With my hobby time being extremely limited at the moment (you may have noticed the lack of blog activity...), my thoughts have turned to what I can do that isn't painting or gaming, neither of which are particularly practical options while we are trying to sell our house and deal with all the trials of relocating to another part of the country.
So I got thinking about setting up a Mighty Empires campaign. I can generate a map and convert it to hex paper so I can file it away easily. Everything can be marked on the map or tracked on notepaper for easy storage and minimal occupation of space. One of the good things about Mighty Empires is that it works as a stand alone game as well, so until things settle down, I can resolve battles using the game mechanics. Knowing me, progress might be slow, so by the time we've moved I might be able to focus my painting to what is going on in the campaign, especially my massive pile of Empire lead.
I think I'll start with a 4 nation campaign. Bretonnia, Empire and Undead can be the first three as I'm collecting them already. A second ‘evil’ army would be good and Chaos should be fairly cheap to collect, given the high points value of a lot of their forces, so they can be the fourth. Sorted. In addition to that I could plan to have any neutral empires encountered themed to a specific race, such as Orcs, just to mix things up a little.
Here's a picture of the map, as generated using the Mighty Empires tiles:
And here's my sketched version, which I will make prettier as I go (note it is rotated 90 degrees). The only difference is that I moved the Chaos capital a bit further away from the Undead. Tweaks like this are one of the benefits of converting to a paper map!
I've left space for expansion to the north in case I want to introduce new races later.
Generating the initial empires has already seen some narrative elements suggest themselves to me.
The Empire start with 3100 points. You can see form the map that their capital is well protected by surrounding mountains. I think they've probably encountered the undead before as they seem to have built two towers in the gaps that enemies could exploit.
With the Empire being a buffer between them and the Undead, the Bretonnians have focused on the construction of a second city and villages have sprung up in the surrounding farm land. At present there exists an uneasy truce between Bretonnia and the Empire in this land. They start with 3000 points.
The Undead gained a foothold here when previous settlers established a city near a huge swamp. The colonists soon succumbed to sickness and plague, leaving corpses ripe for the foul intentions of a powerful necromancer. He has recently waged a campaign against the Empire but was forced back. Since then, he has been biding his time and recovering his power. The Undead begin with 4100 points.
(Note: since taking the above picture I realised the swamp is impassible and should not have the village there. As a result I moved it to the hex above and to the left.)
Unknown to the other inhabitants, a rift has recently opened in the mountainous area to the north, spewing forth the foul servants of Chaos. They are starting off weak, with only 2500 points, but their location means they can bide their time and gather strength, striking at a moment of their choosing.
So that's the background for the campaign. I don't know if I will draw up full army lists if I can't play out the battles on the tabletop at the moment, but it might be an interesting addition and add some flavour.
Since writing the above, I've started the first turn and the Undead have just raised a 600 point force right on top of one of the Empire towers thank to some fortunate Equinox magic. I think the campaign will be an interesting one!
