ME campaign 2 - House rules

Time for a new campaign. This time there will be six races represented, divided into three teams of two. Orcs and Dark elves have teamed up, Daemons and Vampire counts are plotting to destroy the world together and Empire and Dwarfs are best friends as usual. We use the ordinary Mighty Empires campaign rules, but have cranked it up somewhat with more house rules. Some races (most notably dwarfs) needed some anti-suckiness, so they got a couple of meta buffs. Other house rules are addressing the dullness of playing only pitched battles and so on.

Campaign rules
As usual, the goal is to obtain as large an empire as possible. Each turn every player gets to choose a so called "Event" that gives specific bonuses, then it is decided who will fight who.The better you do in your battle, the more Empire points you get; points that are used to conquer tiles or build mines, fortresses or cities in your tiles. Events and challenges are chosen in Initiative order, where the smallest empire goes first and so on.

Initiative
In addition to the "smallest goes first" rule, we added a couple of other boosts for the smallest empires. When rolling for Events and Tactics, the smallest empire gets a +3 bonus, the second smallest gets +2 and the third smallest gets a +1. This means that the "best" Events and Tactics results can only be used by the players with the smallest empires.

Events
We got rid of some of the original events that were never used (no one used Fool's gold and Disaster in our last campaign), and made up a couple of new ones. Starting with the smallest, every player rolls a D6 (adding his Initiative bonus if applicable), and gets to choose an Event from #1 up to the number rolled. An Event can only be chosen once per turn.

1. Diplomacy. One race of your choice can not challenge you this turn.
2. Building boom. Build one structure in one of your tiles right away.
3. All or nothing. Winning your battle this turn gives you +2 Empire points. You get no points at all if you loose or draw.
4. Entrenched lines. All tiles owned by you cost +1 EP to conquer this turn.
5. Landgrab. You can conquer one tile at one lower Empire point cost this turn.
6. Propaganda/Dark omen. All your units receive +1 to Ld (Max. 10). Undead crumbles 1 less than usual.
7. Elite army. No special/rare slot restrictions.
8. Allied reinforcements. You get some unit from your ally's army list (Empire can get a Dwarven gyrocopter, for instance). We have tables for this, but we won't bore you with the details.

Challenges
Challenges are issued as usual, starting with the smallest empire. The challenger chooses a player he wants to fight. A small change to the rules is that is your empire borders to the challenged player's empire, you must choose a specific tile along that border where the battle will take place. This basically just affects the size of the battle (as shown further below), but also means that you MUST conquer this specific tile if you are able to at the end of the turn.

Scenarios
After challenges are issued, a D6 is rolled for each upcoming battle. A "6" means the battle will be played as a scenario. We basically randomize the ones from 6th edition rule book as per the table below. Note that for the sake of simplicity and bug avoidance, no Tactics roll is made when playing a scenario. If the scenario doesn't use normal victory points, the winner counts as getting a Solid victory. If the battle is taking place in a tile containing a race's Capital, it will always be a Pitched battle and no Scenario roll is made.

1. Ambush (Challenging race is attacker)
2. Last stand (Challenging race is attacker)
3. Flank attack (Highest score on Events-roll attacks from the flanks)
4. Meeting engagement.
5. Capture.
6. Break-through. (Dwarves are always defenders, otherwise challenging race attempts the break-through).

Battle size
The players can freely agree on any points size for their battle. Normally though, we use these guidelines that decide the battle size depending on what is built in the tile where the fight takes place.

• No connecting border at all- 1500pts
• Controlled empty tile - 2000pts
• Tile with Mine - 2500pts
• Tile with Fortress - 3000pts
• Tile with City - 3500pts
• Tile with Capitol - 4000pts

Tactics
When playing a pitched battle (which should be most of the times), a Tactics roll is made before each battle, after placing terrain, but before sides are chosen. Both players roll a D6 (adding their Initiative bonus if applicable). The highest scorer subtracts the opponent's roll from his and checks the following table:
(If the roll is a tie, both sides deploy their entire force hidden from each other).

1. You may remove or replace one terrain-piece after sides are chosen.
2. Automatically gain first turn advantage.
3. Remove or replace one terrain-piece, and/or place new terrain-piece anywhere on the table after sides are chosen.
4. Pick one infantry unit/character that may now use the Scouts special rule - no mounts or large targets – note that such a scouting unit may include one or more characters while a lone character counts as your only choice.
5. Choose between extending your deployment zone 6" towards the enemy, or shrink the enemy's deployment zone by 6".
6. Table quarters give your army an extra +200 VP (+400 VP is the battle is larger than 2500 pts).
7. Your enemy must deploy his whole army before you deploy. You also get the first turn advantage.
8. Exactly like #3 but x2 terrain-pieces, also +2 for first turn roll.

Victory conditions
Winning the campaign is a matter of getting as large an empire as possible. Note that you add the empire sizes of each allied side.

• At the end of the 10th campaign turn, the alliance with the largest empire size wins.
• An alliance that at the end of any turn owns more than half of the tiles on the map wins.
• An alliance that reaches an empire size larger than all enemy alliances combined wins.

Race specific rules
Yes, we couldn't resist...

Dwarfs
Dwarfs have failed miserably in most of our earlier campaigns and tournaments, so we buffed them up a bit.

• Dwarfs can build cities in mountain tiles, that also count as mines (giving 3D6x10 gold per turn).
• The Dwarf start the campaign with their capital city in a mountain tile.
• Get a little extra units when defending tiles with mines, fortresses and cities in them. We have tables for this, but again won't bore you with details.

Empire
Also a lower tier race in our experience. Gets a small economic boost (gold hasn't proven to make much of a difference in our campaigns this far, though).

• Gets 1D6x10 gold per city.

Dark elves
Nasty buggers that usually wins everything, but we felt that is was fluffy to give them the following worthless rule:

• Gets an extra D6x10 gold when Raiding.

Orcs & Goblins
Have done fairly well in previous play, but are weak in theory. Thus, a buff or two:

• May build in swamps.
• Starts the campaign with their capital located in a swamp. Yay!
• Gets some extra River trolls when defending a swamp tile.

Daemons
These guys got pretty different rules, mostly for fluff reasons. Most rules have a nerfing effect.

• Can't build anything.
• Destroy all buildings in tiles they conquer. When destroying buildings in this way, they get a rather large amount of gold.
• Gets an extra 1000 points when defending their capital tile, but if they lose their capital, they are eliminated from the game...

Vampire counts
Also get fluffy nerfs (well, it's probably nerfs).

• Can only build fortresses (but can do so even in swamps).
• Get gold for winning battles (the bigger the win, the more gold gained).