campaign we ran last year, I've come to conclusion that you can actually run a full campaign in a weekend if you build for it. I'd like to present to you all Rise to Glory, a full campaign weekend being held at Boards and Swords Hobbies in Derby, UK. This 6 game event will see 3 teams of 8 players battle it out to conquer our particular section of the Old World, either bringing (relative) peace to it, see it become a playground for the Gods or bring about its downfall; you know, all the normal stuff. Within a campaign you'll normally form your own narratives around battles and each other and trying to shove all of that into a weekend is a tall ask so I've come up with (or stolen) some ideas to try and bring those into life in the reduced time period as well as throw a few bones to those who want to engage with the more wild side of things.
What Are We Fighting Over?
So, using some map making software a friend recreated a section of the Old World for us to fight over. You'll notice a bunch of places you'll be more than accustomed to with the lands of Men with the Empire and Bretonnia well covered, but we're also heading a little to the west with the mountains and the lands the Ogres call home being included. We've also got the frozen wastes of the north and just to the south the dead lands of Khemri await, so plenty of room to fight over for sure.
Every Campaign needs a Good Map!
But how does this all work? Well I've included a link to the pack at the end of the post for those who are interested but lets give you a quick breakdown.
Games: Over the weekend each player will play 6 games of varying sizes and have to bring 3 different sized armies as a result. This represents it growing over the course of the campaign into a fully fledged army from a small force. Players will play 2 games at 750pts, 2 games at 1500 (one of which is a doubles game) and 2 at 2400.
Gems: These are the main currency of the event and will decide who wins. Each team will start off with 20 Gems; these can be spent or hoarded for overall victory. Each 100VPs you score in a game grant you another Gem, meaning the more bloodthirsty you are the more your coffers grow.
Map: Each team will start off with 42 hexes owned; these will all be separated with the map being divided into thirds. Each game played sees both players able to claim another zone, and then winners then being able to claim yet another zone, meaning we'll see 36 zones claimed per round of the event. In addition players will be able to achieve certain things during the games to claim bonus zones.
Character Growth: I mentioned how the narrative tends to form of it's own accord over a normal campaign but here we're taking a slightly different approach. In addition to the forces for the games players are asked to bring a Champion of Legend with them for the games. This character is a normal character who through winning or losing games will see their stats increase as the games go on, with usually losing games being more beneficial to the individual character growth and power on the table, after all you learn most from your mistakes right? These characters can start on foot or have a none-wound increasing mount, a Warhorse for example if they want. At 1500pts these characters can now move onto a bigger mount if they want, a chariot or a small monster like a Royal Pegasus might see play. Finally at 2400pts they've been able to use their (ill gotten?) gains and purchase something to show off their status, maybe a Griffon or a Dragon! But don't worry, for characters who don't normally get to purchase mounts I'm allowing players to be a little creative, come to me with a cool idea and we might just run with it. We've not Night Goblin Warboss's who've fed their squigs the wrong mushrooms and a Gorebull who's hoping to achieve his dream and just keep growing so far!
Active Market: Between rounds there will be a phase where players can spend Gems they've earnt to hire mercenaries or purchase magic items from travelling merchants. Magic items are purchased by the teams leader and then distributed as they see fit between their faction, so I fully expect a greedy Night Goblin to horde it as any true Goblin would. We'll be doing this under the 3 faction banners with their team leaders blind bidding to grab the items or mercenary units to join their side. One thing to think about here though is that half of what you spend will be split between the opposing teams, meaning you'll be partly funding their war efforts as well as purchasing the mercenaries services.
Additional Support: I mentioned Mercenary's above and they're going to be a key part of the event. I've been painting up a bunch of units and characters and creating or "borrowing" profiles from the Renegade Crowns army. These units are hired as a unit but depending on the points level the grow in size from smaller units up until large commanding presences on the battle field. I'm going to try and do a quick explanation of these in a follow up article but my favourite of these has to be the Eshin Triad.
Victory: So how do you win? As mentioned above the way one team will be crowned the victor is due to the amount of gems they have at the end of the event. So it's a balancing act between spending what Gems you earn during the event to spend to increase your chances of winning vs what you need to win the event. Of course land you've captured over the course of the event helps as well, with each of those being converted to gems come the end of the final game. We'll be tracking these gems through the event so the teams have a visual representation of how they're all getting on during the games, I'll show you how that'll work next time out.
What Next?
The full rules pack for the campaign can be found
here and I'll be posting the full unit profiles and magic card item decks in the follow up article so if people fancy giving something ago elsewhere in the world then you're more than welcome. Of course if anyone wants to give it a go sooner, feel free to drop me a message as I've still got a couple of tickets left for the event.
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Warhammer: The Old World - Rise to Glory: A Different Kind of Event
