25 years of minis and counting: ASOIAF: War of the Five Kings Campaign Concluded

10 CANDIDATES FOR THE IRON THRONE

As ASOIAF TMG has captured my scarred wargamer heart big time and our community here in Helsinki region has grown nicely, it was an obvious next step to organise a narrative, map based campaign. It is also my most favourite way of wargaming!

The Players

So I started planning the campaign and throwing out some teasers into our community late 2019 and then finally during the Christmas break I had the time to adapt and produce our club's much used campaign set for ASOAIF TMG. I introduced it to fellow gamers on our first ASOAIF game night of 2020 and soon I had 10 players enrolled for the campaign! Even if some us were still waiting for their starter sets (I even carried a German version of NW starter set from Cologne to Marko) we have seven (or eight if you count Stannis and Renly as two different ones) different factions joining the campaign, which is absolutely awesome!!!

Campaign Concept

This campaigns set is already a game in itself and players are competing on who's Kingdom will be the mightiest and hence have the strongest claim for the Iron Throne! Might of the Kingdom is a combination of terrains conquested, gold hoarded and the number of castles and cities built. See a other campaign ran with this Concept here.

* starting gold was randomly rolled for each player, not surprisingly Lannisters got the max amount!!

Tournament round

Each tournament round consist of following phases:

1. Events and Challenges

Starting from the bottom (Kingdom with lowest might) players announce an event they choose (for example "Hiring mercenaries, play with 10% larger army) and whom they challenge to a battle

2. Gather income

for example from cities and mines

3. Battle!

Players play their battles with ASOIAF TMG and report results to our campaigns FB group. They can use gold to get a few extra points to their armies. Victory points from games are converted to "Empire points". If a named character was a casualty in the battle, he or she can't be used in the next campaign round.

4. Conquest and build

Players use their Empire points to conquest new (adjacent) available territories to their Kingdom - these can also be from the opponent's kingdom, as long one has won the battle. Empire points can also be used to build cities, castles and mines or simply for hoarding more gold.

5. Update map and Google sheet

Results of the round are documented and the next round can start!

At home I also have a physical map (from Risk GoT) to follow the progress

You can find the campaign resources from here:

Campaign map and symbols as a PPT-file here
Campaign rules document here
Spreadsheet for campaign tracking here

CAMPAIGN PROGRESS

Round 1. results

First round of our campaign was completed on 11th of Feb 2020

Match up and results:

Marko (NW) vs. Mikko (Stannis Baratheon) - narrow victory for Marko 10-8

Martin (Neutrals) vs. Oskari (NW) - draw 11-10

Johannes (FF) vs. Herkko (Lannister) - narrow victory for Marko 10-8

Paavo (FF) vs. Heikki (Renly Baratheon) - decisive victory for Heikki 11-4

Teemu (Targs) vs. Mika (Stark) - Narrow victory for Teemu 12-8

Report of my battle against Mika's Starks here

Campaign status after round 1. + gold rolled for round 2.

Round 2.

Second round of our campaign was started on 12th of Feb 2020

Matches and Results (challenger first)

Paavo (FF) vs. Marko (NW)
Herkko (Lannister vs. Mikko (Stannis Baratheon)
Mika (Stark) vs. Johannes (FF)

Martin (Neutrals) vs. Oskari (NW)

Teemu (Targs) vs. - Heikki (Renly Baratheon) - decisive victory for Heikki 9-0

I challenged Heikki's Baratheons to a fight, but this time Khal Drogo (or was it me?) gave in for blood lust and charged head first into Baratheon battle line! That lead into his unit being decimated in the first turn and me losing my commander right away, which is devastating in the Fire and Blood Game mode! I just played bad! At least I learned a hard lesson! Battle report here

Ranking and map after the 2nd round:

Round 3.

On Round 3. Herkko and his Lannisters managed to win Mikko's Baratheons and hNoence they captured King's Landing, this speeded Herkko to the leading position of the campaign.

I challenged Oskari and his Night's Watch. I managed to land a deciding blow already in the first round s my Dothraki vets charged his Crossbows, whom had been badly crown zapped and shot up, and smashed right through theme, coming into within 12" of his stone thrower... My Victory granted me 5 Empire points to conquest with as I had the "All or nothing" event.

Map at the end of round 3. I claimed the southern mountains and started a mine there... gold shall flow!

Round 4.

Match up

Marko (NW) vs. Mika (Stark)

Paavo (FF) vs. Mikko (Baratheon Stannis) 15-8

Johannes (FF) vs. Martin (Neutrals) - Narrow victory for Johannes

Teemu (Targs) vs. Herkko (Lanni) 11-4

Mikko (Bara) vs. Herkko (Lanni)

Heikki (Baratheon) vs. Oskari (NW)

Mikko and Herkko will have 2 games

As I was still a bit low on the campaign ranking, I got the opportunity to challenge campaign leader Herkko and hence get a shot at capturing King's Landing! Unfortunately Mikko had the same target in mind (having lost K'sL to Herkko recently) and he took "Cut the snakes head" event allowing him to challenge Herkko too! This lead to a situation, that we needed to come up with a rule for the order of conquesting after games. Normally conquests have been made by players as they have played their games, but now there was a clear conflict of interests. We agreed that the player with a "better victory" would have the priority for conquest.

As the COVID-19 pandemic is upon us many of the games are now being played with Tabletop simulator (on Steam platfrom). So was our game with Herkko too! With a cunning play and focusing on destroying Lannister units one by one I managed a great 11-4 victory

I also played as a proxy for Herkko's (Lannisters) second game against Mikko (Stannis). I had a big stake in the result as well... You can see it's battle report here

Round 4. completed

Huzzah! I managed to climb to the leading position with a narrow margin to Paavo and his wildlings!

Round 5.

So we had to roll a die to keep the campaign going on 2+. I made a video call to the players and under the supervision of few of them I rolled a 5. Campaign continues!

We're still facing the Covid-19 challenge and Herkko dropped out of the campaign. I think we still have a good match up and games will get played, virtually or 1 on 1.

Match up for Round 5.

Teemu (Targs) vs. Mikko (Stannis) AND Paavo (Wildlings, via Event)

Martin (Bolton) vs. Paavo (Wildlings)

Marko (NW) vs. Heikki (Baratheons)

Johannes (Wildlings) vs. Oskari (NW)

Mika (Starks) vs. "Lannisters" to be played by proxy.

My battles on round 5.

1. Vs. Mikko's Baratheons

2. Vs. Paavo's Free Folk

End of the Campaign

Sixth campaign did not materialise, it would have happened on a D6 roll of 4+. I wanted to have the amount of rounds be ramdom.

Map at the end:

Scoring at the end:

Some conclusions

Top 5 players were within 0,9 points of the winner
3 players shared the third players (I was one of them)
Mika, whom won only 2/5 battles won the campaign and
Marko, whom only won 1/5 battles was third (one of us) with his gold hording strategy

So our campaign clearly was quite balanced and actions outside the actual ASOIAF battles had a significant impact on the results, which was what I wanted. Very pleased how it all went down, except the Covid-19 making the last two rounds more challenging to play (TTS was used quite a bit).

Prize ceremonies and improvements

suggested for the campaign rules

Campaign winner Mika (Starks) got the "King's Guard" Campaign Trophy for him

to safe keep until a next campaign is concluded. Additionally a Tully Medal of Valour with Honours was granted! These prizes were delivered to his house door!

ALL HAIL HIS GRACE, MIKA OF THE HOUSE STARK, THE FIRST OF HIS NAME, KING OF THE ANDALS, THE RHOYNAR AND THE FIRST MEN,
AND LORD OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS.

Second place went to myself, as I had painted the most miniatures for the campaign - that's 75 minis for my Targaryen army. This is a prize in itself. (I was third in the actual campaign ranking)

Third place went to Mikko (Baratheons), he was second in the campaign ranking. He got a Baratheon Banner!

A Consolation price was also awarded to Herkko, whom ended as last, with

his Lannister domain almost wiped out of Westeros. Now at least

he can get his bottles opened and drown his sorrow!

Text says: "This went to bollocks" - Jamie L."

Campaign rules improvements

King’s Landing worth 1,5 might, not 2
Have areas worth extra might spread better
Have a separate Build & Conquest phase after all games are played.

Needed because there are conflicting interests.
Order of acting based on victory margin of the battles played - winners go first

Implement three levels of victories:

Narrow victory (2 Empire points)
Decive victory (3 Empire points)
Crushing victory (4 Empire points)

Strengthen the impact of won games further: one solution is to add a “Fame” score, each point of fame equals one point of might. One gains a point of Fame by winning his battle with decisive or crushing victory
Role of gold should be dimmed a bit

7 gold is worth 1 might

Making your army larger a bit more expensive

1 point added = 1 gold
2 points added = 2 gold
3 points added = 4 gold
4 points added = 6 gold
5 points added = 8 gold

We dropped the rule, that the challenger can choose the scenario (quite strong) and made an Event of it (adding the choice of table side)

My Army for the Campaign

I'm playing Targaryens and just as the campaign was about to start (last week of January) I got my starter, here I will add pictures of units and heroes for my army.