Mass Combat Revisited

So - does this get your geek going? 

The armies of Therund had breached Snowbite Pass and begun their descent into the Nentir Vale. With snowstorms howling about them, the generals agreed to separate their host into two legions, one bound for Winterhaven, and the other for Fallcrest. Learning that a dragon had laid claim to the highlands ahead, they risked sending a messenger through its territory to Winterhaven. He returned with news that the town still held, but Lord Padraig had ridden to Fallcrest, and was now besieged by the Burning Banner. With time now of the essence, the generals agreed to cross the Gardbury Downs and reunite their legions for the liberation of Fallcrest. The war had just begun.

...and we'd been playing for about ten hours. If there's one thing to be said for my new campaign battle rules, it's that they're slow. Still - as the picture above demonstrates - they do make for a pretty sexy set-up, and with a bit of pruning I think I can make them play faster. It was certainly a great collaborative effort by the group, with everyone pitching together to draw up banners (and print them out!).

In the end we didn't get round to playing an actual battle, but I had my mass combat rules ready just in case. Way back towards the end of last summer, we used these to run the Battle of Moonstair - in fact, they're pretty much the reason I started this blog. Up until recently that first post has consistently pulled in more hits than any of the others (although now pipped by Stacey's ABCD&D!). I guess a lot of people out there are looking for mass combat rules.

Anyway, I've recently given them a significant overhaul. I've changed the dice resolution so it uses D20s and AC (which feels much more D&D), and cleaned up the maths by adding weapon bonuses and exception-based traits. The battle cards are now categorised into troop types rather than explicit units, and I've added a few more cards to support readying and "banking" initiative points. Perhaps the biggest change of all is allowing each troop to perform multiple actions in the same round, which massively changes the way it plays.

Have a read!

    

The Drums of War

Wizards' map of the Nentir Vale, adapted for campaign play! (click to enlarge) 

At long last we've reached the finale of King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and I've decided to end it all with a big battle. In our campaign, the Nentir Vale is under attack from an army of orcs called "The Burning Banner", so the party led a desperate mission to Therund to call for reinforcements. Now, with Moonstair saved and Skalmad dead, they're returning home at the head of an army. To complete the adventure (and reach level 14!), they must rout the invaders from their homeland.

Ever since we ran the Battle for Moonstair, I've been yearning for a set of rules that would allow us to command troops over distance, manage simple supply chains, dispatch messengers: all the top-level strategic elements of a military campaign. The role-playing equivalent of Medieval: Total War, but flexible enough for a story to run alongside the strategy. In recent days, I've been asking the guys to draw up little war-banners in their spare time, while I've had a pop at working up some rules.

We'll be using the campaign map above as our board. I nabbed Rather Gamey's awesome "hexamogrified" version of the Vale map, and then annotated it with key locations from "Threats to the Nentir Vale", the "Hammerfast" book, and our own ongoing campaign. Stacey also extended the mountains to the west of the Vale, as in our game the Stonemarch is much larger. 

I'm really looking forward to seeing this in action, as it's been a great group effort. At the moment, my rules are very first pass - far too scrappy to show here in detail! - but they'll be undergoing trial by fire this weekend, and I'll be sure to report back once we're done. For now, here's a quick peek at my top-level overview. I sometimes find that writing a summary like this beforehand helps my thoughts stay focussed during the design.