The Ultio Expedition: Ep.4, Ankori Colony
As a run up to the Narrative Event at WargamesCon, the Narrative Guys are running an online campaign for the participants. It is interesting because the two main factions, the 290 Combined Task Force (us) and the Hounds of Abbadon (them) live far apart. So our confrontation is indirect. Our games on the table must be played against members of our own side with one player representing the opposition. For the 290th, we don't decide who is representing the opposition until the game is over, and then we randomly dice for each side. It removes any temptation to hold back while playing the bad guys. You don't know if you are the bad guys until the win/loss is determined. It reminds me of the "America's Army videogame. Every player sees themselves as the Americans and the opposition as the terrorists/mafia/ badguys.
The campaign objective is to control the Warp Anomalies. Control of a Warp Anomaly is established by occupying all of the surrounding hexes.
After a couple of weeks of battle, the map looks like this:
I can't possibly report on all the battles, but I can tell you that our guys have played and reported battles from all over Houston: our FLGS Goldmine Games, our clubhouse, our houses, and the Bayou Battles game convention last weekend.
Here are some beauty shots:
Bayou Battles
the Dark Mechanicus are even coming in from the ceiling!
Thanks for looking!
The campaign objective is to control the Warp Anomalies. Control of a Warp Anomaly is established by occupying all of the surrounding hexes.
After a couple of weeks of battle, the map looks like this:
Here are some beauty shots:
Bayou Battles
the Dark Mechanicus are even coming in from the ceiling!
Thanks for looking!
That a very cleaver idea rolling to see which side you where fighting for after the game & a great way of keeping a bit of balance as well, thanks for sharing Will.
ReplyDeleteWe have some young'uns playing, and it was pretty clear we would need to have a mechanism to negate any temptation.
ReplyDelete;)
Thanks
All your reports are always a pleasure to the sight. But honestly, I've been about ten minutes trying to understand the story behind the Mechanicus on the ceiling!!
ReplyDeleteHi Suber,
DeleteIt was just a joke. The ceiling is low in that part of the store, and the Skitarii player had put magnets on his bases. So he stuck them to the nails holding up the ceiling panels.
Super lame old geek humor. :)
Excuse me while I go make sure my socks match my underwear today. (If you go read Cheetor's blog, that's what uncool old guys do)
Well, I'm incredibly confused, but it looks pretty and I suspect it's been interesting. If you don't dice off to see which side was which until after how do you link them together into a campaign? Are all the battles arbitrarily even? (It's a sensible mechanism to prevent intentionally throwing it. Just . . . not completely sure how it works with the campaign.) Anyway . . . Awesome!
ReplyDeleteHey Composer,
ReplyDeleteYes it was completely arbitrary...
BUT the campaign had 2 purposes
1. Populate the map. As a setup to the big event it got the players involved instead of just showing up and being spoon fed.
2. Get the players to play a lot of games with their armies. Familiarity with your list speeds the game up tremendously, and by motivating everyone to play as many games as they can a month out, I can tell you, we were much faster at WargamesCon than we would have been otherwise.