Mini Campaign System

This mini campaign system was created by me and my gaming buddy to stop us always creating similar army lists. This was developed for another rule set but I thought it might work for epic. At the same time we find is a fun system to vary things a bit. You need to fight only one battle with this system.

Set Up

We use bits of card to determine what terrain is used for a game.

First create your army list.

Then get 6 bits of card (or 9 if you want to and just have the extras with the balanced plus a number). Write on two the number 8, two the number 12 and on the last two the number 24. For each pair of cards write on one cover and the other hills. Put a different letter on each card, say A to F.

The numbers on the cards are for how many bits of terrain the game board will have. So between 6 to 24 pieces.

The word Cover means 2/3 of the pieces of terrain have to be buildings/trees providing cover. The word Hills means that 2/3 of the terrain has to be hills, blocking LOS and in epic terms a -1 to hit if partially behind it, but not providing a cover save.

E.g. the card Cover 24 “A” means that 24 pieces of terrain must be used and 2/3rds of them have to provide cover. The A is an identifier.

Rules Simple Version

Before the game get the cards shuffle them the shortest person draws a card (I’m tall so never get to draw…..) and that card tells you what terrain to put out.

Rules Clever Version… long, time consuming etc

1. put the cards next to each other in two rows, so 2x3
2. write down the card your army starts on.
3. check to see if either of you have picked the same card if you have fight a battle setting up the terrain according to the card.
4. if you haven’t picked the same card leave a marker on the card your army has been on and pick the same or another card.
5. check to see if you have picked the same card
6. continue this until a battle is fought or one player has a marker on 4 cards.
7. if a player has a marker on 4 cards that player is declared the winner and can either decide what terrain card the battle is fought on, or can choose what cards to remove either hills/cover or the number of terrain pieces.
8. shuffle the remaining cards winner draws (finally my chance) draws a card.

Why did we do this?

We found that when you have a chance of fighting a battle with 24 pieces of terrain with most being buildings or 8 hills it made you think about your list in different way. If you could have time the “clever rules” could mean that your could make a no titan, infantry heavy army, that if you played the game aggressively you could win and make your opponent the fight the battle of Stalingrad with warhounds and shadowswords if there list was that way…good luck.

Of course what was on the cards you can vary or use the planetary empires hexes etc etc

I have only used this twice with epic, but used it a lot for other things. I will do more with epic. Thoughts, criticism or baggings all welcome.

It's nice - so a random terrain generator basically?

I think I'd still take the same all comers list though - a specialist list could get screwed if it gets the wrong terrain

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My shifting projects

True, the main idea we had started with was from the crossfire ww2 rules. In that game which is a company level infantry game the critical thing is that to have a good game you MUST have sufficient terrain if you do not then all you will reproduce is the somme.

This leads to the idea of average maximum distance. I remember in the 80's the soviets had supposidly worked out that the average maximum distance in germany was 1500m...so they made their weapons effective up to that range (made for bad tanks in the sinai desert against the isrealis) but we will never know in germany thank god.

Really it is about what is the average maximum distance and the type of terrain your want to create. I havent really looked at this for epic but say it is 60cm currently. If you change this to say 30cm average maximum distance with covering terrain. What does this mean for a list, is a shadowsword with its 90cm range gun a good purchase or a warhound? or is something else like a krieg grenaider in centaurs.

This is just an idea.

The main thing is that if you vary the average maximum distance you should be able vary the types of units that are effective making for more varied game play. Epic is a robust fun system and I like playing it