Idle Thoughts On A HOTT Campaign

If you read this blog regularly, you'll know I'm a fan of mapless campaigns, that are simply an excuse to link battles together with minimal bookkeeping.

One popped into my head this morning whilst I was on the train to work, so I thought I'd post it here, partially so I have it written up, and partially because by sharing it people might add some ideas of their own. It does use ideas from earlier campaign systems I've rambled about here.

Anyway, it's for HOTT. It assumes that you use fixed 24AP armies (although it would work if you allowed a player to change a few AP in each game). It also assumes an even number of players, and that there's at least four of them. It's designed such that in each round the players play simultaneously; that's an important feature in a campaign; HOTT is a pretty short game, but  if you have a group of players together for a campaign it's a bit dull if some of them are sat watching two other players playing their entire game before they get their chance.

So, each player has a 24AP army, and gets three Resource tokens of the same colour. Each player has a different colours for their Resource token.

You win the campaign when you end a round with three different-coloured Resource tokens in your collection.

The campaign is played in a series of rounds.

In each round players choose an opponent. In order to determine the order in which this happens, each player rolls a D6 and adds the number of tokens they have to the score. In the event of a tie, the player with the fewest token goes first, then the player with the fewest colours, and if there's still a tie, dice for it. The lowest-scoring player declares an attack on another player. Keep going until all players are paired up - obviously a player who is attacked doesn't get to choose; they're locked into a battle already.

(This process allows players who are behind in the campaign first pick of opponents, allowing them to choose easier battles in order to get back into the game.)

Play the battles. The player who chose their opponent is the attacker, the other is the defender.

A side loses the battle according to the rules. However if a player lost their previous battle, they lose if they take 10AP of losses rather than 12AP. Note that this could apply to both players in the battle.

In addition work out the margin of victory. Both sides score Victory Points (VP) as follws:

A player scores 2 VP for each enemy AP that is destroyed or is ensorcelled at the end of the battle
A player scores 1 VP for each enemy AP that fled the field or moved off the battlefield.
A player scores 4 VP if they captured the enemy stronghold
A player scores 4 VP if the enemy general was lost (regardless of how it happened).

A winning attacker can take a random Resource token from the defender. But if their VP score is at least double that of their opponent, they choose which resource token they take.

A winning defender can take a random Resource token from the attacker only if their VP score is at least double that of the attacker.

(You generally only get Resource tokens if attacking, unless you win big as a defender. Since players are less likely to attack as they acquire more tokens, it does make it slightly harder to gain resources as you do better in the campaign. The VP are designed to allow players who feel they are in an unwinnable game to reduce the margin of victory by retreating units off the table.)

After the battles, all players get their lost elements back; players always run their full 24AP armies.

(This prevents the 'death spiral' effect, where once a player loses they continue to lose because their army is under-strength or otherwise seriously penalised. The reduced breakpoint does encourage a player not to lose,, but the effect isn't cumulative.)

Needless to say I haven't tried this out.