Linking Battles

[Rodiger]

I am really into campaign games that have linked battles at the moment, where things that happen in a mission affect the next and the rest of the campaign, like squad members dying, receiving injuries or better weapons etc. I recently finished a Shadow War campaign and I am currently doing a Frostgrave one and I love this aspect of the games. What I really want to do is start a campaign at Skirmish level, then upgrade up to Path to Glory then on to full Age of Sigmar battles, all this with using Firestorm. I know Hinterlands has levelling and such so that is a good base for the Skirmish aspect. What I would like for AOS and PTG is a system where if your unit suffers so many injuries then it has some sort of damage table roll after the game where maybe it is disbanded, or has a stat penalty, or you have to pay points to replace new members, conversely if your unit does really well, it can get rewards, like special weapons, stat increases etc. Has anyone developed a system like this for larger battles?

[Lucio]

Progression lists are always hard to write, because what's good for one unit, is worthless to another and game breaking on a third.

For example, take a simple +1 to save. On a Nighthaunt unit which ignores rend you're dropping the chance of failing a save by another from 50% to 33%. On a unit of Zombies, which don't have a save at all, it's useless.

If you try and compensate, you end up trying to write 300+ tables and then balance those against each other.

Doesn't mean "don't do it", these are factors to consider when building a system.

Personally, if I were doing it, I'd have a set of improvements based on the big 3 in a unit, Champion, Bannerbearer and Musician. It limits the scope of the improvements and prevents significant stacking. Rather than reinvent the wheel, allow a re roll on their specific effect, double the range or increase the modifier by 1 as appropriate. There will be a few abusive cases here and there but it's relatively simple and easy to apply.

Casualties are best handled in the abstract, and adjust the points for the army rather than on a per unit basis. Maybe if you lost your last game, you only have 900 instead of 1000 points. Use the Open War cards to help balance things for any significant underdog

[Ollie Grimwood]

There was something in one of the editions of WFB for this, when a unit carried out certain conditions they became elite and gained rerolls. If the unit did certain thing (like rout) or took too many casualties they could lose their elite status.

if I get chance I’ll see if I can dig out my old rulebooks and get you a reference. 

I’d consider having a look at the existing triumph rewards for the various ways to play for ways to show elite units rather than altering warscolls. 

May be  the reverse could be used to represent a disgraced or inexperienced unit where an opponent could force you to reroll successful rolls of some sort, once per battle or more depending on the level of inexperience or disgrace. 

[chord]

Pick up all gates book it had campaign rules that covered units getting better as the campaign goes on

[VBS]

The supplement Warhammer Skirmish had this, like the outcome of a scenario would have an effect "as part of a larger battle". Quite sure the General's Compendium probably had this too (don't have my copy with me now), as it developped campaigns from small to large scale and things in between. 

Quite sure it could be feasable to translate all the examples and bits of information to adapt something similar to AoS.

[Ollie Grimwood]

1 hour ago, chord said:

Pick up all gates book it had campaign rules that covered units getting better as the campaign goes on

Good call, that had completely slipped my mind 

[Rodiger]

Thanks for the feedback, there are some interesting points here.

@Lucio, you bring up some very good points and that is something to consider, the idea of just focusing on the Champion Banner bearer and Musician could work. In my mind I want the guys who start off at skirmish level to advance to have their own units by the time it is at full scale battle level, so they could evolve into the Champion, Banner bearer and Musician.

@Ollie Grimwood, I have had a look at some of the reward tables and they look like they could be used as bonuses. The idea of forced re-rolls is good, it is a simple way of punishing a unit for getting defeated in the game before.

@Chord, I have managed to find the part you are on about in a youtube review of the book, thanks for the tip off.

@VBS, I had a quick look and found a pdf of the Warhammer Skirmishes, it looks really good, it requires an extensive read. 

One thing I really want is the threat of death for your units hanging over your decisions when you play, when I was playing Shadow War I was getting attached to my characters as the campaign went on, and the threat of them dying was affecting my strategy, for example in a situation if the game wasn't linked and it didn't matter if the guy died I'd just go for it, but if there was a good chance one of the guys was going to get killed in what I was planning I might not choose him and use someone else of less importance even if they were not in a better position. Imagine having a guy you've brought through from skirmish level to full battles, if they have an actual chance of dying you might not be so blase with your decisions. 

Today I have been playing with ideas and I was working on a system using Gold Coins. The basic idea was that a unit would earn Gold Coins for how well it did in a battle, such as claiming objectives and total number of enemies killed, the unit could then spend those Gold Coins on upgrades for the unit or it could heal itself. I also thought about having to roll on a damage table depending on what percent of the unit survived, if quite a low amount survived it would be quite difficult to avoid a roll on the damage table. I thought about a common penalty on the damage table would be having to spend the units gold coins to buy it self back up to its normal size.

With the problems stat changes could cause because they have totally different effects on different units, I was thinking of a roll on a random table at a lower gold cost and a higher cost for choose the one you want. The stat changes could just be in effect for the next battle though. 

One thing I could take from Shadow War was you rolled on a table for a reward type, most common was gaining a Skill, but if you rolled higher you could increase a stat, something like that might work for incoporting the renoun type rewards.  
All of this is something for me to think about and work on.