Campaign Plans

As I mentioned earlier I’d definitely like to try and run some more campaigns. To start with I’m going to run a play by email Hordes of the Things Fantasy Campaign in the fall. I’ll have a number of players out of town playing the various heads of state of the nations involved – they will be playing a game of diplomacy via email and the movements of their armies will create a scenario generator for tabletop battles played with however happens to be available to play locally…

I got to thinking, however, that I’d really like to run more one-day “in-person” campaigns, perhaps as many as two or three each year. I could possibly run one as early as this fall. If I ran three a year, distributing them evenly throughout the year, and used this past Campaign as the starting point that would put one in October and the next one in February. Both seem like they might be decent times. February is perfect for having a Wargaming Birthday Bash Campaign day! I’m not expecting that all the folks that came to the last one would be able to make it out to ALL of them, rather I’m hoping more regular campaigns might give some of the other folks who missed the last one an opportunity to get in on the action.

If I did host another campaign in October it would likely have to be another Hordes of the Things Fantasy campaign as I don’t think I’d have enough armies to do any others just yet – except maybe the “Back of Beyond” campaign. I have been thinking a lot about some possibilities for future campaigns. Here are a few of them…

HOTT – “Generic” Fantasy
Obviously I could easily throw together a HOTT Fantasy campaign any old time now that I have the armies I prepared for this first campaign. As I continue to add to these armies there will be more options for players and/or larger armies and the potential for more participants.

I have Elves, Orcs and Dwarves and Amanda’s “HOTT Chick” army. Of course any of the DBA historical forces I have can also be fielded as HOTT armies with (or without) the addition of a few extra fantastical elements. With the stuff I have (plus a couple extra things) I could easily put together a second Elf army (wood elves, maybe) and a second and third Orc and Dwarf Army!? (This doesn’t even include my Lord of the Rings armies…)

HOTT – Lord of the Rings
I think it would be fun to have a campaign set in Middle Earth around the time of the “War of the Ring” and I happen to have a number of suitable armies in the works. I have an Army of Isengard more or less completed and have enough stuff that I could put together armies for Rohan, Mordor, and Moria. I’d need to put together an army for Gondor and possibly some (more!?) Dwarves and some of the “Fallen Realms” – Harad, Easterlings, etc. That’ll probably be a ways off… But it’s fun to think about…

DBA – 1066+
This has sort of been a dream for a while, but I now have, in addition to more or less complete Anglo-Danish and Viking armies, enough figures to do Norman, Welsh, Irish, and Scotts armies! This is closer to happening than the Campaign for Middle Earth!

DBA-Roman Civil War
Okay I don’t actually know much about the history of Rome (which is sad, considering I did take a Roman Classics class at one point…), But it seems to me they did have some civil wars, and I do happen to have almost enough for three or four DBA Early Imperial Roman armies… Of course I could just run an campaign centered on Rome where there happens to be three or four Roman players and they can work together to crush the other players and expand their empires… or have a civil war to see who is Master of all Rome – while the others pick away at their empire… Could be fun! I guess I’d have to get some additional armies for this one.

DBA- Alexanders Successors
I have enough of the old Rafm Armies of the Hellenistic Period to do at least a couple Successor armies… I really don’t know anything about the period, though I imagine after the death of Alexander there was much squabbling and in-fighting amongst his successors… It would certainly be colouful! If anyone can recommend a good (short!) readable book on what happened to Alexanders Empire after his demise…

18thc - Ticorne, Horse and Musket – Imaginations
I thought it might be fun to put together forces for a half dozen or so “Imagi-Nations” for a campaign nominally set somewhere between the War of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years war. I’d use the DBA 1500-1900 extension and twelve stand armies of very generic home-cast tricorne figures. This might be fun to get others in on the painting and designing of the armies of their various duchies, nations, etc.– if I could get them to agree to a common system of basing!?

Great War Era – Back of Beyond
The Far East during the Russian Civil War seems a suitably chaotic setting for a DBA-ish campaign. I could offer a number of different factions that could make temporary agreements and turn around and then stab each other in the back when it was beneficial to do so… If I could hammer out some rules that I like, this could very easily be done as I have Warlord Chinese, Tsarists, and Bolsheviks. If we were using armies of about 12 stands like DBA I could probably put together TWO of EACH right now! To this I could add some “Canadian Interventionists” using the Great War Canadians I also already have… It might be fun to make a few more armies – the Army of British India, “Basmachi” Rebels, etc.

Great War Era – Balkan Fantasy 1910
Similar to the Horse and Musket “Imagi-Nation” idea above I thought it might be fun to come up with some fictional Balkan countries (Bertzegovnia, Zergia, Syldavia, Borduria, etc) and make up a number of small forces for each and have a little Balkan war nominally set in the early years of the 20th Century.

Diplomacy/Europe 1880 -1900
Possibly using the map from the board game Diplomacy – we could have a fictional world war (or at least a European war) set in the latter years of the 19th Century using the DBA 1500-1900 extension we’ve been toying with. Historical armies would be used - Germans, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Ottomans, Italians, French, British… (plus Belgians? Dutch? Balkan nations?)

So, who’d be up for a campaign in October!? Or February…? It looks like the “Back of Beyond” or another “Generic” Fantasy campaign would be the most realistic possibilities for October. Which of the others would you be interested in?