A new online narrative campaign is being run by Woehammer, with battles fought from all over the world over Tabletop Simulator, following Path to Glory rules and a custom ruleset for map movement and even secret marching orders!
If you are interested in map campaign mechanics and gritty army movements, you’ll want to sink your teeth into this system!
The campaign started on August 1st, and will continue until October 31st.
“Multiple players will take part in trying to claim the island of Cratonia on behalf of their Grand Alliance!
A maximum of 5 players from each Grand Alliance will cooperate with each other to claim as much of the island as possible. Players will be able to deploy garrisons and send messages via envoys to other allied players in the hope to find their opponents and destroy them in the field.
There may also be the odd event that crops up that affect players as they campaign across the island.”
“If you want to take part, then hop on over to our discord server and contact me on the TTS channel. The first moves [have taken] place on 1st August 2023, and it’s open to all no matter your skill level.”
The map campaign rules are inspired by some of the best rulesets of olde, with secret orders to the Campaign Organizer where players have no idea where their enemies are on the map, and the only way to communicate among players is through messengers (who can take a few campaign turns to get to their destination)!
The terrain affects army movements, and even if enemy armies are visible! Furthermore, the campaign integrates with the Path to Glory rules, including leaving behind garrisons while the main army continues traveling the map, in exchange for Glory Points. The garrisons are shared between players in the same team, and any one can come represent the valiant defenders.
Conquering settlements also brings benefits to recovering casualties and providing additional forces. Not unlike Total War Warhammer games 😉 .
The concerted effort of every player in their Grand Alliance helps build a territory perimeter, which will then be up to their enemies to breach.
We chatted with the lead NEO for the event, Peter Holland (@woe_hammer), about how players are enjoying it, and how it’s been like, working with such a style of online campaign.
Q: Tell us a bit about what Woehammer is about, and how this idea of a campaign came about.
A: Woehammer was started two years ago and is probably mostly known for producing commentary on the top three Age of Sigmar lists at competitive events. We write primarily about the competitive side of AoS.
Once we started our Discord server the natural next step was running our own TTS tournaments. These have evolved over time, but I’ve always looked for a way to incorporate the narrative element into my games.
In December ’21 I played my first game of Kriegsspiel (KS) which I wrote about on the site. I had a blast, and the love of Kriegsspiel never left. When players started talking about playing Path to Glory as a TTS campaign I jumped at the chance at taking what I’d learnt from Kriegsspiel and applying it to the campaign.
Q: This kind of map campaign ruleset is rarely seen these days in Warhammer, with players submitting their actions secretly to an organizer, and have no idea whats happening with the other players. Its an ambitious dream for many NEOs to go this very simulationist route. What inspired you to go for the full Fog of War?
A: In KS, there’s more often than not a Games Master who runs the battle (usually with some help). The two sides would have a conflab before a battle begins, talk about their tactics and then try and follow that through on the battlefield. Any messages between the players while a KS game is being carried out are by written notes handed to the GM to pass along. It’s intended to replicate exactly what a general can see and have knowledge of in an actual military campaign.
In that respect, a lot of our map campaign rules are very similar. A grand alliance channel was set up to allow those players to discuss tactics and movements before the campaign began. Once under way, each player has their own channel where they receive updates from the GM about what’s happened that their general may be aware of.
If players are moving together, then they may have a joint channel so they are still able to talk freely.
It’s prompted an awful lot of role-playing from the group of gamers, a few of which have been out-and-out competitive gamers when they’ve played Warhammer.
At the end of the campaign, the winners will be decided by the territory each Grand Alliance holds, as well as a number of secret conditions players may or may not have achieved.
Q: Using Tabletop Simulator (TTS) makes it very versatile to gather a lot of narrative minded players from everywhere to participate. Especially for people who want to play Path to Glory but don’t know anyone nearby who is interested. How has coordinating the games been, especially with all the extra PtG rules?
A: We’ve had experience of this for the last couple of years running our competitive TTS events. So far, its gone surprisingly smooth. Once players meet on the campaign map we give them a week to organise their game on TTS, there’s been so much drive in having games I don’t think we’ve had any issues as yet.
This won’t give too much away, but recently in the campaign there was a large battle for the city of Ki-Meia in the centre of the map which involved no less than six players from 3 grand Alliances. I honestly thought it would create a massive bottleneck with the campaign, but the players were so enthusiastic they’d had all their games completed within a week, with one player taking part in three of the games.
As for the actual rules, a number of players haven’t played path to Glory before but with the downtime between games it’s been my pleasure to help the newer players go through their post battle routines (we use a mod called Dice Maiden on the server so players can roll virtual dice in their channels to make sure everything is above board).
Q: You took the bold step to not only tie in the Glory points spending into campaign benefits, but especially to allow armies to be fielded at different points sizes of each other, depending on units the player wants to field from their Order of Battle. What has been the experience with that so far?
A: It’s been hard ironing it all out. While we say that armies can increase in size and meet on the field of battle, any larger armies are limited to 125% of their opponents value. This way they still have an advantage for being the larger army, but hopefully its not large enough so that the underdog has no chance of winning. After all, name me a time in history when two armies exactly the same size have met on the field of battle?
What I will say, is while GW do a great job at working on the balance at 2k the Path to Glory system feels like it needs a lot more work. Summoning at lower points levels was a large debate point before we began the campaign, and in the end this was tied into the maximum 125% rule we created for army sizes mentioned above. Other than that I would like to say its going smoothly so far.
Though myself and the players have already highlighted rules etc that we like, and those that we don’t from the core and battletomes. I think that this campaign will prompt a project on the server of overhauling the Path to Glory rules to some extent.
Q: How do the logistics of the game turns work? Players only battle once they start bumping into each other on the map. Are there any players who have to wait a long time for a game, because they are walking in circles around each other?
A: Players give me an instruction as to what they want to do with their army. This could be something like “March on X location” or “send a unit of forest goblin Spider riders to search the forest for an ambush.” I will then move all the player armies on a TTS map until I think there’s something of note happening. Each player had a vision of 5 squares, so there’s very little chance given the map design and the number of choke points of enemy armies sneaking past them of missing them entirely. We’re on campaign day 7 now and I can’t think of a single player who hasn’t been in combat yet.
When a battle takes place, I judge based on the size of that game how long in campaign days that battle may take. So for a small game of two players at 600 pts, I make an assumption that both armies would be sizing each other up, making their plans, actually taking part in the battle and then recovering from said battle all during the course of a day. An event like the 6 player Ki-Meia battle I mentioned before, I decided to stretch over 2-3 campaign days to account for the logistics of it all.
While those players are then locked for that campaign day, other players may be able to finish whatever moves they have or even make it into combat themselves whilst that first battle is taking place. This way it speeds up the campaign a little rather than just having to wait on two players.
At the moment looking at the campaign map, the battle for Ki-Meia is over but there are three other battles taking place around the same time.
Q: Running this kind of campaign takes a lot of organization and people management, I imagine. What advice would you give to ambitious NEOs who’d like to dip their toes into fully a Game Mastered Fog of War map campaign like yours?
A: I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of work for one person to set up, I have 40 channels for a 19 player game. As well as the group planning channels and player channels, there are channels for outstanding messages between players telling me when to deliver them. There’s a channel for me to roll dice in for certain events.
But once the campaign is underway, the actual organisation isn’t too difficult. Its just noting on a map where everyone it, taking screenshot for them as to what they can see once or twice a week and asking them what they want to do.
If you’re looking to organise something like this, then I would say Discord is your friend. Being able to set up channels for each player that only they can see, and then additional channels for your own admin is a godsend. Likewise with TTS or similar, it’s essential to have your own map with the player tokens on so that you know exactly where everyone is at any point.
I would say, be careful on your map choice, and try and not have a huge map if you’ve only got 3 or 4 players taking part. You also don’t want a map that is too specific in the routes that players can take. One area of our map to the south is basically turning into a tug of War between two factions because of this. You want room so that players feel like they can make tactical decisions in the routes they take but not so much that the armies can wander around and never meet.
Q: What would you like to say to players out there, to motivate them to run this kind of narrative map campaign for their club, or online?
A: Just do it! You’ll have a blast. Many of our players hadn’t played any narrative before but are now so into it, and the actual in-game messaging system, that they’re sending messages in their characters’ voice.
While being narrative it almost has more strategy behind it than a standard warhammer game. Players have had to plan their movements across the map together and sens messages to each other with information they’ve found. And this is on top of the strategy you get from a normal game of Warhammer. Coupled with the almost RPG element of it, I don’t think you can beat it.
Will we be doing it again? Definitely!
If anyone reading this wants to take part, although the game is live anyone can join at any point if we have space. Currently we have a spot for a destruction player if anyone wants to dip their toe into narrative.
Otherwise we’ll run another event probably early in 2024.
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Thank you, Peter!
We will be following the campaign online, so please keep us updated on the popular discords and social media!
You can find the Campaign Rules page here for more details.
What do you think about this online campaign?
Do you have any questions for the NEO, and how they organize all the background management system for such intricate map details and territory control?
Leave your comments below!
Narrative Event Organizer Network 