It's a (HOTT) Knockout! - Episode Five

Will this campaign ever end? We're now approaching the tenth game, and there are only two nations left, but the Inca failed to achieve a victory in their last battle after invading Prester John's Swiss holdings. What will happen next?

Season Ten

Firstly, let us remind ourselves of the current position. The Inca control three regions whilst Prester John controls two. Whoever invades the other has a stab at winning the campaign. And both nations are on an aggression of +1

Let's roll those dice!

Inca: 4+1=5
Prester John: 2+1=3

So despite their defeat in the previous season the Inca are back. This time they strike straight at Prester John's home region.

Prester John had an extended line anchored on a settlement, whilst the Inca massed themselves against the enemy right.

Amazonian lurkers attacked the archers but were driven off. However it broke up the enemy position a little and cost them a few PIPs as they reorganised in order to advance through the settlement.

Prester John advanced to keep the settlement covering his flank, whilst the Inca surged forward as fast as they could in order to catch the enemy before they could redeploy to get better matchups.

Contact! Both armies were overlapped on their right.

The Great Inca was fortunate enough to face warband, and ploughed straight through them. The knights to their right were also destroyed.

So Prester John's right had collapsed, whilst the Inca right, made up of hordes, was steadfastly resisting archers and the elephant.

The Great Inca turned on some knights, and destroyed them as well.

Both armies were now very broken up, but the Inca had the better position.

The Great Inca's rampage was stopped by some blades, whilst Prester John's elephant was being drawn away from the fight by recoiling hordes.

The blades couldn't resist the Great Inca for long, though. They were destroyed and that broke Prester John's army.

The Inca won 12-4, losing a horde, their lurker and a blade.

And as victorious attackers the Inca now took over Prester John's territories to win the campaign

A photos of the winners. They had fought four battles and won three of them.

So that's the campaign over. It went on longer than I thought it would, with the stalemate conflict between the Fishmen and Prester John dominating the middle period. The Swiss and the Elves only fought in two battles, although the Elves did manage to extend their territory.

This was a fun way to run a campaign, and might be interesting to try with even more armies. I found that giving all winners a +1 aggression and losers a -1 created a nice variation in who attacked and who didn't, so will use that again.