Fate of Hammerstadt

Back in May I ran a four round Skirmish mini-campaign set in the ruins of Hammerstadt.  It went alright, but I think that there was a lot to be learned from it.

  

In the Fate of Hammerstadt each player chose from one of three quests (shown above):

The Will of the Pit - Those so inclined can sacrifice their enemies and perform dark rituals in an effort to please the Dark Gods.  Hammerstadt was initially destroyed by a trio of plagued meteors hurled by Nurgle, so these questors seek to finish the job.

The Rebuilding of Hammerstadt - Or, if you'd prefer, you could attempt to lay the framework for a New Hammerstadt, restoring it to the gleaming jewel of Order that it once was.

The Lost Grail of Grimnir - Back when Hammerstadt was beautiful, a duardin king commissioned an Ur-Gold grail in honor of his fallen god.  The Grail was lost when the city crumbled.  If you seek personal gain, this is the quest for you.

So the first thing that happened of course is that of the 7 players who attended, all chose either the Grail or the Pit (nobody wanted to rebuild Hammerstadt T.T)

Some players chose based on fluff, and others determined that the specific objectives associated with a quest didn't line up with the strengths of their warband, which is fair, but was not something I had counted on.  I don't think anybody picked based on the Rewards of Battle, but they might have just not mentioned it.

The event went well, but it was a bit fraught.  One of the main weaknesses of this approach to a mini-campaign was that it did a poor job of creating a shifting narrative.  Because you only moved to the next objective when you won, roughly half of the players played basically the same battleplan in round 2 as round 1 (both players #1 Objectives).  I think if I were to do this again in the future, I would have a D3 table of objectives on each quest, with maybe a big Final objective that was used for the last round of the event.

As far as the results of the event go, Kharadron Overlords took the day and recovered the Lost Grail of Grimnir.  Once the last artefact of Order was looted from the city, the vibrant forces of Ghyran (and Nurgle) grew over the city nearly overnight.  Now, where once there was a grimdark city ruin, there is an overgrown swampy city ruin.  Also, the Kharadron Overlords in Eucebium now have access to a boatload of Ur-gold.