Running a weekend campaign

Hi,

Me and my friends settled for playing a Mordheim campaign next weekend. So far we have played random games at the club and followed the warband's rating and developement in the warband roster as usual. This is the first time we would be playing Mordheim in a much more controlled fashion and because of that I turn to you, the more learned ones.

So the problem is that what kind of campaign system would be ideal for our situation? We have 6 players with 1 warband each: two Lizardmen, one Norse warband, one Shadow Warrior warband, one skaven and one Night Goblin warband. Also we have terrain only for two 4'x4' tables which means that we may only play two games simultaneously. The gaming time is two days in a row to total up to 24 hours of gameplay.

I've been searching this whole evening how people have ran their campaigns, but I did not yet find a suitable way for two intensive days of playing. We could of course just play random games four players at a time and then after two days see who wins by comparing warband rating or something else, but that would be rather boring.

What kind of method for determining the winner would you suggest in this situation and what kind of campaign system (choosing of the scenarios) would you use? All comments are welcome as I still yet have 6 days time for preparations.

Cheers,
Scythas

With that many player i would have thought the most fun campaign ending would be a winner takes all game with all players involved. (push the tables together).
Put an objective in the middle and let chaos reign.

Having labored over a campaign system for two players with multiple warbands, which has broken things more than it helped, i would say the biggest thing to avoid in any system is avoid any randomness over who fights who.
Have a table and make sure everyone fights everyone else at least once, but in your case i would have a four way multi player game every third game or so (you might have to do some maths here to make sure everyone got the same number in).
Or with only two tables always have one two player and one four player game going.
This way you get the best of all the different possibilities.

Scenarios i would just stick to random, that way no one can design warbands for specific scenarios.

edit: oh, and take a camera with you and put some reports on the forum, some of us like that

A weekend of 24 hours of Mordheim with 6 players sounds like a lot of fun.

You have two game boards, which is good. 4x4 might get cramped with multiplayer games but so be it, more action, am I right?

qboid has the right idea, you could start off with one table having a 1v1, another table having 4-way multiplayer. When that is done, the top 2 bands (winning player and last one to route) in the multiplayer game go to face each other 1v1 and the other two previous 1v1 players join in a 4-way. Once these games are done, the last two people who haven't played a 1v1 yet now get their turn to do so, and the rest play 4-way.

Then, once everyone has had their chance at a 1v1 you draw names out of a hat and set up two 3-way mutliplayer tables.

I'm not sure how long this will take, but you can repeat the rhythm to suit your needs (another round of 1v1 & 4-ways where you make sure people who have never played 1v1 against each other have a chance to do so, and then more 3-way, or any combination thereof) and then have a big final game by putting both boards together and having a 6-player brawl, as qboid suggested.

If your warband wins a 1v1, you get 1 victory-point.
If your warband wins a 4-way, you get 3 victory-points, and 2 victory-points for coming in second.
If your warband wins a 3-way, you get 2 victory-points.
If your warband wins the 6-way final, you get 5 victory-points, 4-victory-points for 2nd and 3-victory points for 3rd.

(The last game can get crazy where the warbands with lower points gang up against the leading point bands)

At the end of the campaign, most victory-points win. You can change these points as you see fit, these are just what I quickly jotted down and thought might work best. Or not use them at all and go by ratings at the end. Or even just go by who wins the big 6-way brawl

Have fun and do take pictures and battle reports

The main problem with a 1v1 on a table and multiplayer on the other is that 1v1 battles generally take longer than multiplayer battles (especially free for all multiplayer). Maybe you could force alliances on the multiplayer table with both warbands in a team acting at the same time so it is like a big 1v1 battle.

I agree with having a big free for all battle with all six warbands playing to determine a final winner. The main concern with this is that you will need to have a tight objective or limit the battle to a finite number of turns or else allocate enough time to allow the battle to finish cleanly.

+1 to battle reports.

Whoops... 1v1 generally are a lot shorter... I got the sentence back-to-front in my previous post.

RationalLemming wrote:

Whoops... 1v1 generally are a lot shorter... I got the sentence back-to-front in my previous post.

True. Maybe they could play twice?

Maybe include a time limit for the games.

1.5 hours for a 1on 1 and max 3 h hours for a 4 way battle.

The 6 player battle should be played with no limit but expect to play for 4-6 hours and more. ( this depends also on the scenery you. More and higher buildings with ramps on higher levels to go from building to building makes the games slower but more interesting.

I also would try to use scenarios where players are forced to get active by conquering buildings / areas searching for treasures or running wild for wyrd stone. I know there are some players who love to camp in an upper level of a ruin and wait. I hope you do not have such players, because such games are not so much fun.

Thank you all for your input!

In the end, 2 of the 6 players canceled their attendance and one random guy just popped in so all in all we had 5 players. We played five rounds of two 1v1 games while one spectated. This way everyone got 4 games. Then after 8 hours we played 4 player free for all (one player got too tired and just chatted about Wh40k-roleplaying game with others who were around) where the scenario was of my own devising.

We had a Magical Rock -weapon in the middle of the 48"x48" map and whoever stood last with it won and gained the weapon for his own. It counts as a sword and gives +1 to hit and +1 to wound. We also used some random weather options from some chart google brought up. After every player turn we rolled D6:

1-3: random building gets hit by a lightning and gets on fire if 4+ is rolled.
4-5: random model with at least 5+ armour gets hit by lightning: S5 hit. (Our lizardmen player with skinks with shields liked this a lot )
6: random model gets hit with S5.

In the end all the buildings were on fire and models inside were stunned to death! Vampire jumped from a blazing building with the arttefact in her gasps to a river, but chaos marauders ganged her in the end gaining the sword and winning the game as my Night goblins routed for the first rout test (damn you Ld7!!!).

We also tried new houre rules:

Rules for shields and bucklers are merged, so either one gives +1 to armour save and the ability to parry. Also a re-roll to parry if model also uses sword or dwarven axe in the other hand as per normal rules for bucklers.
Ithilmar Armour counts as light armour, so everyone who can buy only light armour from own warband inventory is also able to buy and wear Ithilmar Armour. Gromril Armour counts as heavy armour in this respect as usual.
Armour save modifiers are replaced by the following: S5 -1, S6 -2, S7 -3, S8 -4, S9 -5, S10 -6.
If a model has an armour saving throw, it is not modified by strength to worse than 6+, meaning that model always gets at least 6+ armour saving throw. Critical hits and special rules that ignore armour saves also ignore this 6+ save.
Spears strike first if charged.
Climbing can be done in the middle of the move, a model still has to make a climbing test.
All black powder weapons do not use the Prepared Shot rule.
All black powder weapons use the misfire table, although none of these results can destroy the weapon.

We all liked the chances expecially to the armour giving some idea to actually wear armour and shields. After the 10 hours of gaming yeasterday few players didn't want to continue today, so in the end it was only 1 day of gaming.

Might need to try again in the future.

Cheers,
Jussi

nice one, sounds suitably chaotic and fun!

Whenever I run a campaign over a weekend and I have done many over the years, It largely depends on how many folk are playing. If its even numbers make sure everyone gets and equal amount of fights and then a multiplayer game into the mix.

If someone is drawing ahead and lagging behind match people up to stall if they are ahead and give a chance to if they are falling behind.

With the underdog rules you have the joy of the underdog ruling especially in multiplayer scenarios where everyone gets a bit of the action, as you add the total of the warbands ratings who are against you and that gives a fair boost.

If someone someone is dominating send them against the west gate campaign or the thing in the woods

Frienzied mob for those falling massively behind or grave yard clearance just to prop them back up.