For the past few weeks I've been scouring the net for ways that others have introduced this idea into their games. I've found a huge wealth of information and ideas, from single player missions (which I'll be posting about very soon) through to grand multi-player events spanning years.
What I've ended up coming up with is a fairly modest campaign, highly story driven, that will be wrapped up in a handful of games. It utilises the Planetary Empires set, however a pen and paper would be equally suitable for tracking, I just prefer the visual representation the tiles give.
The set up is simple. An odd number of hex-tiles (or areas on a map) are put together. the layout isn't overly important. They could be arranged in a rough circle, or placed one leading to the next, like a pathway. The odd number serves to ensure there is a clear winner at the end.
Unlike most other campaigns, neither player starts with any territories, so no flags are placed on the map. Only when one player defeats the other will they plant their flag to mark the conquest of that location. Games are fought until every tile has a flag, and the winner, naturally, is the player who has the most.
More often than not, the best course of action is to keep nominating an unclaimed area of the map to fight over so that you can edge one step closer to victory. There is however the option to nominate a location already won by the enemy. This opens up the tactical options, and will hopefully stop any total flattening of poor generals like myself! It also stops the feeling that it's just a best-of-three series of games. The only downside is that the controlling army gets to pick their Warlord trait, implying that they're better prepared for receiving the enemy.There are no campaign turns as such, when you're deciding where to fight simply roll off on a D6, and the winner picks the battle.
These are the rules by which I'll be trying to run a small campaign for my friend and I. I've kept the rules simple as I plan on going heavy on the background, the stories, homebrew missions, and to be honest just to try things out. If this is a success then I'll be upping the ante and throwing in more ideas for the next one.
The next post in this series is going to outline our specific campaign. Where we're fighting, who is fighting, and so on. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.