Warmaster Ancients 5-Player Campaign!

Howdy folks,

My little gaming group has decided to play a rather large campaign game, and I thought it would be nice to cover it here on my blog and share it with the gaming community worldwide.

The setting - rough 'Ancients' period
The players - Rome Republic, Greek, Carthage, Celtiberian, Seleucid
The rules - for table-top battles: Warmaster Ancients, for the campaign: based on basic campaign in Ancient Armies expansion
The map - from the old board game 'Imperial Governor'


The map at the start of the Campaign -

Each player begins with a Home Region (darkest hex), and 10 supporting regions.

The supporting regions provide the players with a choice of either Gold or Troops. Each region (and new regions as they are added), are rolled from a random chart and include areas like Rivers, Cities, Hills, Mountains, Pastures, Wastes, Deserts and so on. The different type of regions provide a different level of Gold income, or a different troop type.

Towns for instance can produce either 70 gold, or 2x cheapest Infantry from the players lists.
While Forests can produce either 40 gold, or a unit of Archers.

Each player also begins the game with 3x 1000point armies chosen from their respective Warmaster Ancient lists. They can then add to these lists any troops they generate from their controlled regions, so armies are never the predictable set 1000pts, and opponents are never completely sure of what they will be facing in battle.

Gold is used to raise new armies and pay for existing troops.

Players have two weeks to issue orders to their armies, with one extra week reserved to handle any outstanding games. No orders can be made in the third week to avoid last minute abuse. Players are also granted a 'Defender' bonus if they get their armies into position and have no response from their opponent within 7 days. The system is designed to encourage early orders and a quick response to keep the action flowing.

Orders take two forms - a 'Conquest' order, which is a direct challenge to a specific player and involves one players army marching out to capture land between the two players, or, a 'Campaign' order which involves a players army marching into enemy controlled lands and causing havoc.
Table top battles are played when armies meet in response to an order.

Conquest orders gain the winner a new region to add to their existing area.
Campaign orders steal gold from an area and half from surrounding areas.

Gold goes firstly to the Armies baggage area (the baggage also used to restore points of troops after each battle), which is a table top feature like a terrain piece, fully capturable and fully lootable!
This makes Campaigning armies very rich if they can make it home.


Once we are a few months into the game and have ironed out all the creases, flaws, and mistakes, if there is any interest in the rules we are using I will gladly upload them here as pdf for others to try.

Battle reports to follow soon as games are played!

thanks
Chris