Mighty Empires III Concludes!

7/15 @ Games Workshop, Oak Park.


not the final map, but scores and territories held are accurate..I will replace it with
and actual shot of the map soon.


Here is a shot of the final map unobstructed by notation
next campaign it's going to be a much smaller one!

FINAL STANDINGS


ORC AND GOBLINS- 18
DWARFS- 17
CHAOS- 16
VAMPIRE COUNTS- 13
EMPIRE - 11
OGRES- 10
HIGH ELVES- 8
LIZARDMEN- 8

Eliminated players
-Lizardmen
-Dogs of War
-Chaos

Build and Conquest Round 9


ORCS -5EP- Anthony's path to winning was pretty simple. He didn't have enough EP to capture
Josh's Capital as it was in a mountain hex, but he could completelydestroy it for 3EP and use 2 EP to upgrade 2 of his castles to cities giving him the winning total of 18. This dropped Josh score by 4 leaving him with 14 EP.

DWARFS 2EP- with 2 ep Andre's only move is build another city which gets him close, but not close enough. he ends with 17 EP

CHAOS 2EP ( 1 carried over)- With his capital destroyed at 14EP josh's 2 EP can given a new capital but not in valuable his Utopia hex, either an new capital and a city or two new cities only give him 16 EP.

VAMPIRE COUNTS 0 EP- with the "all or nothing" strategic event this week, Bill ends the campaign with his round eight score of 13 EP

EMPIRE 6EP (1 carried over) for two weeks I had to throw away EP that I couldn't use being I was completely boxed in and didn't want to cancel my alliance with the High Elves. in the end my last round option was to destroy my mine and build and city in that hex. costing me 3 of my 6 EP. unfortunatley the last couple rounds I had a total of 8 EP I couldn't use. to bad I couldn't expand! my final score was 11 EP.

OGRES 2EP- Ogres manage to finish with pretty respectable sized Empire at 10 EP considering all the rebellions, disaster and famines Ken had suffered. he builds and additional city with his last 2 points to get the 10EP

HIGH ELVES 2EP- Likewise Billy had some hard luck with events, things turned around when we got the Dwarf/Empire/ HE alliance happening so we could quit having forced games everyweek. An extra city with Billys final two points give the HE 8EP.

LIZARDMEN 2EP- Down to a single hex at one point- Joe came back from the verge of elimination with some key victories and some really strong games like his round 9 match up versus the VC to end with 8EP, and extra city gives with last two points ties with High Elves with the smallest Empire.


Conclusions-

Our third and largest campaign definitely suffered from player lethargy during the final round, with most the final games being concessions. (a lot of that being due to the group having to get the shops Games Day table ready) In retrospect 18 weeks was really just too long to keep everyone motivated- particularly when you its clear you can't win, are blocked into playing the same person every week, or suffering from a rough losing streak. not mention we had three drop outs due to real life over that extended period of time. Eric had to drop due to time commitments, Erik got a job in DC and moved. Jeff got promoted and was running all over the place and flying to Baltimore once a month. allot can happen to any group of adults in 4 and half months so what we did get accomplished was great.

The good news is the expanded ME rule set we are using has been tweaked considerably and it pretty clear what worked and didn't. My immediate impressions of where to go next are pretty clear.- Tweaking some the strategic events- dropping the ones that where never chosen or useless and coming up with few new ones. Some of the campaign events are either too powerful, (i.e -free items for the whole campaign need to get dropped and replaced with weekly bonuses) I am sure some others need to be tweaked as well.

The mandatory challenge rules seemed to present the biggest problem across the board. When guys are climbing over each other to take Diplomacy everyweek in order to play someone different in the new round there is obviously a problem. My solution is to drop the mandatory challenge rule entirely in favor of a smaller map, ideally 12 players on 48 hexes. Smaller map will force territory challenges and prevent to much land hording and "turtling" basically the same way the challenge rule had intended. Hopefully this will solve numerous problems. Formal alliances are going to be dropped completely, in favor of informal alliances among players. Team games will be by player choice and each team member needs to use a single army organization chart as sharing one army organization chart clearly presented balance issues depending on the participants.

3000 point games led to being problematic as well as time they take led to them not being played at the shop and many times not getting played at all due to real life getting in the way 2000 point games will always be the default with exception of potential 3K+ games for Capital invasions. Also I want to incorporate 1000 point games in to mix. My goal for the next campaign it to get 6 games played every campaign night, and with a new cut off time of midnight 1000 point games will come in handy.

Lastly we probably need to return to a weekly format, the scuttlebut I am hearing is the potential of a 40K campaign on friday nights...so going back to weekly or semi weekly (say 6 rounds over 8 weeks) should be pretty doable. Overall I had a great time and look forward to the next one. We have alot of new blood interested and with only about half of this crew probably returning for next campaign should bring some interesting things plus alot of the guys will be trying new armies which will be cool. Me, I still be playing Empire..my VC are too far off from being game ready and I have to many other commitments..if I can hobble together a my all Goblin army together thats a possibility- but Empire has some many options..I still feel like I am getting the hang of it. Thanks to everyone who participated in this and congrats to Anthony's Orcs who win the last two campaigns, he is the man to beat!