Planetary Empires: Tournament Endgame

After many months of play (on and off due to real life), our Planetary Empires campaign has finally come to a close. The board situation at the end of the game is as pictured below.

With an unassailable lead, the Eldar of Ulthwe have all but dominated the world of Farenheit's landing in this campaign. My own Alpha Legion force (30k) is in second place with four tiles held. The space wolves (40k) have but a single tile left. Meanwhile the poor forces of chaos have been totally routed off the planet through a series of battles. 

Overall, this was a fun tournament. Earlier rounds can be read about here (Round 1; Round 2; Round 3); with two of the battles available to watch as YouTube battle reports (here and here).  

We are planning a much smaller Kill Team scale tournament next with some additional (new) players. Stay tuned for that in the New Year!

Planetary Empires Campaign - Round 3 Update

Following on from the last round (what seems a long time ago due to the Summer Holidays), the campaign map now looks like this.

I think the map says it all really! The Eldar player is undefeated in the entire campaign so far, with the rest of us having won at least one game each. 

As for my Alpha Legion forces, we're now split between tiles on diametrically opposite sides of the planet. The Space Wolves are similarly divided. The Chaos Space marines meanwhile at least have a pair of contiguous tiles, including one (tougher to conquer) mountain tile left. 

Since I lost (against the Eldar) last round, I get to challenge first in the next round. I think I might try to take on the Chaos Space Marines. I at least have one extra manufactorum (meaning extra points in the coming battle) compared to him, and might have a slight advantage. I'm not sure what (collectively) we can do about the expansionist Eldar though. Its simply a very tough codex to beat down for all of us it seems!

Planetary Empires Campaign - Round 2 Update

Continuing a few reports based on our local campaign, Round 2 has now played itself out and the Planetary Empires map has been updated accordingly. 

So what happened here?

Well, my 30k Alpha Legion forces played against the Space Wolves (40k) in this round. The mission was "harvesting", in which there were 4 objectives and each player gains 1 victory point for controlling any objective and the end of the OTHER player's turn. 

In playing against the Space Wolves, I did something that I've not done much before: chose something other than infiltrate for my mutable tactic. Instead, I selected counter attack as I knew my opponent was running a bucket load of wolves backed up with long fangs and Wolfen. Further, due to the way the games are set up, I was at a 75 pt disadvantage. I didn't think I had much to lose, so I castled up in one corner of the board with a terminator squad hunkered down in a land raider for most of the game. This remarkably paid off, and I scored a victory as I took out the Space Wolf army piecemeal, whilst retaining the bulk of my army in a largish blob. 

In the other game, the Eldar massacred the Chaos / Khorne forces by a very very narrow margin. I was thinking that their game could have gone either way -- and it could have right down to the last moment. A few saving throws here or there gone the other way and it would have been a massacre the other way around. A very tense game.

This means that the updated map shows that the Eldar are winning with 6 tiles in total (they're undefeated!). Both Chaos and my Alpha Legion have 1 win and 1 loss each, but I now have 4 tiles and Chaos has 3. The Space Wolves are yet to score a victory and have been reduced down to 1 tile. In the next round, I will be facing off against the Eldar. I'm not looking forward to those D-Scythes to be honest with you. But we'll see what happens!

As a result of these battles, I stole one of the Space Wolves tiles right at the top of the map, whilst the Eldar conquered one of Chaos' tiles adjacent to their territory. We both expanded in to the only unclaimed land. Much building of manufactoria proceeded (they give +50 points value for a battle) and we now find ourselves in this situation. We're having a week off, so round 3 won't be until 2 weeks time. Wish me luck! (I'm going to need it against 40k Eldar!). 

Planetary Empires Campaign - Round 1 Update

As readers may be aware, we're currently engaged in a small scale Planetary Empires Campaign. For this, we are using the modified "Blended Empires" rules that have been posted here a long time ago. (See: here and here). 

Earlier this week, I posted a video battle report of my own battle against the vile forces of chaos… which I lost miserably due to my daft deployment and not handling the Heldrake very well at all. Meanwhile, the Eldar scored a massacre victory over the Space Wolves. 

These results gave 8 Empire Points to the Eldar, 7 to Chaos, and 3 each to us "loyalists". 

And now, Round 1 is over with, and Empire Points have been earned and spent by the players. The only rule we impose for Round 1 spending is that players may not conquer other player's tiles. Therefore everyone expanded in to unclaimed tiles, did various upgrades, and bought veterans and reinforcements.

The updated map is below.

In the next round I will be facing off against the Space Wolves (on 1425 points-- 1300 points base, plus 1 manufactorum, plus 1 reinforcements) whilst I will face them with 1350 points (1300 base plus 1 manufactorum), plus one unit to be upgraded with a veteran rule thanks to my Bastion. I'm thinking some +1 initiative for my marine squad to be able to strike first against I=4 wolves. 

Ice Planet

A complete set of Planetary Empires tiles done in an icy theme. These are to fit in with the recent acquisition of the Frost Grave mouse mat gaming board that I got from Deep Cut Studio. 

I'm also very happy for others to use this image in their own games if they wish.

Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Lava Planet Tiles for Planetary Empires

More tiles for Planetary Empires today. This time, instead of a Martian or red planet theme, its more of a Mustafar inspired planet. A lava based world with a lot of the hot magma bubbling to the surface where the crust has been battered from orbital fire, and it flows in rivers along what was once presumably lovely countryside with fluffy bunnies happily bouncing along. 

These are approximately half of the tiles that I intend to do for the lava planet. The other half is in progress. The painting techniques used are fairly standard in terms of dry brushing and black ink for shading. For the lava painting, I used a wet blending technique that is very similar to how I paint the hellblades on bloodletters -- building up from a deep red colour through to orange, yellow and a splash of near-white at the very hottest points. The overall effect is a striking one: the dull greys and blacks giving way to a vibrant lava colour that flows across the land and seeps upward through a brittle and thin crust in a variety of places, overflowing the ruined buildings picked out in a bone colour across the battered land.

Red Planet Tiles Finished

Following on from yesterday's post about some test tiles that I did for an upcoming tile based tournament that my former gaming group are having, I managed to finish off the basic "Red Planet" set of tiles. 

I'm imaging that this is a small rocky terrestrial class planet somewhere on the outer edge of a habitability zone. Not too unlike Mars perhaps, but smaller. Arguably.

As readers will be able to pick out from the image, I've used Mighty Empires tiles in combination with Planetary Empires tiles here. The river is a bit of a dead give-away really. But then again, I hope that the overall effect has been to successfully hide certain Might Empires features through the cunning use of applied paintwork. In particular, I think one would be hard pressed to identify the grain field in the tiles if you didn't know what you were looking for. 

The rivers have been done in a green colour to reflect an alien world. Or possibly pollution. I'm good with that either way. On a base of dark green, I lightened the colour with a wet blend up to approximately striking scorpion greed as the highlight colour along the edges of the bends. I think the effect has worked nicely overall. The central tile features a silvered wall which will no doubt be fought over hard. It could also double up as a small airfield for a planetary assault to take place.

Red Planet Test Tiles

Back Down Under, my former gaming group is holding a tile-based gaming league using the old rules for Blended Empires detailed here. However, the old board that I created for that league seems a bit dated now (as does this larger one which was a later iteration from this one). And here in the UK, I'm sure that my tiles will come in useful for future series of games that we're planning.

Hence, I wanted to paint something new. So the first thing I thought of was doing a Red Planet style set of tiles.

Here are the pair of test tiles.

The painting recipe was simple enough. A black undercoat was followed by a mechrite red base coat. Following a dry brushing of blood red, a black wash was applied to ensure that the recesses became darker. Then, subtle layers of dry brushing and weathering were applied in progressively lighter colours, through from red, even slightly pink to a yellowed bone colour. Finally, pure black lowlights were selectively applied in one direction from the raised rocks. This gives a three-dimensional feel to the overall piece and suggests light coming in and striking the rocks. 

Well, a few more do to for a full planet of tiles. I might keep this one to a smaller size though. A Moon, or small terrestrial in a system for instance. 

Spread Thin Rule in multi-way Battles

In the next round of our campaign, we will be having 2-on-1 battles.  This poses a dilemma for how to implement the "spread thin" rule for our campaign.

The usual spread thin rule (reproduced below) is based on how many Planetary Empire tiles each opponent holds before the battle, such that the player with the larger number of tiles is at a points disadvantage (i.e. spread thin!) compared to the smaller empire.

Tile Difference	Points Bonus
0	None.
1-2	+50 points.
3-5	+100 points.
6+	+150 points.

There are two broad options:
(i) The players simply total the number of tiles that they have and consult the chart above.
(ii) Each player compares individually with their opponent.
(iii) Both of the above!

Here's an example:
The Tau hold 6 tiles and are being attacked by an unholy alliance of necrons and daemons.  The necrons have 4 tiles and the daemons have 3.

Option (i) would see the tau get a bonus 50 points as they have 1 tile less than the necrons plus daemons in total.

Option (ii) would see the necrons get a bonus 50 points and the daemons a bonus 100 points.

We think we might go for option (iii), since it gives everyone a bonus, but would like to hear suggestions and narrative interpretations for any of the options (e.g. flank attacks on both sides for option ii).

Blended 40k Rules for Planetary and Mighty Empires

In running a protracted, tile-based campaign, we wanted to create a new set of rules that would blend together the rules that come with Planetary Empires and Mighty Empires.  Although we liked aspects of both, there were some other aspects we wanted to get rid of - such as the randomness in capturing a tile in Planetary Empires.  Therefore we set about creating a best-of-both-worlds approach in blending together these two rules sets. Below is the result of that blending!

Empire Points.
The tile-based campaign centres around the acquisition and spending of "Empire Points".  Players earn Empire Points for playing 40k games and the degree of their victories:

Empire Points	Battle Result
7	"Massacre" victory. This means that all enemy models have been removed from the tabletop; or all objectives are held / met (not simply contested) at the end of a battle. A total victory!
6	Victory. The game was won (as defined by the mission rules, or over half of all possible mission points were obtained), but it was not a massacre result (as defined above).
4	Draw. The game was a tie by the mission definition.
2	Loss. The game was lost.
1	Secondary objective secured. If the game has a defined secondary objective (recommended!), then the player earns up to a maximum of 1 additional point for claiming the secondary objective. The default secondary objective (if no other is specified for a mission) is to kill the leader of the enemy forces (the HQ with the largest points value if there are multiple HQs). Note that this means not simply routing them off the board - the enemy HQ must perish on the battlefield by your hands (that means that if they die through "perils of the warp", the point can not be claimed!).

Empire points can be expended on any of the following after a battle (or preferably) a round of battles has taken place. The player with the highest number of unspent Empire Points has the initiative and may spend their points before the player with the next highest points. In the event of a tie, players shall randomly determine who spends next. The Empire Points may be spent as follows:

Empire Points	Expenditure
3	Conquest. You take a tile off a player that is adjacent to one of your own tiles. You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.
4	Long-range conquest. You take a tile off a player anywhere on the board. You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.
2	Rout. You force a player the relinquish a tile that they control that is adjacent to one of your own tiles. The tile is then treated as "unoccupied". You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.  You cannot rout a force from a Mountain Tile, nor can you rout a force from behind a shield generator: they must be conquered (which is more expensive!).
1	Expansion. You claim an unoccupied tile that is adjacent to one of your own tiles.
1	Reinforcements. If you lost your previous battle, you may spend 1 Empire Point to increase the points value of your army by +75 points for your next battle.
1	Veterans. If any of your units survived, then one of them can be "upgraded" through gaining a veteran ability. The veteran ability must be chosen from this list: +1WS, +1BS, +1I, furious charge, tank hunters, counter attack, hit and run, infiltrate, preferred enemy, fleet. If the unit all dies (not simply routed!) in a subsequent battle, the upgrade is lost. A veteran squad must be the same load-out as in the battle where they gained their veteran status. This cannot be transferred.
1	Destruction. If the opponent you have just fought controls a tile upgrade (such as a manufactorum) somewhere in their empire, you may expend 1 point to destroy that upgrade.  You may not destroy any construction that has been built in the same round, or any tile that was not occupied by your enemy before the battle.
1	Construction. You may build any one of the following on any tile that you control that does not already have an upgrade: manufactorum, power station, shield generator, command bastion.

Battles.
All battles will be at a pre-arranged points value. Team games (2 vs. 2; etc.) are permissible by prior arrangement. Each member of a team earns full Empire Points (as above) according to the battle outcome. All battles use standard 40k rules and missions, or alternatively Battle Missions from the book of the same name. There are two exceptions to this. The first is when a player has no tiles left, in which case, that player may force a planetary assault (planetstrike) on a target player in the next round. That player takes the role of the attacker. The second is a game that involves all players. Such a game may use Apocalypse rules and each player should increase the points value of their army such that each side has at least 2500 points.  Players with the lowest number of points gets to choose their next opponent first.

Spread Thin Rule.
When preparing for a battle, compare the number of tiles that you and your opponent own. The player with fewer tiles is entitled to a points bonus in the coming battle as per the chart below. This is to represent the other player being more thinly spread over their territory.

Tile Difference	Points Bonus
0	None.
1-2	+50 points.
3-5	+100 points.
6+	+150 points.

Tiles and Upgrades.
Certain tiles, and certain upgrades to tiles have varying effects on the battles being fought and the map-based campaign as a whole. These effects are detailed below.

Tile / Upgrade	Effect
Spaceport Tile	The player controlling a spaceport tile is considered to be adjacent to all other spaceport tiles (NB: see above for conquest costs!).
Hive City Tile	A Hive City counts as a spaceport tile, a power station, a command bastion, a shield generator, and a manufactorum all in one. The latter four may be destroyed by expenditure of Empire Points as above, but the Hive City Tile and its Spaceport status may not.
Mountain Tile	It costs 1 extra Empire Point to conquer a mountain tile.
Manufactorum upgrade	A manufactorum grants a bonus +50 points to every battle that you fight. This can stack, up to a maximum of a +150 points bonus.
Command Bastion upgrade	Each command bastion in your territory allows you to assign a veteran rule to one of your units. This can stack up to three times (i.e. three units being upgraded). These upgrades disappear after a battle (unlike the expenditure of Empire Points veterans as above).
Power Station upgrade	A power station gives the controlling player a +1 roll for selecting deployment zones, seeing who goes first, and all reserve rolls. The can stack three times, up to a maximum of +3 for each power station in your territory.
Shield Generator upgrade	It costs 1 extra Empire Point to conquer a tile that has a shield generator upgrade, or any adjacent tile to the shield generator that is owned by the same player.

For the Wasp Campaign, all battles will be at 1000 points, unless by prior arrangement.

All players must supply a 1500 points army list from which they may choose 1000 points for any given battle. Bonus points (due to tile upgrades, the spread thin rule, or Empire Points expenditure) can be spent on either the remainder of the 1500 points list that they've supplied, or an allied codex that is undeclared. The latter option is to give extra flexibility in building multiple armies (so that players can get a feel for units from another codex that they don't usually use) and represents the arrival of recruited mercenaries, or other allies and slaves. 


If campaigns are at a higher points value than our Wasp Campaign, then bonus points values may require modification throughout these rules.

Mighty Empires: Gork Effigy

An effigy to Gork (or is it Mork?!) amidst a lush fertile tile from Mighty Empires.  This will be the starting point/tile in the Wasp Campaign for cosec's Orks, but will otherwise serve no real in-game / in-campaign function (other than annoying cosec if and when enemies capture it, no doubt!).

Introduction: The Wasp Campaign

Over the coming months, our group will be taking part in "The Wasp Campaign".  We will be using Warpstone Flux to keep track of the campaign during that time using the "Wasp Campaign" label.

The campaign will be fought using Planetary / Might Empires tiles that I've been working on (and off) for a while.  The full map is displayed in the image below.  As can be seen, there are a variety of tiles and tile upgrades to be had.  The dis-joint region to the upper left is an orbiting Moon that can be accessed from the main planet via the space ports and the Hive Cities.

There are six players:
Chaos space marine (that's me); Blood Ravens; Black Templars, Dark Eldar, Crimson Fists, and Orks.

The general background for the campaign is as follows.

+++

WASP-987c in the ancient cartographs of the cosmos was known as 68-twelve-three in the Great Cursade, but simply Wasp to its human inhabitants. Brought to compliance by a Luna Wolves expedition, the planet and its moon had long been plagued by ork raids. When the Wolves all but destroyed the ork population and proved the worth of being something greater than a solitary outpost, the human populace readily accepted their part in the greater human empire. The orbiting moon was transformed in to a low-grade forge-planet and 68-twelve-three became a loyal outpost within Segmentum Obscurus.

During the Heresy, the planet declared for Horus after a short and swift internal civil war, and supplied materials for their cause. Following the defeat of Horus, the planet was swiftly brought back in to compliance by the Imperial Fists as part of Guilliman's plans to stabilize human space.

In modern times, the orks have started to plague the planet once more, having had a long time to build their numbers back up again: the home-grown waaaarrrrggggg is threatening the human inhabitants to a scale not seen since the Great Crusade. The Crimson Fists, as inheritors of the Imperial Fists' lineage, have dispatched a garrison to the planet to aid the rulers with the ork threat. But the forces of chaos have not forgotten about the planet either: they want it back as a vital world beyond the Cadian gate, believing that Dorn's lackeys never did fully rid the planet of the Horus supporters. Guided by their sense of duty and an accidental signal picked up by their astropaths and navigators, the Black Templars have also been drawn here. Although they seek the defeat of chaos, they also know of a looming dark eldar threat, are distrustful of the Fists' ability to carry out their duty following the ork over-run of Rynn's world, and are downright bristling (even hostile?) to the Blood Raven's following rumours of their recent actions aboard the Judgement of Carrion and elsewhere. In turn, the Blood Raven's arrival here has been marked by secrecy and stealth: their immediate path toward a Brass Keep deep in otherwise unoccupied territory speaks volumes of their purpose in contrast to the Crimson Fists or Black Templars. Can they be trusted? What is their true purpose? Supporting the human population and the Crimson Fists, or something more transmundane? And scenting blood, the dark eldar are drawn like moths to the flame. But do they also have a deeper purpose?: could that old tower on Wasp have been constructed by exodites millennia ago as one of the more crack-pot locals claims?

+++

In future posts, we will detail the rules by which we're going to fight over the terrain, perhaps post some complementary army lists and certainly tag progress of the players and the battles...

Mighty Empires: Vernal River Fork Tile

This tile is from the Mighty Empires expansion tiles set and is one of two tiles to feature a fork in the river. I wanted to achieve two things with this tile:
(a) creating a more realistic feeling for the river's flow than I had achieved with other river tiles;
(b) giving a go at attempting some vernal flowers in bloom, in contrast to varied greens that I usually mess around with.

For the river, it a basecoat of electric blue was applied followed by a blue wash.  Using a fine paintbrush and the basecoat colour, I then picked out where I thought the river might be flowing due to rapids and the convergence of the fork (the river is flowing from 2 streams in to 1 stream; left to right as pictured). A few perpendicular lines to the river's flow achieves a rapids feel in the upper left corner, whilst the confluence of the two rivers is suggested with a "Y"-shaped indulgence just after the fork.  A few more subtle wiggles and it was done.

For the vernal feeling, I tried to pick out a few patches of greenery in a variety of reds, yellows and (scorpion) green. Although this didn't turn out exactly how I had pictured in my mind's eye, I don't mind too much.  The river certainly is the centrepiece of this tile.

Large Planetary and Mighty Empires Map

As my readers will know, I've been painting various Planetary Empires and Mighty Empires tiles on-and-off for a long time now, with a variety of painting techniques and terrain styles implemented.  

This is one of my larger maps that I stuck together recently.  

I think the overall aerial view is neat, and I'm especially pleased with the green tiles nearer the bottom half of the image. Considering that they were painted over the course of months (nay: years!), the manner in which they run on from one another is great.  

I'm tempted to get back to these tiles and paint a few more up now that I've convinced myself that the end result can look this good in the end.

Planetary Empires: Old Shelled Tile

For this Planetary Empires tile, I've picked out the shelled portions in codex grey and washed them darker.  In the surrounding regions, a selection of browns and greens play out, suggestive of a once fertile but now abandoned region of the planet; accentuated by the old forgotten wall (top left).  This tile is unusual for me as I've added some static grass to the top right quadrant of the tile (brighter green).  Although it was a little bit of an experiment to see how it looked, I think the static grass has worked out very nicely. 

Mighty Empires: Blood Lakes Tile

This tile is from the Mighty Empires expansion tiles set and features a series of lakes.   I've painted the tile up in a dark forest green and brown series of colours with a dark track running through it.  Pretty conventional really (cf. this varied woodland tile), apart from the lakes.  The lakes are a two tone red (magenta and blood red) followed by a wash to bring them together.  This tile is clearly from some alien planet where there's either been a lot of blood spilt, or the lakes are unnaturally filled with the vitae of Khorne's victims...

Planetary Empires: Darklands

A simple tile from the Planetary and Mighty Empires range that has been painted up in a brooding mixture of dark browns and foreboding blacks. 

With multiple layers of dark brown and black washes and subtle grey highlights, the tile gives an uneasy feeling for any who try to conquer it.  Perhaps this was the site of an ancient chaos temple whose influence still stains the lands.  Or perhaps orbital bombardment destroyed millions of acres and split the crust of the planet before the attackers fled.

Planetary Empires: A pair of barren tiles

This pair of barren tiles (Planetary Empires) were painted in a grey waste theme - lots of different tones of greys, together with some yellow and brown accent colours (and on the rockier one) some darklighting to shade where the Sun might be pointing.  I'm particularly pleased with the blending achieved on the left hand tile -- the browns steadily grow in to one another in a very pleasing manner.

Mighty Empires: Swamp Tile

The swamp tile is one of the more unique and unusual tiles contained in the Mighty Empires expansion. It features multiple (flat) small puddle areas combined with low-rise texture. For this tile, I used a combination of greens and browns to suggest a soggy, peat laden area with some green bits possibly floating on sub-surface water. The blue puddles are probably a little more vibrant blue than I was originally gunning for, but I can live with that. The highlight of this tile for me is the blending of the greens and browns which I think contribute greatly to the overall vibe of the tile.

Mighty Empires: Expansion Tiles

Today, I wanted to show the images of the Mighty Empires expansion tiles as the product on the Games Workshop web site only depicts one side of them.

The first side features a pair of forking river tile to enable your rivers to divert (or converge?) across your maps. They're pretty neat if your map needs to feature an extensive river system.

On the other side are (a) a tile with several lakes located to one edge and (b) a heavily farmed tile. In addition, 4 flags are also attached as well as 6 markers (2 orky monoliths; 2 elven towers; and 2 dwarvern ale houses).As with all the Mighty Empires tiles, they're completely compatible with the Planetary Empires tiles. The markers should also be adaptable as well. The elven towers can definitely represent exodite planets, the pubs can double up as some feudal planet marker, or even an advanced barracks. The orc monolith is also ideal for orks. But is it a monolith to Gork or Mork?