Hinterlands: Skirmish Campaigns in the Mortal Realms

[Moldek]

@bottle don't know if you're looking for this but I'd love to contribute to Hinterlands. While I don't play much at all I am an artist and I'd love to have a project that lets me do some dark fantasy illustrations. I know I'm far from the level of GW illustrators but I want to work on realistic drawings, and if I can offer some illustrations for your Hinterlands book I'd be thrilled
Here are some illustrations I did during my latest Mordheim kick three years ago (holy ****** time flies) :
http://pierremortel.tumblr.com/post/86904484006 
I don't know if I'd be able to do big scenic drawings (though I'd love to try) but I know I can manage small decorative illustrations like there used to be in the old GW rule books. You know, a crow on a couple of skulls, a far away warrior contemplating a ruined tower, a mysterious treasure chest, that kind of stuff...
I understand that style is a matter of taste so no worries if you're not interested, and additionally to anyone reading this, if you need a couple of drawings feel free to ask me and I'll try to provide! 

[MacDuff]

I love this community!

[Sharkbelly]

This all looks very, very cool. I can't wait to try it out. I've started building a party of adventurers.

Edited August 13, 2017 by Sharkbelly

[bottle]

What a fantastic bunch of characters! Let me know how your games get on!  

[hot_boy_ronald]

I just wanted to stop in and say how wonderfully designed this is. My friend and I set ourselves up to play a quick scenario to test the waters and ended up 5 hours and 3 progressive scenarios later with two unique warbands with a great story for each. What a great system. 

 

Are there any plans to expand on the stock scenarios offered in the book? One thing we struggled with was designing custom scenarios, and specifically custom rewards for winners/losers and the objectives, that fit our story. 

[bottle]

14 hours ago, hot_boy_ronald said:

I just wanted to stop in and say how wonderfully designed this is. My friend and I set ourselves up to play a quick scenario to test the waters and ended up 5 hours and 3 progressive scenarios later with two unique warbands with a great story for each. What a great system. 

 

Are there any plans to expand on the stock scenarios offered in the book? One thing we struggled with was designing custom scenarios, and specifically custom rewards for winners/losers and the objectives, that fit our story. 

Wow! These are the stories I really love to hear!  I'm glad you've been having an enjoyable campaign! 

To be honest, I've put Hinterlands updates on hold for the moment. Skirmish is out now which offers a really similar type of game (although without the character progression), so what I wanted to do was find a way to merge Hinterlands into Skirmish rather than compete with it. 

I started work on the changes but I did hit a few snags. Despite their similarities there are a number of differences to how a campaign plays out. In Skirmish it's super fast and although your Warband starts incredibly small it can be dizzyingly large after just a few games. Campaigns are also built around 6 games rather than being ever ongoing. So I've not been too sure on the best way to proceed.

In the meantime there was Path to Glory coming out and also fan-made Skirmish expansions being made by the Warhammer Weekly crew and The Mortal Realms crew - I know the Mortal Realms guys quite well and am a fan of Warhammer Weekly so I again didn't want to compete with anyone and decided to put Hinterlands on hold for the moment.

I'm actually now putting a lot of my spare time into Warhammer Quest. So that's what you'll see from me in the next coming months  although coming back to Hinterlands just to add on more scenarios does sound like a fun project to do to so I'll think of some ideas in the background! :-) 

Cheers!

bottle

 

[WarbossKurgan]

On 20/08/2017 at 8:22 AM, bottle said:

I started work on the changes but I did hit a few snags. Despite their similarities there are a number of differences to how a campaign plays out. In Skirmish it's super fast and although your Warband starts incredibly small it can be dizzyingly large after just a few games. Campaigns are also built around 6 games rather than being ever ongoing. So I've not been too sure on the best way to proceed.

In our current AoS Skirmish campaign we started at 35 Renown but we have halved the Renown gained after each game, including the random bonuses from the Triumph table. It has slowed down the warband size increase a little but maybe not enough for my taste.

I also feel there is a bit of a problem in rewarding success: giving the warband that wins a game more Renown than to looser means they are more likely to win the next game, so you start to get into a loop of success breeding success.  I'm thinking about introducing fixed Renown increases for our next campaign - maybe with a small random factor on top...

[bottle]

Really interesting insight! Yes, the re-rolls might not be enough to boost the underdogs. You could always try creating an 'underdogs gambit' table as in Hinterlands. Another neat idea would be to award out ruse cards from the open play deck for each 10 points of renown difference.  

[Mr. White]

@bottle, what are Warhammer Weekly and Mortal Realms Crew?

Other forums? Game clubs?

[MacDuff]

On August 20, 2017 at 0:22 AM, bottle said:

I'm actually now putting a lot of my spare time into Warhammer Quest. So that's what you'll see from me in the next coming months  although coming back to Hinterlands just to add on more scenarios does sound like a fun project to do to so I'll think of some ideas in the background! :-) 

There are two things I dearly wish for in WQ. First, stats for all the bad guys (and random generation tables that relate to player levels). Second, more random tables for adventuring between dungeons - like in the old WH RPG Adventurer's book. I'd love for there to be different such events tailored to different realms. No small wish list, I know.

[WarbossKurgan]

11 hours ago, bottle said:

Another neat idea would be to award out ruse cards from the open play deck for each 10 points of renown difference.  

Genius idea! I will suggest it as soon as we have a deck of Open War cards!!!:D

[RexHavoc]

So does this mean the RPG/Expansion to Hinterlands is official dead and gone? I was looking forward to seeing things like items and weather. If its never coming back then its something I would probably house rule myself in at a later date, I'd rather not go through the effort if there is, say a year down the line, a chance you bring it back. 

I've been working on some warbands for a while now, but gotten behind painting my blasted airship (damn difficult mini, I must say!) The airship, as well as a refuelling station, are being used terrain pieces as part of a massive campaign. I love painting but even with the simplified rules of AoS, I still cant find the time to paint a whole army, or play games. Hinterlands has shaken that out of me, and I've painted more in the last 6 months (till I got stuck on the airship!) than I probably have in the last ten years. I'm setting a huge campaign that is allowing me to paint and try out all the different models I've wanted too but never bothered with, as I just didn't want huge 2k armies, as they would sit there unpainted! I have a huge story line all worked out, and by the time it ends, I should have a couple of fully painted AoS armies, as I intend to paint and replace every change that happens in the warbands! (I'll be running a few larger games as well, using some huge monsters as special scenario models- a good excuse to buy a lot of dragons I Wouldn't have normally touched!)

[VBS]

Was thinking about warband compositions the other day, and how Hinterlands and the official Skirmish compare. Does someone else also feel like "gold coins" (regular points) work much better than the "renown" thing? 

Skimming through the supplement it is easy to notice some discrepancies like a Marauders costing 1 renown and Skeletons 2 (instead of 6 to 8 gold respectively). Or like a Chaos Knight costing the same as a Wild Rider. It doesn't make much sense for such small games were even a few "gold coins" can help you squeeze in a model or two, which definitely has an impact on small scale games (with the objective of making the game fairer and more balanced...).

This was just a random thought on how Hinterlands > official skirmish for me  And raises the question on why did they introduce that renown thing when sticking to regular points per mini is easier....

 

Anyway, rambling aside, it's been a while since I checked all these skirmish and aos28 topics and I'm feeling reaaaally motivated for some Hinterlands/Skirmish/Narrative now that regular match play is sort of out the question with the new ghb. Have some ideas for a heavily converted chaos warband.. let's see how that goes 

[bottle]

On 2017년 8월 23일 at 4:47 AM, Mr. White said:

@bottle, what are Warhammer Weekly and Mortal Realms Crew?

Other forums? Game clubs?

Late reply!  Warhammer Weekly is a YouTube channel. @Thomas Lyons is one of the cohosts who also posts here, they are both working on lots of extra rules for Skirmish which will likely take Hinterlands' spot and be a great in depth system building upon the official rules!

The Mortal Realms is a narrative play podcast. They are also working on Skirmish rules called "Renown or Ruin" IIRC, there work is super exciting and will likely be everything the Realm Master Campaign in Hinterlands ever dreamed to be (and much more besides). Most of the crew are on here I think. @StoneMonk @Red_Zeke Et al  

On 2017년 8월 23일 at 8:00 AM, MacDuff said:

There are two things I dearly wish for in WQ. First, stats for all the bad guys (and random generation tables that relate to player levels). Second, more random tables for adventuring between dungeons - like in the old WH RPG Adventurer's book. I'd love for there to be different such events tailored to different realms. No small wish list, I know.

Quite a list! I'll definitely see what I can do. I want to develop a full RPG campaign system using the WHQ renown mechanic, and lots of adversaries and places to go post-battle, but I need to not get ahead of myself. To begin with I am going to play through the main campaign and maybe catalogue any tweaks (I already have a few mini-bosses planned).  

On 2017년 8월 28일 at 0:12 AM, RexHavoc said:

So does this mean the RPG/Expansion to Hinterlands is official dead and gone? I was looking forward to seeing things like items and weather. If its never coming back then its something I would probably house rule myself in at a later date, I'd rather not go through the effort if there is, say a year down the line, a chance you bring it back. 

I've been working on some warbands for a while now, but gotten behind painting my blasted airship (damn difficult mini, I must say!) The airship, as well as a refuelling station, are being used terrain pieces as part of a massive campaign. I love painting but even with the simplified rules of AoS, I still cant find the time to paint a whole army, or play games. Hinterlands has shaken that out of me, and I've painted more in the last 6 months (till I got stuck on the airship!) than I probably have in the last ten years. I'm setting a huge campaign that is allowing me to paint and try out all the different models I've wanted too but never bothered with, as I just didn't want huge 2k armies, as they would sit there unpainted! I have a huge story line all worked out, and by the time it ends, I should have a couple of fully painted AoS armies, as I intend to paint and replace every change that happens in the warbands! (I'll be running a few larger games as well, using some huge monsters as special scenario models- a good excuse to buy a lot of dragons I Wouldn't have normally touched!)

Thanks so much for the comment. It's really great to hear that Hinterlands has been a great motivator to get you painting. I wouldn't say Hinterlands is going to be dead, but with some excellent members of the community working on Skirmish expansions it feels like there isn't a pressing need to update Hinterlands straight away (it's already had its time to shine, I can't wait to see what the others come up with!)

In the meantime Skirmish and RPG level gaming is my passion, so with others working on Skirmish expansions I a, seeing this as an excellent excuse for me to delve into WHQ and try and do something similar.  

[bottle]

On 2017년 7월 14일 at 0:37 AM, Moldek said:

@bottle don't know if you're looking for this but I'd love to contribute to Hinterlands. While I don't play much at all I am an artist and I'd love to have a project that lets me do some dark fantasy illustrations. I know I'm far from the level of GW illustrators but I want to work on realistic drawings, and if I can offer some illustrations for your Hinterlands book I'd be thrilled
Here are some illustrations I did during my latest Mordheim kick three years ago (holy ****** time flies) :
http://pierremortel.tumblr.com/post/86904484006 
I don't know if I'd be able to do big scenic drawings (though I'd love to try) but I know I can manage small decorative illustrations like there used to be in the old GW rule books. You know, a crow on a couple of skulls, a far away warrior contemplating a ruined tower, a mysterious treasure chest, that kind of stuff...
I understand that style is a matter of taste so no worries if you're not interested, and additionally to anyone reading this, if you need a couple of drawings feel free to ask me and I'll try to provide! 

Oh my goodness, I realise I never replied to your post directly. My apologies! At the moment nothing is quite being worked on for Hinterlands, but I am thrilled and flattered you would like to add some of your excellent art to the project! I will definitely be in touch when/if I begin working on an update and in the meantime I would 100% getting in touch with Warhammer Weekly or The Mortal Realms (as mentioned above)  

1 hour ago, VBS said:

Was thinking about warband compositions the other day, and how Hinterlands and the official Skirmish compare. Does someone else also feel like "gold coins" (regular points) work much better than the "renown" thing? 

Skimming through the supplement it is easy to notice some discrepancies like a Marauders costing 1 renown and Skeletons 2 (instead of 6 to 8 gold respectively). Or like a Chaos Knight costing the same as a Wild Rider. It doesn't make much sense for such small games were even a few "gold coins" can help you squeeze in a model or two, which definitely has an impact on small scale games (with the objective of making the game fairer and more balanced...).

This was just a random thought on how Hinterlands > official skirmish for me  And raises the question on why did they introduce that renown thing when sticking to regular points per mini is easier....

 

Anyway, rambling aside, it's been a while since I checked all these skirmish and aos28 topics and I'm feeling reaaaally motivated for some Hinterlands/Skirmish/Narrative now that regular match play is sort of out the question with the new ghb. Have some ideas for a heavily converted chaos warband.. let's see how that goes 

Yes, speaking personally I certainly prefer the granular approach of coins/points. I also think there's something satisfying and tangible by earning dozens of "coins" after a battle rather than single digits of something else even if they mean the same thing. On the other hand the simplicity of the Renown is certainly a plus and resonates with a lot with the overal design philosophy of Age of Sigmar. It's a tough call!

[someone2040]

Personally I feel that they went with renown to create a fake disconnect between AoS Points and Skirmish Points.

Like, I'm really surprised at how many people just don't get it, and ask for other people to work out renown points for models they want to use. We've known the formula from basically the first time we got any in depth look at Skirmish.

But overall, it means that even though we get updated points every year, GW don't have to update Skirmish points at the same time. Because they've never come out and said these points are based on Matched Play profiles. So they can feign ignorance whenever it comes up (Even if people with half a clue know better).

Additionally, because the points are less granular, they're less prone to small shifts in points. Obviously, there was a pretty huge upheaval in points for a lot of factions this time (Most of them included in Skirmish renown updates). It's unlikely that GHB2018 will tweak points as much. But because Skirmish renown is more coarse grained, it's less prone to these changes in cost. Orruks went from 100 to 90, but they still end up as 2 renown no matter if they cost 100, 90 or even 80.

 

Personally, I would've preferred renown is it had absolutely no connection to AoS points. i.e they actually went and had a think about balancing things for Skirmish. This would actually justify a separated points system in a good way as they could actually take into account things that do and don't work (Such as Lord Celestants Hammercloak/ Skeletons not reviving D6 per turn). 

 

As it stands, renown is basically just a mechanism to obfuscate the fact they're based on points. Ultimately, I think if you branch outside your core faction the points start to balance themselves out. I wrote up 8 quick 50 renown lists, and they all came within +/- 10 points of 250. Half of them within 5~ish points of each other. But it can definitely create some huge outliers:

Spoiler

50 renown/260
Big Boss 24/120
Orruk 2/12
2x Arrow 4/24
2x Moarboy 4/24
2x Boarboy 10/48
Boarboy Maniak 6/32

vs

50 renown/240
Wight King 24/120
2x BK 10/48
2x GG 6/32
5x Skellie 10/40

That's a pretty large discrepency between the Bonesplitterz and Deathrattle, 20 'points' is like 2 and a half extra Skeletons (And that's ignoring the fact that Deathrattle don't get some of their in game bonuses).

 

So overall, I think in most cases, renown is 'good enough', but there'll be some outliers. At the end of the day, you can always convert the renown the other way and play using points if you feel it'll lead to more balanced games

[RexHavoc]

Couple quick questions:

Do the hinterlands gold cost & the Skirmish renown/points work out to be the same? I cant get the skirmish PDF to download to compare.

With the 15 models max warband I can see my Grot warband filling up very, very quickly (even from the get go). Should I drop the starting gold for them, as to not have them completely overwhelm my mixed dwarf warband?

 

[Moldek]

@bottle no worries, I'm glad you liked my drawings  

Thanks for pointing me towards these other projects. I am working hard on my art skills these days and I'd love to get my hobby dose by drawing warriors instead of kitbashing them.

Whenever you get to a point where you need some illustrations there's a good chance I'll still be interested

[someone2040]

On 9/2/2017 at 11:41 PM, RexHavoc said:

Couple quick questions:

Do the hinterlands gold cost & the Skirmish renown/points work out to be the same? I cant get the skirmish PDF to download to compare.

No. Gold is more fine grained, as it's essentially taking the matched play points for the unit, then dividing it by the minimum unit size to get points per model (or gold).

Renown does the same thing, but divides the value by a further 5 and then rounds that number. Because of this, renown is more coarse grained and imbalances can occur.

In general, they roughly work out very close, but you can definitely get imbalances (See my post above yours for an example of 2 50 renown warbands that are 20 points apart).

[kasprzyk]

Hi,

Do you have a valid link to download these rules?

[EMMachine]

 

5 hours ago, kasprzyk said:

Hi,

Do you have a valid link to download these rules?

There was a PDF in the downloadsection of this forum. But it looks like bottle has deleted the file this october. There is a changed text in the first post.

On 17.12.2016 at 11:43 AM, bottle said:

Hi everyone, I am retiring Hinterlands for the time being now that we have not only the fantastic AoS Skirmish but also lots of exciting fan made content being made for it too. I would like to thank everyone who supported this project, helped it grow and gave feedback along the way. The AoS community is really one of the best things about this  game and why I love this hobby so much . Who knows if Hinterlands will ever come back, but for the moment I am going to keep it on the down-low. Doesn't mean you won't still be seeing me around here though .

Cheers, bottle.

 

Edited November 16, 2017 by EMMachine

[EldritchFaith]

Is there anywhere I can find the rules for this? The download link doesn't seem to work for me.

[GuitaRasmus]

I've downloaded mine from here: http://thursdaynightaos.blogspot.dk/2017/04/hinterlands-for-age-of-sigmar.html

[StoneMonk]

On 8/30/2017 at 11:13 AM, bottle said:

The Mortal Realms is a narrative play podcast. They are also working on Skirmish rules called "Renown or Ruin" IIRC, there work is super exciting and will likely be everything the Realm Master Campaign in Hinterlands ever dreamed to be (and much more besides). Most of the crew are on here I think. @StoneMonk @Red_Zeke Et al  

Thanks Sam! Hey All, I'm finally ready to share the 1.0 of Renown or Ruin. I'll be appearing on Warhammer Weekly with Vince and Tom to share more about it. And I have some videos explaining the concept here. The PDF will be available on TGA on Friday and I hope to host some more discussions here on TGA as well. Really hope you all like it. Sam's Hinterlands were a huge inspiration for me and my crew. We're having our 8th session prior to the review and I can hardly get them to play anything else but this. Here's hoping that this resonates with all of you as well!

 

[Thundercake]

@StoneMonk, interested to see this when it comes out.  I totally get not wanting to get down in the details enough to have each model or character progress or grow. However, I think there may become an issue where a weak hero grows in renown and starts to have a warband that may be a little "much" for that type of hero. This is something I kept thinking about when starting my narrative campaign and decided to work in a way for the players to "level up" their general into a more powerful hero through a narrative choice that happens in a scenario mid way through.  I'm sure there will be enough freedom within the rules for someone to can this to how they want it the general/heros to grow.