Mighty Kingdoms - Mighty Empires for Kings of War - Part 2

Part 1, the lead-up to this entry, can be found here.

Mantica was on the edge of the abyss. The surging of evil spewed forth untold horror upon the lands, and was defeated only through a mighty alliance of the neutral and good races. Channelling immense sorceries, a great thaw was thrust upon the world again, flooding the abyss and stemming the tide of evil. Balance was restored yet again.

There were repercussions from this, however, not immediately obvious at first. New lands not seen since the time before Winter's grip were now exposed, preserved through the ages by the unnatural magical cold. Far to the north and east of Mantica an undead outpost of the Ahmunites shook off the residual icicles, shuddering into motion again. The current southern Empire of Dust sent a fleet to meet up with their long lost brethren, while many other factions of Mantica raced up to colonise the newly surfaced fertile lands.

In the centre of this region a Kingdom of Men even defrosted, transported from another realm entirely, snap frozen in time, now rising up to conquer a new world - the men of Solland.

The peninsula at the top right in the little green box is where we imagined the campaign took place.

The players who participated were as follows, some more engaged than others, providing their personal kingdom names to go with their factions:

Tas S - Trident Realm of Neritica - The Dark Tide (of the Endless Sea)

Christo M - Empire of Dust

Chris K - Undead - Kingdom of Storms

Nick P - Empire of Dust - The Scarabs

Michael G - Basilean - The Holy Teuton Empire

Charles B - Abyss - Cockspittle

Craig S - Elves - Empire of Black Thorn

Mark W - Elves

Julian M - Kingdom of Men - Solland

Mark M - Ogres - The Thunderous Mountains

Julian even painted up a few of the tokens in his kingdom's Solland colours and regalia.

Early on, small amount of exploration occurring.

I got all excited about Tas's Neritican's. He provided me a logo and colour scheme, and I made some files for settlement flags, tokens and army flags. Unfortunately my ability to choose colour shades and designs that will print out visibly in a tiny scale was not quite up to snuff.

Still, better than generic tokens.

The Dark Tide of the Endless sea lived up to their name, surging in from the coast and pushing deep into the peninsula. Few could stand in their way. The Vampire Lord's undead forces skirmished frequently with them, only to be cast back repeatedly.

The ogres of the Thunderous Mountains were assailed on two borders; the Teuton's to the north, a military bridgehead for the Baslieans into the peninsula, and the undead of the Vampire Lord from the south. The Vampire Lord himself chose not to explore this new land, instead sending his underlings to found the Kingdom of Storms and explore for ancient and buried necromantic lore.

The defrosted Solland kingdom was well fortified, but lacked the crops and city infrastructure required to maintain a fighting force long term. Being surrounded on all sides with hostile kingdoms certainly wasn't helping.

The Dark Tide was turning, as it had overstretched itself, creating multiple borders with multiple enemies, making it all but impossible to hold their territory. Forced inland by the elves of the Black Thorn and the undead of the Kingdom of Storms, who then clashed over the former Neritican cities and fortresses on the coast.

I painted up the Ral Partha undead capital token. It's a bit scratched and scuffed from transport now, I'll need to touch it up and get some heavy varnish onto it.

The resident Ahmunites explored the land almost automatically, no sign of a leader or driving mind behind them, the armies systematically expanded and conquered mindlessly.

We were variously having ring-in players control the kingdoms of people who were unable to make it for the night, or having other players on opposite sides of the map take the turns of missing players. Through sheer luck Christo's Empire of Dust expanded and collected an awful lot of territory with little opposition.

The elves of the Black Thorn had an uneasy truce with the intruding Scarabs of the Empire of Dust. This left the elves free to focus inland (to the north and east) while the Scarabs fought northward unopposed. The greater abyssals seemed to have abandoned their invasion force, leaving their burgeoning kingdom disorganised and ripe for the picking.

Charles didn't turn up after a few sessions, so even though he came out guns blazing early on, his kingdom was easily subsumed by Nick's Scarabs in later game years.

The other kingdom of elves fought on valiantly despite some early bruising from the abyssals, and frequent changes of heads of state.

Mark was unable to make many games after the first few where Charles had attacked him hard, but the ring-ins and others were able to keep his kingdom on the map for quite a while in game terms.

To my despair I found that the sticky back of some of the tile magnets wasn't particularly robust when stored vertically in a warm room for weeks at a time. Each session we'd have to bust out the glue sticks and repair the map.

The Black Thorn, Dark Tide and Kingdom of Storms all scuffle over some key central settlements.

The Dark Ride are reigned in, the Kingdom of Storms and Black Thorn are vying for supremacy, while they all but concede control of the peninsula to the Scarabs, who systematically conquer around the western half of the continent.

The Black Thorn take Solland's capital, leaving a puppet human king in place.
(We couldn't get the flag back out to replace it with one of Craig's)

After five years of brutal conflict, the demographics of the land are starting to settle. Races are wiped off this area of the map, and the Scarabs decimate rather than assimilate their Ahuminate brethren.

The fleets of the Kingdom of Storms and Black Thorn about to clash on the coast. The timbers did not hold up to the conflict, and many a sailor was lost that year.

About 7 real months after we started, 6 game years have passed and we declare a winner. Nick's Scarabs Empire of Dust won out, with Craig's Empire of Black Thorn elves second, my undead of the Kingdom of Storms third, and Tas's Dark Tide of the Endless Sea Neritican's fourth. All other players had been wiped off the map by this stage, but Julian's Solland kingdom of man got the wooden spoon, persevering for the longest in the face of defeat but ultimately coming last.

The Scarabs had conquered the bulk of this peninsula, their borders settling with the Black Thorn and Dark Tide. The Kingdom of Storms were backed into a corner, but had secured the passed and fords into their lands and settled back to piece together what they learned from this campaign.

Next up we're going to play a smaller player count. Among other lessons learned, we want faster movement so that multiple empires can converge on any runaway leader, less settlements discovered through exploring, more expensive purchasing of new settlements, and also we want to bring in Vanguard companies and warbands. Keep an eye on this GitLab project to keep track of our progress in developing the rules, and watch this space for updates of a new campaign in 2019!