Hostile Realms Campaign Map

I used the Wizard Kings Vassal module to design an interesting map for a Hostile Realms fantasy campaign.  I've owned the Columbia Games' block game for some time and I always thought it would make a good fantasy campaign aid.  You can mix and match the map sheets to your heart's desire.

Each block represents a Battle Group.  There are 4 player kingdoms.  From lower left clockwise, they are: Undead, Goblins, Gonfor, and the Middle Kingdom.  I imagine we could play on Skype and. I could move the blocks according to the players' orders while they watched online.  I think the module only handles 2 players, but unlimited observers.

Battle Groups move as follows:

• Light Terrain Move card:
• Enter a clear hex (2 MP)
• Follow a road (1 MP)
• Medium Terrain Move card:
• Enter a desert hex (3 MP)
• Enter a woods hex (4 MP)
• Cross a wood hexside (4 MP)
• Sail any number of hexes from a friendly city to a friendly city (3 MP)
• Heavy Terrain Move card: 
• Enter a mountain (6 MP)
• Cross a mountain hexside (6 MP)
• Enter a swamp hex (5 MP)
• Cross a river without a bridge (5 MP)
• Sail to or from a coastal clear hex as long as the departure or landing hex is a friendly city (5 MP)

Castle blocks will mark controlled cities.  Occupation of cities scores points for the players.  Supply depots can be built in cities.

The players will know what Battle Group strength their blocks are.  For example, the Goblin player secretly knows his Orc block is Size 3, his Goblin block is Size 2, and his Troll block is Size 1.

Fielding a Hostile Realms army

This is part of a series of articles I've been writing on converting Piquet's Theater of War campaign system for use with Hostile Realms, Piquet's fantasy rule set:

• Part 1: Campaign deck conversion
• Part 2: Campaign Roster creation
• Part 3: Campaign Playtest Turn 1

Now that we have the campaign roster established and you know how many units are on campaign with you, it's time to talk about how to determine which units are in a particular battle.

Theater of War uses a Piquet Army Characterization Deck to select the units.  You could also use a poker deck.  Special Effect cards have the following effects:

• Stratagem (4 each) - Remove random enemy Effect card.
• Army Effect (4 each)) - Pick any one slot for your army.
• Infantry Effect (4 each)- Pick any one infantry slot for your army.
• Artillery Effect (4 each) - Pick any one character or engine of war slot for your army.
• Cavalry Effect (4 each) - Pick any one cavalry, beast, or large creature slot for your army.

Force Size cards are worth their normal value (4 each of values 2 through 10).

In this example, we'll assume the army is Battle Group of Size 3 vs. an enemy Battle Group of Size 3.   The Middle Kingdom player has no Advantage Level based on his Battle Card hand.  We'll use the Campaign Roster I created in the last Hostile Realms article for the Middle Kingdoms:

*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Hand-gunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Archers of the Guard
17. Mountaineers
18. Civic Militia
19. Civic Militia
20. Ribaldequin organ gun
21. Minotaurs
22. Shire Archers
23. Rex Champion Upgrade
24. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

25. Priest

The player pulls 3 cards for his campaign roster size.  He draws a 5 (Roster 1-10), Cavalry Effect, 2 (Ignored because his Battle Group is Size 3), 7 (Roster 11-20), Stratagem, and a 9 (reduced to a 5 because the roster only goes from 21 to 25). 

The total number of units is 17 (5+7+5).

Since a Stratagem was drawn, the player can take away one of his opponent's random Effect cards.  I use the Cavalry Effect card to pick the minotaurs since I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of cavalry chosen randomly from the list.

So now it's time to pick 16 random units (the Minotaurs are already selected).  I use poker cards assigned to each unit.  The results:

Mountaineers
Ribaldequin organ gun
Shire Archers
Crossbowmen
Priest
Household Knights
Rex Champion upgrade
Feudal Knights
Civic Militia
Household Knights
Hand-gunners
Civic Militia
Feudal Knights
Jhone of Orc upgrade
Crossbowmen
Household Knights

Interesting Army.

The Rex will lead a mounted command of 3 Household Knight units and 2 Feudal Knight units.

Jhone of Orc leads a foot command of an organ gun, 2 Crossbowmen units,  a Civic Militia pike block (2 units), 1 Hand-gunner unit, 1 Shire Archer unit, and 1 Mountaineer battle order unit.

The Priest leads...wait for it...a Minotaur unit.  I can only imagine what the back-story is behind that command.

And there you have it.  I built this army while drinking a Bushmill's on ice with a few cards and a calculator while the wife watched the Real Housewives of Wherever.

A fun army with a King who is a master of jousting and personal combat, but a commander of unknown quality leading a command of the brashest, best-equipped and wealthiest knights of the Middle Kingdoms.

A young female hero who was raised as a child by Orcs, but now rallies the common infantry of the army with her Blessed Banner.  The center of her command is a solid pike block of townsmen.

And a mad priest who has emerged from the wilderness with a group of minotaur converts.  Hmmm.

Welcome to the wonderful campaign world of Hostile Realms.  It won't match up against the art and printing quality of Games Workshop, but there's magic in this book.

Next Hostile Realms campaign article...Making a campaign map.

Converting Hostile Realms Campaign Rosters

 This continues my efforts to convert Piquet's excellent campaign rules, Theater of War, into a format usable for Piquet's fantasy rules, Hostile Realms, that I began here.

One of the best aspects of Theater of War is that it is designed to prevent the battle size inflation that can often kill a fun campaign game.  Once you have generated your campaign roster, the battles will never include more units than you have on your campaign roster.  TOW uses a calculation of sequence deck card size, troop quality modifiers, and card divisors to figure out how many units each side can have.  This doesn't work as well for Hostile Realms because the sequence decks are all the same size and there isn't a card divisor for army characterization used in the rules.

Here is my solution.  To illustrate it, I'll use the Middle Kingdoms army list.

For this example, I'll start with a list of 20 units and a total roster points of 2000 points.  You first have to fill in all of the minimum numbers required by army composition percentages.  The list you make can be any size, but I do recommend your army point total should be 100 points per unit.

According to the Middle Kingdoms army list, at least 30% of the army has to be mounted knights, Household and Feudal.  However, there has to be more Feudal knights than Household Knights.  So, you need 4 Feudal Knights and 3 Household Knights.

At least 10% of the army has to be Sergeants.  You add 2 Sergeant units.
At least 10% of the army has to be Crossbowmen.  You add 2 Crossbowmen units.
At least 5% of the army has to be Handgunners or Skirmishers.  I chose to add 1 Handgunner unit.
At least 5% of the army has to be Mountaineers.  You add 1 Mountaineer unit.
At least 10% of the army has to be Civic Militia.  You add 2 Civic Militia units.

That does it for your mandatory units, so your campaign roster looks like this:

1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia

The total points for this group is 1146 points.  That gives us 854 points left.

Your army will always contain a Commander in Chief Champion and 1 Sub-commander Hero.  We allow the Commander in Chief to lead a command, so this allows you to have at a minimum 2 commands.  They are listed first on the roster and they always appear in a battle unless upgraded to someone else.  They cannot be unique characters unless upgraded.

Middle Kingdom has a Prince Champion for 168 points and a Count for 104 points.  That makes 1418 points.

You can use slots to upgrade these leaders if you desire.  The slot costs you the points difference between the mandatory leader and the upgraded leader.

The Middle Kingdom can field as its general "the Rex" mounted on a flying beast for 220 points and Jhone of Orc, a unique Hero, for 128 points.  The Rex upgrade costs 52 points (220-168) and Jhone costs 24 points (128-104).  That's another 76 points (1494 points).

Here is the current roster:


*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Rex Champion Upgrade
17. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

Some of the army lists have additional mandatory requirements when certain units are selected.  These requirements are satisfied by presence in the campaign roster, even if they are not ultimately selected to be at a battle.  The choice of a Rex Champion Upgrade triggers the mandatory requirement that 2 Household Knights units and the Archers of the Guard be present if he is to be included. So, we add the Archers of the Guard for 126 points (1620 points total).  The Household Knights are already on the roster.  Done and done.

So far, that does it for the mandatory units required on the list.  Now we can do a bit of shopping.

The army list has to contain 20 units, so we have to shop appropriately.  Every 2 units of mountaineers and civic militia can be put together to form a pike block.  A single unit can only form battle order.  I like pike blocks, so I'll go shopping for some more infantry:

1 Mountaineers unit (Max 4) 60 points
2 Civic Militia units (Max 4) 66 points
1 Ribaldequin organ gun (Max 1) 36 points
Total points: 1782

*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Archers of the Guard
17. Mountaineers
18. Civic Militia
19. Civic Militia
20. Ribaldequin organ gun
21. Rex Champion Upgrade
22. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

I'm at 20 units and I still have 218 points to spend on anything I want as long as I don't go over army maximums for the 20 unit army size.  I could buy up to 5 units of orc warriors for Jhone of Orc to command (an option when she's on the roster).  I could buy up to 2 units of foot knights (77 each) to stiffen the infantry.  Or maybe 4 units of Peasants (14 each) as a cheap way of increasing the morale chips for my army.

Instead, I opted for:

Level II Priest (126 points)  The High Priest is much too expensive (242 points!!).
Minotaur unit (65 points)  This army allows dragons and minotaurs.
Shire Archers (27 points)  The army can have a max of 2 longbow units.  The Archers of the Guard count as one of them.  The Shire Archers aren't as good, but they both get overhead longbow fire which can be pretty effective.

So, here's the final campaign roster:


*Champion General
*Hero Sub-commander
1. Household Knights
2. Household Knights
3. Household Knights
4. Feudal Knights
5. Feudal Knights
6. Feudal Knights
7. Feudal Knights
8. Sergeants
9. Sergeants
10. Crossbowmen
11. Crossbowmen
12. Handgunners
13. Mountaineers
14. Civic Militia
15. Civic Militia
16. Archers of the Guard
17. Mountaineers
18. Civic Militia
19. Civic Militia
20. Ribaldequin organ gun
21. Minotaurs
22. Shire Archers
23. Rex Champion Upgrade
24. Jhone of Orc Hero Upgrade

25. Priest

It's a pretty strong campaign roster in terms of troops, but it is a little weak on command.  I would have loved to purchase another Count, but I blew too much money on my mounted knights and the Rex upgrade.   Also, the characters in this army are expensive.  

In most battles, it looks like the General and the Count will lead two commands, most likely 1 mounted command and 1 foot command.  If I get lucky and draw the Priest, I could always give the Good Bishop a third command to lead.

Next article...selecting the troops for battle.

Hostile Realms Campaign Conversions

Since we've been playing a lot of Hostile Realms lately, I've been thinking about how to use Hostile Realms and Theater of War to run a Hostile Realms campaign.  Theater of War (my review here) allows you to convert Piquet sequence decks into campaign decks that can move your campaign armies and decide the size of the forces in the battle.  The sequence decks in Hostile Realms are similar to Piquet decks, but several Piquet cards aren't present or are represented by rules or other cards in Hostile Realms.

After mulling over the TOW rules and the Hostile realms army lists, here is my conversion from Hostile Realms decks to TOW decks:

•  Army Morale/Courage: Every army gets a Major Morale card and a Supply card.
• Brilliant Leader: Wild card
• Engine of War Reload: Strength card for the first card.  Further cards are Retire cards.
• Favor of the Gods: Strength card per card.
• Fliers and Light Cavalry Move: Scout card and Retire card.
• Heroic Moment: Heroic Effort card per card.
• Leadership Check: Officer Check card per card.
• Lull: Staff Inefficiency card per card.
• Manna Recharge: Attack card each for the first 2 cards.  Further Manna cards are Strength cards.
• Maneuver: Defend card.
• Melee: Engage in Battle/Strength card per card.
• Move:  All armies get 3 Light Terrain, 3 Medium Terrain, and 1 Heavy Terrain move cards.
• Move 1 Command: Flank Attack card for the first card.  Extra Light Terrain Move card for second card.
• Missile Reload: Attack card per card.
• Only the Required Optional cards are placed in the deck:
• Berzerker:  Wild Attack card per card.
• Uncontrolled Charge:  Wild Attack per card.
• Crushing Missilery: Defend card.
• Superstitions and Omens: Wild card 50%/Command Indecision 50%

The Maneuver conversion makes armies like the Dwarves better able to fight battle on the defensive.

Meanwhile the Undead have more Melee cards, but no Move 1 Command cards, so they have more strength in battles, but aren't able to make flank attacks unless they have a Skilled Commander with a Brilliant Leader card.

Let me know what you think.

Next article...What troops show up for the campaign?