Efengie Season 3 Postmortem

Last month we wrapped up Season 3 of the Efengie Campaign.  I've compiled the battleplans and story into a campaign book entitled "Coalescence Aftermath".  This season opened with the first Coalescence event, and meandered its way through the better part of 2017.

In Season 3 I made some changes to the Clash of Empires framework.  I changed the army construction rules to be 5 units total, one of whom must be a hero (the general).  Summoning was restricted to one unit.  I think that this change worked really well.  It made game times more consistent, and allowed players to bring whatever they want while keeping it from getting out of hand.

I also made some tweaks to the Underdog Deeds.  They are still a part of each individual battleplan, although in this season they were always the same.  I changed the defaults so that the Underdog Deeds do not require any pre-game discussion (selecting units marked for death or things like that).  I was quite happy with this change as well.  It sped up the pre-game discussion phase where players inform each-other about their armies and whatnot.

I replaced the Laurels of Victory table (previously it had 6 different possible objectives on it and players rolled to determine which 2 were in play) with one objective that is always active and two that are battlefield specific.  At each event I set up two tables (enough to support 8-9 players), each of which represents a different location in Eucebium.  I think that this change was positive.  Not only did it make the battles more consistent and easier to keep track of, but it also lent itself to a cool campaign system.  I've written the campaign rules for this book such that the victor gets to choose the next battlefield.  This simple structure adds a bit more immersion to the 2-player campaign rules.

During Season 3, I organized a big Triumph and Treachery battle ("A Drift of Landshoals" in the book) with 7 players.  I kind of flubbed it by creating play aids on which I incorrectly transcribed the new GHB2017 Triumph and Treachery rules... whooops!  We still had fun, but I learned an important lesson there about reading comprehension.

The story of the season was a wandering one going from Sigmar's invasion to the Eye of Terror briefly opening to power struggles with Colossal Red.  I still haven't figured out how to tell a good story based on battle outcomes when Order almost always wins.  Perhaps next season I will take a page from Malign Portents and organize it via story outcomes/motivations instead of Grand Alliances.

The next season is kind of kicking off with Malign Portents, so I am foreseeing "Efengie: Malign Portents" as the next likely campaign arc... we shall see!  Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the new Efengie Campaign book, which is on the downloads page (or you can click the book cover at the top).