Warcry Campaign - The Under-Carngard Championships

The UNDER-CARNGARD CHAMPIONSHIPS is the working name I’m giving to this in-person, Warcry narrative campaign weekend I’m planning to run at some point. (If anyone has a better idea for a team, I’d love to hear it!?). I’ve mentioned it before, in other posts about other things, but thought I’d do a post just about the campaign - to have a place to out all the thoughts and be able to refer back to. I haven’t worked out ALL of the details. I haven’t worked out MANY of the details. What I do have is this…

The campaign would take place in the city of Carngard. Well, BELOW the city of Carngard. Cargard its located on the Bloodwind Spoil - a region in the Eightpoints between two highways from the Varanspire to the Realmgates leading to the realms of Chamon and Ghur.. Carngard, also known as Reaver city, is run by a cabal of Chaos warlords and has slave markets and gladiator pits and all sorts of sordid nastiness. Below the streets and alleys of Cargard, however, a massive infestation of Skaven lurks in a sprawling warren of caverns and tunnels. 

Players in this campaign would each control a Skaven warband that is vying for control of the Under-Carngard. 

I have a fuck-tonne of old metal Skaven miniatures. Forty-three are painted, I still have about sixty still to do. I should have enough to make almost NINE Warcry Warbands when I'm done! I may or may not attempt to acquire a few more just so there are a few more options... 

Ideally I'd like to have EIGHT players - nice even number. Hopefully if we got through six rounds MOST players would get to play MOST of the others...? 

I have a BUNCH of cavern terrain. Enough to make a few Warcry battlegrounds and have materials to make a few more (maybe mid summer terrain week out in the garage) . 

We made good use of the cavern terrain in the Shadow War Armageddon campaign! I think the Warcry boards are about 22"x30". The modular cavern terrain are based on 30cmx30cm squares - a little less than 12"x12" so six would be needed for a Warcry battleground - just the stuff on the table in the picture above would make three of them. I'm sure I have more than just this! 

Initially I though I’d organize all the Skaven into warbands myself, maybe with themes running through them - all from one of the Great Clans (Scryre, Verminus, Eshin, etc) or colour coded - like sports teams - with their raggedy clothes using teh same palette and names printed in different colours on their bases to denote which warband they are in... But now I’m thinking I’ll just have them as a big POOL and at the beginning of the campaign all the participants will DRAFT their warbands at the beginning of the campaign! (Then no one can complain I made shitty warbands and they lost because of said terribly made-up warband - which would be fair, I’m okay at making up stories and background fluff and themes and colour coordinating… any army or warband that I’ve made that was actually competitive, was entirely a fluke…)

I’m not certain about the first round, it might just be a roll-off… But there might be a bidding round - bidding for how many points LESS than the normal 1000 points you’re willing to start with? Lowest bider goes first, ties roll off? (OR maybe it will just be whoever commits/signs up first!). Regardless, after the first round, drafting would take place in order of least total accumulated points to highest. Rounds continue and players draft until they’ve reached the point total they bid to start the campaign with (or 1000 points if we’re not bidding). 

It’s been a long time since I read the Wacry rules… and those were the rules for the previous edition… I’d LIKE there to be a narrative element to it, whether using parts of the actual Narrative Campaign rules presented in the game.

I like the idea of having an area control element. I’d make a map of locations under Carngard. Each location controlled might give some sort of bonus - during the campaign and/or as extra victory points at the end of the campaign. Each round different warbands could challenge each other for control of various locations. Players would start with one area. There would be other uncontrolled regions at the start. The first few rounds players would be challenging other to take control of uncontrolled regions. Thereafter, they would be fighting to retain their own regions or take over regions controlled by others. I’ve sketched out a few map ideas, but was generally thinking if there were regions equal to two or three times the number of players, in two to three rounds (assuming players were only fighting over uncontrolled regions) those regions would be snapped up and the remaining campaign could be fought over ones controlled by players. 

Rough-doodly-sketch ideas for maps... areas controlled wouldn't necessarily have to be contiguous! 

I’ve used a Swiss-draw format to determine opponents at weekend campaign/tournaments in the past and that didn’t always work out. During the Ronin campaign two of the players that did the best ended up playing each other three times!? They got along and had a great time, so that was okay… Conversely, the two players that were at the bottom of the standings all weekend ALSO ended up having to face each other three times and were absolutely SICK of each other. 

I though this time we might use standing to determine who gets to challenge other players. The players with the lowest standing get to choose who they challenge each round. They can either challenge a warband to fight over a Narratively, those that are winning need time to consolidate their new holdings and the losers are desperate to attack and gain (or regain) control of locations? Functionally, at least those that are losing have some choice in who they face and can switch things up if they’re not having fun losing to the same player time and time again! 

Or maybe warns that LOST in the previous round, get to choose first, in order of lowest overall standing to highest. The CAN challenge someone who also lost, that would just mean that later challengers would include someone who won in the previous round, but they would go after all the players that lost, and would choose in order from lowest overall standing… though they’d likely be the last to challenge another player and the last to challenge won’t really have any choice in WHO they challenge, just WHERE they challenge them… 

What if a player ends up challenging someone who doesn’t control any territory, and there is no uncontrolled territory…?! Hmmmmm… things to think about. 

WHEN will I run this…? I don’t know yet. Obviously I need to paint the rest of the Skaven… and need to finish the basement renovation (which is on track to be completed by the end of the summer!). If I got REALLY motivated, I could potentially run it this fall. Or I could run it for next February’s Winter Wargaming Weekend/Wargaming Birthday Bash. Or maybe next summer… 

I mean, once I get the stuff DONE, there’s no reason I couldn’t run it multiple times!?  (Of course when have I ever done that? Still have all the armies for a 1066-ish DBA campaign… Still have all the armies for the Ronin campaign…) Or maybe I could find a use for the rats in some OTHER type of event. Maybe something more like a co-operative tabletop series of adventures or role-playing weekend campaign - where players are all members of a party of heroes sent to deal with a Skaven infestation below one of the cities of Sigmar in the Mortal Realms!? (Hmmmmm… I really like THAT idea…) 

I guess I best start with actually READING these current Warcry rules I’ve picked up and play a few games with the rats I’ve got painted!