About 14 years ago Games Workshop published a campaign book called Blood in the Badlands. It was a poorly written, thrown-together, obviously not playtested mess of a campaign that was mainly meant to sell a new product. Mighty Empires, I believe it was called. It was basically hex-shaped tiles that represented various types of terrain that would all be assembled together to create a board to play on. We didn't use that product, instead relying on a hex map I created and displayed on our gaming club's webpage.
The Blood in the Badlands. Mention that name in my gaming club and you're sure to get some eyerolls, disgusted looks, and maybe a groan or two. And yet, it was glorious. 8 players, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, epic, glorious success, and catastrophic failure all rolled into one book published (not playtested) by Games Workshop.
I've wanted to run another really great campaign, but it will never be. Not with this group, and for the last few years I've been struggling to understand why. I think the problem is that the ArcticFox of 13 years ago needed a little more life experience, and today's ArcticFox is going to take a crack at it. What follows will be a few vignettes from that campaign, in chronological order as best I can remember them. Maybe by doing this I can achieve some sort of catharsis and allow myself to finally let go of the idea of ever having another massive campaign in this group. I hope you'll bear with me as I share these stories as I flatter myself in thinking that any of this is worth reading in the first place.
Story 1: The Skyscraper
This tale takes place in the Games Workshop Battle Bunker in Bowie, MD in a tiny strip mall about halfway between Annapolis and Washington, DC. The Bunker isn't there anymore, but at the time it was a 24-gaming table hub of all things Games Workshop. The Blood in the Badlands campaign was still in its early stages and people were meeting each other and playing each other for the first time.
To understand this story, you have to understand a concept in the 8th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (WHFB) that I like to call the "Power Gamer's Cocaine." WHFB was a great system as long as your armies stayed outside on the battlefield. Go inside buildings and... things get a bit wonky. This particular rule concerns how many troops can fit inside a building. The rule basically said that a unit can fit up to 5 troopers per floor of the structure, for purposes of size and being able to fire out through windows, doors, etc. The variety of possible buildings that can appear on a Warhammer tabletop meant that there couldn't really be specific rules for each, so the catch-all rule was (paraphrased) "The players should agree before the game how many floors a building has." This isn't hard to do for 99% of the population, since generally models built for tabletop wargames have an obvious number of floors in them...
Then there's that 1%.
In this scenario, Tony's force had rolled up on a fortress under Steve's control and was assaulting it. So far, so good. The players placed the castle on the table and then began to place other scenery items on the table. Things like hills, forests, other structures, fences, etc. got placed, one at a time. Tony chose a tower and placed it a few inches outside Steve's fortress walls. This was the red flag that anybody who ever played Tony should have known to look out for. Steve never had before, at this point.
Now, I was at the Battle Bunker that day, playing a game from the same campaign against another player, but as I looked over and saw that tower go up, a little voice inside my head said "Uh-oh." I knew that Tony had placed that tower, and I knew what it meant. Too late, I realized that I had failed to warn Steve about Tony's approach to gaming. Now I was just waiting for the inevitable.
You see, as I discovered a little while later, Tony had proposed that this tower be considered 10 stories tall. Steve, being new to Warhammer, new to playing Tony, and a very laid-back, friendly guy to begin with, amicably said "Sure. 10 stories it is." And nearly sealed his fate.
The tower model we're talking about here is about 6" tall and represents a wizard's tower of about 3, maybe 4 floors. (I don't remember exactly. I used to have a tower ruins model that uses many of the same parts but mine only went up 2 stories.) That model isn't high enough to be able to see over the walls of the castle, but if it were 10 stories...
And that's what Tony was counting on. He was now playing as if that model were itself 10 stories which meant it would easily be able to shoot over the walls and into the castle courtyard. He then garrisoned a 30 model unit of elite Wood Elf archers into it which meant a murderous rain of wood and feathery death would be raining down into that castle every turn, and there was very little Steve could do about it.
I don't need to tell you that Steve was going to lose that castle. An army of fortified High Elven defenders was poised to lose a stone-and-mortar fortification to an army of Wood Elves with nothing but bows and a couple of walking trees.
Now, I'm making Tony seem like a jerk here and I don't mean to. As I said before he's a good guy. The problem is that almost every gamer has a sense of when they're gaming the rules and when they aren't. It keeps us on the straight and narrow path that avoids exploits or holes in the rules that are obvious errors. Tony's brain did not come with that component installed in the software, and he just doesn't see it. From his point of view, declaring the tower to be a 10-story structure is a perfectly legitimate play since it violates no rule in the book.
Steve wisely came over to me, as the Campaign GM, and asked me if this was a legitimate play. I went over, got Tony's side of the story, and made the following ruling:
Want it to be 10 stories? Fine, it's 10 stories but regardless of how many floors you and your opponent decide that building has, the actual height of the model doesn't change. Steve agreed that the building was a 10-story building, but it's still no taller than it was before and therefore it still can't see over the wall. Tony didn't like that ruling, but to his credit, he didn't pitch a fit about it. He accepted the ruling and the game was played. He did wind up putting that large unit in the tower and using it to shoot at Steve's defenders on the walls, but he did not have a line of sight to fire into the courtyard.
The moral of this story: You aren't being a jerk if you don't just let your opponent do whatever he wants. Some opponents will willfully abuse the rules to gain an advantage, and some just don't realize when they're doing it. Either way, even if you're laid back, don't be a doormat. Fair play is fair play. If you're playing someone worth playing with, it won't be a problem.
Story 2: Why We Read
In the early stages of the campaign one player, Jeff, was playing a Wood Elf army. It's unclear why he would choose that particular faction since it definitely does not reflect his usual play style, but I guess he thought he could work it in.
I initially wrote a rant about this game right after it happened here.
His name is Jeff (again, not using real names in this.) His army was assaulting one of my fortresses and the Army of Bretonnia was arrayed to defend.
I'd lent him the campaign rulebook so he could brush up on the castle assault rules in order to come to the table prepared. I also kept the book out and available for reference during the game. To win, he had to capture 3 out of the 3 objective markers which represented sections of the fortress. If he only captured 2, then the winner would be determined by who destroyed the most enemy units. If he captured one or zero, then I win.
So he deployed his army outside of my walls in a very effective formation, and I completely botched my own deployment. My best units were my knights who, being mounted on horseback, had to remain in the courtyard where they couldn't defend the walls or towers. Care to guess where all of the objective markers were? In the wonky rules, they could attack the walls or towers, but couldn't hold them.
So basically I settled in and prepared to hand over my fortress.
But then something weird happened. Jeff, who had been dominating the game for the first 3 rounds, suddenly began making stupid mistakes. At one point he even took a unit of heavy infantry, that had captured a tower, and had them exit the tower.
...in the courtyard...
...in front of my best unit of fresh, uninjured knights.
Hilarity ensued.
So by the end of the game, Jeff had only been able to capture and hold 1 objective marker, and so I won.
This is when I started to hear about how I had not made the victory objectives clear enough (did they seem complex to you?). Apparently, I hadn't made the siege rules clear. Apparently, I hadn't made the defense rules clear. Apparently, I was just a big ol' meanie who took advantage of his lack of understanding of the castle assault rules to win the game.
I was... annoyed... by this.
Fortunately, we talked it out later and he continues to be one of my best friends to this day. He really is one of the best people I know and even though he isn't a man of religion, he acts more like a Christian than most of the Christians I know. I think maybe he has a hard time with losing and needs something to point to that will allow him to save face. It isn't that he really thought I had treated him dishonorably, it's just that he has a very tough time just acknowledging his own shortcomings when it's a contest.
The moral of the story: Read the rules and know what you're doing. If you don't, then you have nobody but yourself to blame.
Story 3: How many dice?
I wasn't there for this story. Well, I was physically there, but I wasn't involved in the game.
This took place at DropZone, what was almost the premier wargaming store in Maryland, now a closed-down memory. This was during the heyday when they had 4 gaming rooms which were almost always full. It was early-ish in the campaign, and the war was in full swing.
This game was being played between Tony and Steve (not real names), Wood Elves vs. High Elves, respectively. I was there playing a game against someone else that day (I don't recall who) so I'm going to attempt to reconstruct what actually happened, based on what I heard from both players later.
It was a Saturday, and the smell of gamer funk was heady in the air in the large gaming room at DropZone. The sounds of dice hitting tables, the cheers of a good roll, and the groans of a bad one wafted off the bare drywall of the walls that had been neatly painted, but never fully decorated. The Blood in The Badlands was well underway, and the Wood Elves of Athel Loren were battling the High Elves of Ulthuan for one of the map grid hexes. It was Steve's turn, and he was in the magic phase. In WHFB, that meant you could have your wizards cast whatever spells they had prepared for the battle, which you'd do by rolling dice. The procedure was you declare what spell you were casting, declare the target (if applicable), and declare how many dice you were going to use in the attempt.
Tony's version of the story:
Steve picked up the dice, rolled two, and saw that the total was not high enough to successfully cast the spell. He smiled mischievously at Tony and dropped the third die, which increased the rolled total to a number high enough for the spell to go off successfully. Steve was playing dishonestly, because he rolled the first two dice and then only threw the third because the first two weren't enough. Tony graciously let it slide because it's only a game...
Steve's version of the story:
Tony had already been getting away with some questionable tactics, like moving models further than their allowed move distance or shooting arrows through terrain that normally one can't shoot through. Nevertheless, Steve graciously let it slide because it's only a game. When the magic phase in question came up, he picked up the three dice and rolled them, but one of the dice sort of got caught between his fingers and dropped last. He never intended any sort of shenanigans.
The Investigation:
If there's anything I can't stand it's a cheater, and yet I know both of these men to be honest men who play an honorable game. Tony can be somewhat of a min/max gamer at times and Steve is a prankster of sorts, but neither of them would cheat, as far as I know. I've known Tony since 1989 and Steve since about 2008, but if either of them was being deliberately dishonorable in a game it would be a surprise to me, so I figured this must be a simple matter of a misunderstanding. I knew both of these guys, but this campaign was the first time they'd met, and this particular game was only the second time they'd played.
The way I saw it, it all came down to just how many dice Steve actually intended to throw. The fact that he picked up 3 dice suggests that was his intent, but what really matters is whether or not he declared that he'd roll 3, per the rules of the game. Steve assured me that yes, he had indeed declared that he would roll 3 dice. Okay, so if he declared three then he had to roll 3. No problem there.
So, I went to Tony and asked him. Here's how the conversation went...
Me: So did he declare that he'd roll 3 dice or two?
Tony: He rolled two, then a third.
Me: I get that, but how many dice did he declare he was going to roll?
Tony got a momentary blank look, blinked a couple of times, and said:
He rolled two dice but didn't roll the third until he saw the first two weren't a success.
Me: But how many did he declare he'd roll?
Tony: I'm saying he rolled two dice which didn't succeed, then looked at me with a weird smile then rolled the last one.
Me: (Exasperated) But you have to declare how many dice you're rolling first. What did he say?
Tony got that blank look again and muttered "I don't know man. I just know he didn't throw that third die until the first two failed."
Tony's a good guy. We've been friends now for almost 40 years and I trust him completely. It's just that he's sometimes really stubborn once he's made up his mind on how to interpret something, and it's very difficult to get him to see it differently once he's reached that point. So I let the subject drop at that point and concluded that it was just a misunderstanding. I'm inclined to think Tony was being stubborn here, because of the blank look he gets when he realizes he's probably wrong but doesn't want to change his opinion. It's possible that Steve had forgotten to declare the dice that day, but I think if he had, Tony would have pointed that out sooner.
The point of this story? Even honest people can have a disagreement over a misunderstanding. What makes the situation a bit juvenile is that both were perfectly happy to complain to me, but not to just talk to each other. Also, it's just a game. Everybody is happy to SAY it's just a game, but rarely do people ACT like it.
Story 4: Honorable Combat
I decided to put in a positive tale, just to break things up a bit. I did say there was also glory in the campaign, did I not?
In this story, Tony and Sam had a battle in an open field. Tony was playing his Wood Elves and Sam was running an Empire army. Imagine high Medieval/Early Renaissance Germanic and you'll have a pretty good understanding of what the Empire in WHFB was.
Tony is an excellent wargamer but he often tends to forget things, which is understandable as complex a game as Warhammer Fantasy Battles was. We all forgot things, a lot, but I think Tony struggles more than most. The battle was going fairly evenly, with neither side gaining a significant advantage. Sam's long gunners (dudes with matchlock rifles) and Tony's Wood Elf archers were killing each other across the table while knights battled Tree Men.
At some point, about halfway through the game, Tony completely forgot about an important rule in his army that allowed his archers to pierce armor more effectively when firing at Sam's armored knights. As a result, his arrows were very ineffective in this round of shooting. The conversation went something like this:
Tony: Ok so your armor save is 4?
Sam: No, it's 3 in this case.
Tony: Really? Why?
Sam: Because I'm in short range of your archers... so I get -1 to my armor save, remember?
Tony: Oh! Duh. Thanks... That's really great sportsmanship, dude.
Sam: Thanks. If I win, I'd rather beat you because I outplayed you than because you forgot a rule.
Tony: Who taught you that?
Sam: My dad.
Tony: That's awesome, man.
And it is awesome. Sam went on to lose that game, but it was an honorable loss and he fully deserved to hold his head up high. I happen to know he regrets nothing. The moral of this story: Yes, kids do still listen to their parents, and yes, a battle honorably lost is better than a battle won by exploiting honest rules mistakes.
These next couple of stories are the Bizarro images of the last.
Story 5: The Rules Are Terribly Unfair... Unless I'm Winning.
Sam's territory on the campaign map was in a fairly central location and bordered three others' who were on the opposing alliance. Sam was a good Warhammer player but his choice of faction (Empire) meant that to find victory he had to really work at it because that particular faction was one that required finesse. A lot of finesse. Too many options, in my opinion, and a lot of moving parts in an army that was much better suited to players with a lot more experience and time than he had. As a result, he became a target.
One of the adjoining players was Dave, who played a pretty simple and very tough Chaos army that was more or less a point-and-click force. Not a lot of finesse to it, just run your very tough units at the enemy and watch them beat face.
So in the first game they play, Dave is attacking one of Sam's fortresses. As you can imagine, attacking a fortress by assault is not an easy thing to do, and the first couple of turns Dave was getting a pounding from Sam's archers, artillery, riflemen, crossbows, wizards... the works. Being a man of... volatile emotions, I got a series of profanity-laced texts from him during the course of the game letting me know exactly what he thought of these siege rules, how unfair they were, and how it was utter... well, you can imagine what.
Now, I had no way of knowing what it was like to actually be there, but when talking to him about it later, Sam was very surprised at the nature of these texts. It seems Dave appeared very calm and reasonable the whole time. Maybe he just didn't want to be a jerk during the game and I was helping by being the pressure relief valve in receiving these texts.
Despite the complaining, Dave went on to win that game. His troops were overwhelmingly more powerful than Sam's in close combat once hand-to-hand was joined, and even with the disadvantages that exist when you're assaulting over castle walls, they still overwhelmed the defenders.
The moral of the story is, If you agree to play by a rule set, don't whine about it when things don't go your way. Especially when the game isn't even over and you haven't had a chance to see how it all balances. Bothering to read the rules ahead of time has a nice tendency to prevent nasty surprises.
Story 6: What You Don't Know Can Kill You
This next tale involves the same two players... Sam and Dave. You see, emboldened by his victory against Sam's fortress, Dave launched another attack into Sam's territory.
Dave's army, as I mentioned, was very tough and difficult to kill. To make things harder, attacking them in close combat conferred a -1 penalty for causing wounds against the unit. Read that last sentence again, with emphasis on the "close combat" part.
So Sam and Dave played another game or two, the entire time Sam applied a -1 penalty to his shooting attacks as well as his close combat attacks. He was mistaken about how that worked, probably having misunderstood the wording of the rule at some point or another. It's understandable since that particular rule would be in the Chaos army book, not the general rulebook, so Sam didn't really have an easy way to read it. Besides, the campaign was being fought by the honor system...
It was an honest mistake perhaps, but I know Sam's play style. He announces what he's doing, he announces why he's doing it, and he announces the rules he's using to give the opponent a chance to check him so he doesn't make mistakes.
Sam: "Ok I have 20 archers... rolling to hit, need 4's... ooh good roll I got fifteen hits. Ok now to wound I need... 5's... oh and with that special rule you have I need 6's... Bah. Only 3 wounds..."
Dave: <Should be correcting Sam here on that special rule, but wasn't.>
Repeat the above exchange about 20 or 30 times in a game and you can see how that bonus really adds up, and when an army like Sam's relies heavily on shooting attacks, this is clearly not how the game was meant to be played.
So what's the deal? There are three possible reasons why Dave didn't correct Sam, in any of the games they played.
Maybe Dave somehow never noticed that Sam was applying this penalty to himself. I don't really see how that can be, especially since Sam likes to announce what he's doing and why for exactly this reason, but it isn't impossible.
Maybe Dave did say something, at some point, and Sam didn't remember. It's possible, but also unlikely. Finding out that a major disadvantage actually doesn't exist would be a pretty memorable moment.
Maybe Dave knew full well what was happening and chose not to speak up. There are many reasons why that could happen. I don't think Dave is a dishonest player, but I do know how hard it can be to point out your opponent's errors when it would hurt you.
Maybe he first saw it during that fortress assault game and chose not to say anything, believing that the rules were unfairly favoring Sam's force and that somehow this mistake balanced the scales... but then couldn't come clean later because he'd lose face.
Maybe he's one of those gamers whose mentality is that it isn't his job to make sure you know what you're doing, so your mistakes are your own fault. I don't know. All I do know is that Sam doesn't trust Dave as a gamer anymore, and I can't blame him. This is especially true because Dave rarely attacked anyone but Sam, despite pledging to back off a bit to avoid making Sam feel picked on in the campaign. (In fact, now that I think back, I don't think Dave ever attacked anyone else but me, which he did only once. The Knights of Bretonnia did not suffer Chaos to befoul their territory...
The moral of the story: It's never a bad idea to double-check your understanding of the rules governing your opponent's army, even though that can mean not relying on your opponent. It isn't unreasonable to ask to look at your opponent's army book so you can see the rule for yourself. If your opponent refuses, I'd call that a red flag.
Story 7: When Winning Just Isn't Enough
This tale is the story of a battle between myself and another player, Don.
Don was a Dark Elves player, which meant he'd joined the alliance opposing the one I was in. We had a fairly straightforward battle, with the Knights of Bretonnia attacking the Dark Elves in their territory.
The battle did not go well for Bretonnia that day. I made a few mistakes and Don, being a competent player, was able to capitalize on them. I could see by the end of the fourth round that I wasn't going to be able to pull a victory on this one, so I decided to concede the game.
Instead of a victory smile, Don instead looked dismayed. I asked him what was wrong.
"Well, If you concede now, I won't be able to kill your general."
You see, in this campaign, there was a narrative continuity between games, such that characters were sometimes able to carry over items and injuries from one battle to the next. In some cases, they could even be captured or killed. Up to that point in the campaign, there had never been a problem if one side or the other conceded.
Don's problem here was that by conceding the game, I was essentially ending the battle at that point, and Don wanted the chance to go after my characters. While I admit that there's a certain strategic benefit to making sure to injure your opponent's characters, nobody had made an issue of it before. This struck me as poor sportsmanship since he'd already won the battle.
Additionally, the problem here was that it created a conflict of interest. I was the GM, and also directly involved in the problem. If I ruled that a player could concede the game without losing characters (as we'd already been doing) then it would appear self-serving, since it was my characters at stake. On the other hand, I didn't want to just arbitrarily rule against that since it struck me as bad sportsmanship to compel a losing player to play it out just so that the victorious opponent could maximize the total damage.
Admittedly, it also went with the character of the Dark Elves.
So I took a compromise route. I ruled that if a player conceded a game, a die roll for each character that was still on the table would determine whether they escaped or whether they suffered an injury as if they'd been removed as a casualty during the game. Don didn't really like that, since I think he was very confident that he could have run down all my characters, but with Bretonnian horses being pretty fast for having barding, I think he was a bit overconfident on that.
The thing is, When you're playing a game like this and you know you've lost, it really sucks to feel compelled to play it out. That isn't fun at all and I wanted to find a solution that wouldn't make people feel compelled when the desire to play was gone.
The moral of the story: In a campaign like this, where the GM is also a player, it's always a good idea to have a co-GM who can step in and make a call when there's a conflict of interest.
Story 8: The whining begins again.
Our campaign had been going sloooooooly so we restructured it to pick up the pace. Turns became one month long with the last day of the month being the day for resolving army actions like claiming new territory or building forts and stuff.
So at the end of the first month with this new approach, I could feel the storm coming.
Now, bear in mind, in this campaign there were 8 players. That's a lot of cats to herd, but they were all adults. I had revised our gaming club's campaign rulebook 5 weeks before and in it was the campaign schedule. Everybody got a copy and it clearly stated the last day of the month was for resolving moves.
Now, knowing that people probably didn't read it or read it but didn't remember, I created a post the previous afternoon on our gaming club forum reminding everyone about the deadline (midnight). And just to make doubly sure, I sent out a group E-mail to every player reminding them.
Well, of the 7 players (excluding myself) I heard back from 2. So I posted the end of the turn at midnight and followed it with a post to address concerns I could see coming ("Nobody TOLD me it was the end of the turn!" "But I told you 3 weeks ago in a casual conversation what I was planning!" "But my next move was OBVIOUS!")
Well, it was just before 9:30 AM the next day, and already I'd gotten nastygrams from 2 people. Apparently, it's an ENORMOUS amount of work and effort to log onto a web forum for 5 minutes to post actions. ENORMOUS, and if I were a good GM AT ALL I'd coddle them, hold up the campaign for them, and read their minds for them so they don't have to expend the unreasonable effort to post a message.
One player I'm not sure what he thought because all he said was "Really?" Another took it like a man. The third gave me three of the excuses I anticipated, all in one set of texts:
"I told you I was gonna do this when we talked a couple weeks ago..."
I'm sure you did, but you have to declare these actions during the Resolve Expeditions Phase. Telling me as part of our discussion in an alliance isn't enough. Otherwise, it isn't fair to the guys who are not in the same alliance as me. It would mean that my allies NEVER miss their chance to do anything because we discussed it in advance during our planning. Not fair.
Additionally, these things need to be placed on the forum so that there's a record. Telling me in the car on the way somewhere or mentioning it to me at D&D isn't enough. Expecting me to take the time to make the posts for you isn't reasonable. My time is valuable too.
"When I made my move, I said, right in my post, that it was for the purpose of taking the hex."
No doubt, but stating your reasons for an action way back in the move phase doesn't constitute declaring an action in the Resolve Expeditions phase. When I'm closing out the turn, it isn't reasonable to expect me to research through the thread to try and find your reasoning and then take your actions for you. It's not like I have a photographic memory and know who said what. I'd have to read every single post. Even if it were easy, I still wouldn't do it. The move phase was a month before. You might have changed your mind for all I know.
"I had a lot of stuff going on yesterday and didn't even check my E-mail until today."
That sucks and I feel for you, but if I make an exception for one, I have to do it for all. Sometimes life gets in the way. Maybe it wasn't your fault, but it wasn't mine either. In any case, you own a smartphone. You can check E-mail anytime, anywhere. If the campaign wasn't a priority for you that's perfectly reasonable and fine, but that doesn't obligate me to give special treatment nor does it entitle you to hold up the rest of the group.
Story 9: The Wall Before the Wall
So at one point in the campaign, Tony had decided to assault one of my cities. The unusual feature of this battle was that it took place in a special location on the map that added extra elements to the battle, like legendary magical items and monsters.
The problem was that the basic siege rules didn't really have room for these extra elements, which caused things to become massively overcomplex with rules contradicting each other and all sorts of unexpected side effects of combining these separate rule sets. So what I did was to choose a scenario from one of the supplemental books that was meant to resolve battles in this kind of case.
Basically, one table edge represented the city wall. Then, the attacker would deploy their force on the table across the middle. The game would then begin. The attacker would have to do enough damage to the "walls" to cause a breach, which would mean the city fell. On the first turn of the battle, the defender would be able to deploy their army onto the table on the table edge opposite the wall. The result would be that the attacker would be between the wall and the defender's army.
To win, the attackers had to inflict a certain amount of damage to the wall. To win, the defender had to prevent this from happening within 6 game turns.
So Tony agreed to this scenario and off we went to play our game.
Remember a few stories ago when I said Tony sometimes has a hard time knowing when he's cheesing the rules and when he's just playing the game well? Well...
So we got to the venue (DropZone) and the place was PACKED. There were no free tables and we were unable to play our game. We were out of time for the campaign game turn so there was no way we could just play another time. So, we decided to just hang out there for a while and agreed to just call off the battle for the turn entirely.
That's when Tony told me what he was planning to do.
In Warhammer, if at any time, at the end of a turn, your army has no models on the table, you automatically lose.
In Warhammer, you cannot deploy units onto the table within a certain distance of an enemy unit.
Since this scenario calls for the attacking player to deploy his army first, and then have the defender move his army onto the table during the first turn, Tony's plan was to deploy his entire army around the perimeter of the gaming table (excluding the side with the city wall) and make it impossible for me to move my force onto the table in the first turn. In so doing, he would force an automatic win. So there would have been no game, no dice rolled, no fun. Just an auto-win. His plan was to then challenge me to a friendly non-campaign game after having secured himself the campaign game win and taking my city.
This really irritated me, because essentially it goes completely against the entire point of the campaign, which is to get people together to play games. His exploit of the rules was not only against the spirit of the game, it also went against the point of the campaign. Not to mention the time wasted that I spent building my army, driving us to the gaming venue, and working out the scenario.
He did sheepishly agree that he could see that was a cheese thing to do, but since the rules allowed it... He was going to do it for the official campaign game, but then play a non-cheese game with me just for fun. This was not much of a consolation, since if we'd been able to get a table and he'd actually done that, I would NOT have been in any mood for a game.
The moral of the story: If you're not sure whether an action is cheesy in a game, ask yourself whether the result is consistent with the point of the game. If it's not... Don't do it.
Story 10: The Vanishing Tower
So near the end of the campaign, there was a massive magical structure that was being fought over in one of the built-in campaign scenarios. It would be a 4-way game and each of us was trying to capture the massive tower at the center of the table. Whoever did so would gain significant bonuses in the campaign and have an advantageous starting position in the final game.
It was Sam, Dave Jeff, and me and the battle was joined.
Capturing the Wizards' Tower at the center of the table was key to the game, and whoever controlled it at the end of the game would win. The only way to control it was to have one of your wizards physically enter the tower.
Mine was the only wizard on a horse. (I was playing Bretonnia, after all.)
So in the first turn, I was able to send my wizard galloping toward the tower on her ridiculously fast unicorn. She made it into the tower in turn 2 and when my magic phase began, her spells were massively supercharged because she was casting from inside this awesome wizards' tower.
Too bad on one of my spellcasting rolls I rolled double 6s.
In Warhammer, rolling double 6s when casting a spell meant that things had gone out of control and the magical energies were ripped from the spellcaster's grasp. The end result could be terrifying or awesome, depending on the result of an additional die roll. So I rolled again.
What happened next can only be described as the worst possible outcome for a game of this type.
In game terms, what happened was that I rolled boxcars (two 6s) again. In narrative terms, the result was that the magical energies unleashed by my wizard caused a magical vortex to appear and rip the tower out of the game universe and be annihilated. Of course, my poor wizard and her unicorn went with it.
Remember, capturing that tower was the game's victory objective. Essentially what I had done was to destroy the whole narrative point of this game, and so it was now impossible for any of the players to win.
So... we just kinda packed up our armies and left.
Nobody was mad at me since it was just the luck of a random die roll, but I still felt bad. It's hard to gather 4 players at once for a game and it felt like I'd wasted everybody's time. They ragged on me in a friendly way, of course, and I know they didn't blame me, but still.
Not much of a moral to this story. sometimes, the dice just screw you over. (This, by the way, is one of the criticisms I've had about Warhammer and Warhammer 40k... too much randomness.)
The Final Chapter
So here we have come to the end of the series.
The table was set up as part of our gaming club's annual New Year's party which we usually held in a building run by the LDS Church on the nearby university campus. The center of the table was a castle which my army occupied. Then there were four other players who showed up with their armies to take it from me. They were: Sam and his Empire army, Dave and his Warriors of Chaos army, Tony and his Wood Elves, and Don with his Dark Elves. The object of the game: Be the player who controlled the castle at the end of the game (which lasted 5 turns). I got to start the game already in the castle because I had won the most games during the campaign.
One thing I specified at the beginning of the game was that because time was somewhat limited and because there were 5 players, in order to keep things moving we were going to have to stay focused, and if some kind of rules error happened along the way, we weren't going to go back and re-do it unless it happened in the same turn it was noticed. What I was afraid of was that somebody would remember something that should have happened a couple of turns before, and then we'd have to go back, do it over, then play through turns we already had. Doing that was bad enough in a one-on-one game, no way were we going to be able to do that in a five-man game and possibly finish in a reasonable amount of time. I made sure to put that out there upfront so that there wouldn't be any drama if it came up later. (Today's Word of the Day: Foreshadowing)
Well, everybody was deployed and coming at the fortress. Fortunately, they were also beating on each other so I didn't have to defend against a massive force by myself. It also helped that Sam was an ally of mine and was actually attacking Dave in order to help me. Dave reached the tower first and used Archaeon as his General.
In Warhammer, Archaeon is regarded as one of the most broken, overpowered, unkillable characters. In fact, it was Archaeon that was at the center of the narrative story that Games Workshop used when they decided to stop supporting Warhammer Fantasy and (literally) destroy the Warhammer world. (To my disgust, Archaeon is back again in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. Let that be yet another reason I won't play that game.) So Archaeon leads a large unit of Dave's best troops up the walls and into one of my towers, to be met by my Bretonnian General. (A generic Lord character, not an overpowered named one.) Needless to say, Archaeon defeated my General in single combat and it looked for all the world like the Chaos Warriors would gain the tower and rule the day...
But there was trouble brewing on the Chaos Warriors' right flank. You see, a couple of turns previous, one of Dave's monsters had started battling one of Sam's units. This monster had a special rule called "Causes Terror," which meant that units fighting it had to take a Leadership test on two dice or flee from it. At some point, Sam and Dave had forgotten to roll this test. Now, suddenly, Dave remembered.
This was a minor problem in a minor part of the battlefield. It would have no effect whatsoever on what was happening in the fortress or with anybody else, and it certainly wasn't game-changing. If they'd remembered, Sam could very well have passed the Leadership test and nothing would have been any different. Now, maybe Dave had other plans for that monster, such as bringing it into the fight for the castle. I don't know. What I do know is that Dave was suddenly expressing outrage over the forgotten Leadership test.
I reminded him that, according to the statement I'd made, which all agreed to, that was a rules mistake that was a couple turns old now, and we were just going to have to let it go. He didn't like that very much and argued that Sam should have had to take the Leadership test for that unit. Well, yes, he should have... but both players had forgotten about it and it was two turns (which was a couple of hours) ago.
This was the point at which things got UGLY.
Dave stood up, shouting and cussing about how unfair that was and how that was complete B.S. Oddly, his rage seemed directed at Sam, not me, even though I, as GM, was the one who refused to allow the takeback, and it's not like he himself wasn't equally to blame for the forgotten die roll. He grabbed his army and started packing it up while the rest of us, as well as the other party guests, sat in stunned silence. Dave finished packing, got his coat on, and headed for the door, his fiancée pushing him out to keep him from going on further with his angry tirade, cussing all the way. (This is in a church building, mind you.)
Now, let me pause here. I'm making Dave out to seem like some kind of volatile monster. He isn't. Well, he's kinda volatile, but not a monster. I'm aware that he was tired and not feeling well, and a combination of those and other factors caused the blowout. He remained one of my closest friends for years after and I loved the guy like a brother, but I can tell you that nobody was sad to see him leave the party that day. He apologized to me a day or two later, but as far as I know, never to anyone else.
Well, with the Chaos Warriors off the table, my job of defending the castle became a lot easier. A couple of turns later I was victorious by a thread, but the victory felt a little hollow. I feel like Dave would have won that game had he stayed, so I don't really feel like I fully earned that victory. I also think that the other players silently felt cheated, because there was little chance of one of them winning the castle now that Dave wasn't there whittling down my forces anymore. Since Sam wasn't coming at me, my entire left flank was safe and I could shift my defenders over to stop the elves.
So in a sense, it was a glorious Bretonnian victory, but in another sense, it was a very anticlimactic end to the 2 year campaign.
The battle raged on for hours. The Wood Elves struck hard at the Southern wall of the Bretonnian fortress. A Bretonnian dragon flew out to meet them but was struck down by the elite Asrai warriors. The Dark Elves advanced slowly, clashing with Warriors of Chaos to the North and East even as the Empire struck the Warriors of Chaos in their left flank. Bretonnian magic lashed out as best it could against the superior magical abilities of the enemy.
The Warriors of Chaos reached the walls first, and their general met Lord Guy deLyonesse in personal combat. Lord Guy was slain, falling bravely in defense of his King and Country. The Grail Knights rallied and denied the Chaos forces possession of the north tower. The Wood Elves pressed hard, the Dark Elves pressed harder and began breaching the southern walls and towers. Murderous bolt thrower fire slew many brave knights in the southeast tower and Bretonnian lives ended in breathtaking numbers, yet the Banner of Bretonnia still flew over the fortress 4 hours into the game.
The Wood Elves and Dark Elves began attacking each other, fighting for one of the towers and Bretonna threw its full weight of numbers against the Warriors of Chaos, desperately holding them back. Eventually, the Dark Elves gained the upper hand over their Woodland cousins and held the southeastern tower, and took their turn to strike the northern tower to consolidate their hold and end the battle victorious.
But Bretonnia wasn't finished yet. Peasant Men-at-arms flooded the tower and died in ghastly numbers as they struggled against the elite Dark Elf Black Guard to stop them from gaining the tower battlements.
Chaos. Fury. Death. It was a massive charnel house of close combat fighting.
Until at last, the battle was over. The fortress grew quiet...
And the Banner of Bretonnia flew proudly over its ramparts.
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