Clash of Kingdoms

I've been working lately on the future of the monthly Age of Sigmar Game Day I run.  I am trying to make good use of the lessons I've learned from the past six months of running these events so that I can improve things for the next "season".  So far, we have used the Clash of Empires style of battleplan (a la Warhammer World) for all of the events, including an 8-player Coalition of Death battle, and some 4-player Triumph and Treachery battles (the battleplans for all of these events are available in the Efengie Campaign Book).  I have really liked this style of battleplan because it does not rely on points, but still provides structure for the event.  So I am making some changes, and am working on a new framework which I will call "Clash of Kingdoms".

   

The most important changes are to how reinforcements work, and to how the Underdog mechanic works.

Reinforcements

Clash of Empires

In the Clash of Empires rules, each player may add no more than 15 models to their army during the battle, through resurrection, summoning, etc.  During the events, it was my observation that it was very difficult to actually be constrained by that limit unless you were summoning Zombies or some other trashy unit.  It does do a good job of allowing unpredictable summoning (like abilities that create Chaos Spawns on a particular result or other such things), but because it boosts the effectiveness of summoning big monsters over summoning scrubby units, I was somewhat unimpressed overall.  The other thing that I'd like to change is to bring the Reinforcements rule into line somewhat with the expectations of Matched Play.

Clash of Kingdoms

I'm still mulling over what the rule will be in the Clash of Kingdoms framework.  I've got two competing ideas of how to go about this.

1 - You may not add more than 1 new unit to your army during the battle.

>>> This ability is certainly simple.  It allows players to take the risk of summoning if they want to.  Also it lets them use their command ability if it adds a new unit (but only once).  Or, if they'd prefer, it lets players leave themselves open for more haphazard summoning (assuming they have some).  Moreover, it keeps the impact of summoning relatively minor.

2 - You may not add new units to your army during the battle unless you have fewer Laurels of Victory than your opponent.

>>> This ability is more of a 'balancing factor' than the other.  I like it from the perspective of it being a rubber banding mechanic, but it doesn't seem like it would handle haphazard summoning well (since that's unpredictable).  My other problem with it is that it approaches balancing summoning, but since not all armies can summon new units, I think it's kind of a one-sided rubber band (a rubber diode?).  As you can see if you read through the Clash of Kingdoms rules above, I've mostly made up my mind for option 1, but option 2 is still on the table (at least for now).

The Underdog

Clash of Empires

I really liked the Underdog Deeds in Clash of Empires.  That said, they took up a lot of space in each battleplan, were often not terribly inspired, and didn't come up as much as I'd like.  The other problem was that players always looked at the Underdog Laurels table and thought it applied to all of the victory conditions (not just to the Underdog Deeds).

Clash of Kingdoms

In Clash of Kingdoms, I'm doing away with Underdog Deeds as a requisite mechanic (I can still include them in some battleplans if I want, but I don't have to).  By having Underdog status and difference in Martial Strength apply to all victory conditions, I can free up a lot of space for cooler battleplan rules, as well as clear up the confusion about what the extra points apply to.

Because this will have a bigger impact than the Underdog Deeds did, I'll need to re-calibrate the Underdog Table to increase the Martial Strength Difference required for each bracket.  I'm currently working off of intervals of 25.  Usually we get Martial Strengths from about 50-100 at our events, although we've had them get as high as 150 or so (we have an Ogre Kingdoms player).

Because earning double Laurels of Victory is such a big deal (and so the Martial Strength difference requirement is higher), I have changed the framework such that the Underdog now gets to choose who takes the first turn.  I figure this is an important enough decision that even if the Underdog is a full 24 wounds down, they should still hopefully feel okay about it.

All in all, opening up the framework will give me more lee-way so that I can do cool things like this (rough draft of the first battleplan for season 2).

I'll probably get a playtest game in this weekend to check at least some of the intervals for the Underdog bonus, but I'm feeling pretty good about the changes so far.  I'll let you know how it goes when we hold the event!