Specialist Arms Forum
Games Archive => [GA] Discussion => Topic started by: Tiberius on April 17, 2016, 11:19:41 PM
-
I don't know if this counts as a specialist game, but I just bought the old 1990 Mighty Empires Game off eBay (and for a reasonable price! ... well reasonable to us who spend 100s on toy soldiers)
I mostly wanted the miniature towns, cities, castles and ships for if I ever want to do my own campaign, and to use for other games. I was just wondering if anyone else had the game, or played it. Is it worth playing the game itself? Seems like it would be such an old fashioned game it would be hard to get through, but there are always hidden gems!
-
I was always fascinated by this.
I went to the GW website to see if I could buy the plastic one for campaigning and... It's gone. Only the 40k planetary empires one remains =<
-
I purchased the plastic set off ebay, another very reasonable used price. then promptly ordered 3 sprues of the expansion tiles from GW with the river forks and they had the alternate city model that I use as a village instead. Soon after I found out that they had stopped making it.
THEN I learned that warhammer fantasy was killed off and I started thinking and checked the dates. I purchased the sprues after warhammer's funeral and in my head I joke that I reminded them to kill off mighty empires as well. I see some guy reading the invoice of the order and just thinking to himself while scratching his head, "What the heck is mighty empires?"
I use an official adaptation ruleset for warmaster to play out all of the battles of an ME campaign but without any of the dragons (I straight up ignore them). It honestly works really well and gives plenty of different gameplay. Me and my brother have started one and try to play regularly and meet up at a gaming store every month.
Some people think its too much work and hassle to run an empire while campaigning but we both like the oddball random stuff that happens all the time. A plague could kill your entire army one winter :)
The original tile punchouts are available somewhere as a pdf to download and then you can print them out onto a magnet sheet somehow and then magnetize all of the pieces and you would honestly be just the same as the new locking plastic pieces.
-
Ahh yes, this is where this posts belongs. Thanks for moving it to the proper place.
Ha, sucks that you killed Mighty Empires ;D. I had always wanted that set when I was younger, but never was willing to pay for it. I loved the 3D tiles. I am excited to try a campaign, but I will be moving soon, and I will need to make some gamer friends in my area. It could be a very long time before it actually would happen!
So I've been looking through the game. I didn't realize the pieces were so small!
(http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/ah136/clericclausen/Mobile%20Uploads/BB6D9A6D-80EF-4914-BE77-8B9037D5308E_zps9hxmxyij.jpg) (http://s1379.photobucket.com/user/clericclausen/media/Mobile%20Uploads/BB6D9A6D-80EF-4914-BE77-8B9037D5308E_zps9hxmxyij.jpg.html)
That's fine by me. I was thinking about making a 3D settles of catan, and use these as towns and cities, which I think they will work great for. And as an added bonus, my fiancee things they are "adorable".
-
speaking of the terrain pieces, in all of the battle report pictures in GW magazines for Man O'War they used the old ME models for terrain. they would make the islands and then top them off with the necropolis or the wizards tower or a fort. I started looking into collecting a few of the old models and doing that myself but just for the sea shore forts as I never want to make 3D terrain for that game, I like the card punchouts to much.
If you lived a bit closer we could defiantly meet up and play a campaign. St. Louis is a 7+ hour drive for me :/ and a boring one at that, and I hate the cardinals HA!
I actually took it a couple steps further with the campaign and added rules for a man o'war fleet and then added heroquests for your warmaster characters. All very nuts sounding but actually plays out well, I just mashed currently existing rules up so I didn't make up too many new rules. Me and my brother have just started but he has no idea how to play man o'war.
-
If Adepticon had a MoW event I'd play. ;) ;) ::nudge:: ::nudge:: Say no more...
-
I've had some epic games over the years... it works best with at least 2 sets of tiles and 4-6 players. Just don't expect to play through more than 1 season in a typical game session. Last time I played we did a bank holiday weekend and 5 sides played a season each day. Well worth a play through, especially if you get all the extra rules.
-
I am honestly contemplating being the MOW guy to put on a simple tournament, which would probably be a poop chute the first year as there supposedly is a lot of rules questions and holes but as long as everyone is at least willing to try and just play and have fun it should be a fun event to add. I honestly hope to have my fleets boxed and magnetized and transportable and then I can easily bring all four fleets with me, 5 if someone wants a help a bit with the khorne fleet and 6 if I can get help to fill out 2 empire fleets.
on top of that I saw a large siege game by warhammer fantasy players and frankly that's a dang warmaster thing. So how could we put one large multiplayer siege game for warmaster in there? I have a castle made up and plan on getting it magnetized and boxed this summer. its not pretty but it'll do.
oh and by the way Tiberius, there is a lot of things to build and get ready for with a campaign if you haven't thought about it yet, the number one killer of campaigns I think unfortunately :(
-
Did your ME set come painted?
that was the worse part of it for me, took so long for me to get them painted, 2 months in fact. That was all I worked on, the flags and the cities and mines and the land tiles.
They look sweet when all done though.
Do your tiles go together ok or do they have the plastic weld line all the way around that catches and stops them from locking correctly like mine all did. I had to sand them all down smooth with my dremel sander tool. HUGE amount of time but they are a nice smooth action for the most part now.
-
Not a Cardinals fan??? How dare you sir!
Ha, just kidding. I'd hate them too if I lived just about anywhere else. But hey, 11 titles and a payroll much smaller than the Yankees is nothing to scoff at ;), even if we Card's fans are annoying. Thanks for the invite though, even if I was willing to drive 7 hours, I'm moving from St. Louis out West, so it would even be significantly longer!
Sadly my set did not come fully painted, just a couple of each piece. A lot of them are primed though, which is nice.
As for sanding, my set doesn't have plastic hexes, I think that's just the later box? All my hexes are printed cardboard and totally flat. The only plastic pieces are ships, villages, cities, armies, castles and dragons.
As far as running my own campaign, I would practice a lot with a single friend or two before I tried anything too serious. And I would probably keep things pretty simple at the beginning. Probably won't be anytime soon regardless!
I do have one question though, that has never really been answered. And it is a SUPER basic question. My friends and I tried a Warhammer campaign long ago in High School. We lasted one day. We tried playing the old poster map from the General's Compendium. After playing one round, with no armies close to each other, we realized we'd have to play a few rounds before a battle would happen. So we did. But when a battle finally did happen, it only involved two people. But then we were confused. What is everyone else suppose to do during that battle? Just go home? If we did this once a week, would it often be just coming for 30 minutes to play a map round and then going home, unless you were a lucky person who was able to get in a battle. Is that just the way of these types of campaigns?
I have never really known. I've never actually seen one be played, I've only read about them...
-
that's right, you said you got the old paper cutout set. I don't actually hate the cardinals but they did beat my tigers in the world series and the 1 game I went to with my wife on memorial day a few years back was STUPID hot and the cardinals got blown out that day too by the giants so we actually walked to a bar up the road a bit from the stadium for a beer ha
I got seats way up on top for the view of the arch and the grass arch but the tickets lied, I couldn't see the arch at all from my seat.
I have had that question in my very mind the whole time, in my 1 on 1 campaign with my brother its easy, play until a battle. the other players could very easily play until they get into a battle while the other 2 duke it out, but as they catch up after the battle they can "see the future" and might be considered cheating I guess. I guess that would be the only way and to do that you would probably need a game master who would never actually be in a battle or control an army.
Someone else should be able to answer that better than me.
-
I do have one question though, that has never really been answered. And it is a SUPER basic question. My friends and I tried a Warhammer campaign long ago in High School. We lasted one day. We tried playing the old poster map from the General's Compendium. After playing one round, with no armies close to each other, we realized we'd have to play a few rounds before a battle would happen. So we did. But when a battle finally did happen, it only involved two people. But then we were confused. What is everyone else suppose to do during that battle? Just go home? If we did this once a week, would it often be just coming for 30 minutes to play a map round and then going home, unless you were a lucky person who was able to get in a battle. Is that just the way of these types of campaigns?
I'm guessing the best way to handle it would be something like this:
Everyone gets together at the start of the campaign. Rounds are played on the map until a round where one or more battles need to happen. Those players that are battling have a week to get there game in, everyone else plays pick up games during this period. After that, the next round starts and armies are moved on the map.
If someone's willing to run the map and take pictures of it, you all don't have to be in to move the armies. You can send them in like Diplomacy.
-
Gotcha. I suppose it simply could be, play rounds until a battles happens each time you meet during the week, then do that battles later that week like you say. The problem I can see is that it kind of discourages battles to happen, because then map play has to stop. However I guess that can be good, since IRL I suppose battles are big hassle too...
I do like the picture taking idea, but if we have lovely Mighty Empires maps and models, I'd want people to enjoy them in person!
-
The original mighty empires game was on Vassal for a long time which made it far easier to play. You could play through turns at home and meet up for games. Of course...despite not paying the game an attention for 25 years GW smashed this fan friendly module with its usual IP cease and desist nonsense.
http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Mighty_Empires:_Warhammer_Expansion
-
If you have the modern version with the plastic tiles you can download the original rules as a pdf and use warm aster bases as "banners". Irregular miniatures 2mm scenery can be used for villages etc.
I got a set of the plastic tiles for a fiver. If you have a 3rd printer you can download a file from thingyverse which as far as I know is copyright free. It's a blank tile but it fits exactly with ME tiles. You can make your own tiles with modelling clay and GS :)
-
May not be to everyone's taste but I find the tiles best tackled with 1mm flock and clump foliage.
Spray the tile green. Paint roads in cream. Pva. Flock. Clump foliage. You can do 20 in an evening.
-
Flocked tiles. 3d printed "blanks" and GW mountains.
-
Thats a very nice look there :)
Skickat från min iPad med Tapatalk
-
That is really cool! I need to find someone with a 3D printer because that's exactly what I'd like. I was thinking of just getting some board hexes from pendraken. The ones that lock would be much better. I'll have to look into the 2mm scenery also!
-
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29890
-
Gorrin, have you been able to play a full campaign with your might empire tiles? How did it go and what would you change for the better?
I see a lot of the "I put in a lot of time and energy but now no one wants to play" when it comes to the mighty empire tiles.
-
Beautiful work, Gorrin - I like that forest look as well.
-
Cjbennett22
Mighty Empires can be played as a stand-alone game or as a campaign tool. The card tiles are available to download, as are the rules - you can use anything to represent the pieces - I use Warmaster Stands because I don't own the original game...besides it looks better imo to use an orc stand to represent an orc army rather than a human stand with a coloured banner. I'm not sure if you were interested in ME as a game or to play a campaign. My opinion of the game is that it's great fun, 1 set is only really good for 3 players and you need two lots of tiles really to play 4-6 players. I think someone else mentioned that the more players there are the longer turns take. Tbh it's been so long since I played a game I can't remember much about it apart from the fact that we always left out the dragons...I never really saw the point. As I said previously, I used to play it online on Vassal and that made the games a bit more manageable - you didn't have to leave all the tiles out until the next time you got together.
Include the extra rules for mines, necropolis and wizard towers if you can, if you download the right version of the rules they are all included and you don't need to get the old copies of WD!
As a campaign tool, the sculpted tiles look great and are ideal for campaigns but YES it's a lot of work. Campaigns are one of the most fun parts of our hobby but there are many, many pitfalls to doing so. I would recommend reading an article Rick Priestley wrote in the Wargames press (I have it somewhere) that detailed different types and different ways to play as well as his experience with trying to run them.
One thing most people will tell you is that people have different levels of commitment. A campaign might take 12 consecutive Monday nights, can all players commit? What happens if just two of the four of you show up one Monday? One thing I've done is ensure that each "power" has two players. If both show up - they confer and play together, if one shows up - that person plays alone, if no-one shows up we used house rules - usually moving their armies back to their capital and leaving their territory up for grabs as we played turns without them.
The other thing is that a 4 power campaign might quickly involve one player quickly eliminated - you have to allow for that. We would often incorporate this by "absorbing" the defeated "king" into the conquering power as conferring player...sometimes within two campaign years two players are out and two are left. It can happen very quickly.
I've been playing a mapless campaign of WFB 3rd edition with some friends. It's really just a series of linked battles (the Legend of Sheepy Hollow) but this Sunday will be only the third Sunday in two Months we've been able to get lead on table. Real life gets in the way!
The GW "General's Compendium" is also very good if you can get a copy (it's on SCRIBD) and describes a variety of ways in which a campaign can be played.
-
Thanks stormwind. It's a quick technique and quite effective.
-
Gorrin, if you ever find that Rick Priestley article, I would be very interested. I also check amazon every once in a while, to see how much the General's compendium is going far. One of my friends had one ages ago, and I just remember it was a blast flipping through. You are right though, PDFs of the book are pretty easy to find.
Those are some great ideas dealing with people not showing up, and people being eliminated. Becoming a lieutenant is a fun way to keep things going.
As I have said before, it will probably be ages before I could organize one if I ever do, but it's at least fun to dream about and plan just in case.
Also do you know where I could find the updated mighty empires rules?
-
Tiberius, PM me and I can send the rules to you.
-
Tiberius I'll have a look for the article I usually put all interesting articles (especially Rick's regular column) in a folder so I doubt I'll have thrown it away.
Mighty Empires rules are here:
http://www.darkagepress.com/WarmasterDownloads.html
-
Tiberius, just curious if you have been painting your mighty empires stuff and how that project is going? It was a beast getting mine done and sadly only 1 failed attempt at a campaign as life constantly gets in the way :/
-
Sadly I haven't been working on my Mighty Empires stuff at all recently. All my hobby time has been spend trying to get by first 1,000 points of Warmaster Empire done. Which thankfully, I just did! I will post some pictures later today. I think my next project after that will be either a Chaos or Orc Army, not sure which. Gotta have some armies before you can play a campaign!
How many players did your failed attempt include?
-
It was just me and my brother. We live 2 plus hours away from each other and we both have 2 kids ranging from nearly 2 to 5 right now so its really difficult for one of us to take the entire day off for travel and gaming and travel back just in time for dinner on a weekend day.
We met up at his place to kick it off and built the map then played a basic 2k point warmaster game just because at the store near him and that took 3 hours alone! We like chatting it up and looking up all the rules just to be sure AND the Malifaux players kept coming over to watch a bit (they were doing a tournament the same day), our game started before their tourney and ended well after their games were all packed up.
I still have the map packed up and the paperwork filled out with hopes of jumping right back into it but I highly doubt that will happen. I was chaos and he was high elves.
My campaign is pretty bold though, I combined Man O'War and Heroquest into a Warmaster campaign using mighty empires and my brother has no idea at all on MOW. I'm still working on my rulebook but almost done now. I played a game just to test all of the rules and to check balance of a chaos force holding a city against a high elf siege army while a High elf fleet tried to break through the chaos fleet and to drop off more troops inside the city on an 8x4 table (also I added dueling to do 1 on 1 combats with your heroquest characters that represent your warmaster heroes). The battle took me 2 days to do and 1 night to prepare for, crazy awesome though. I'm pretty sure 1 turn took me 1 hour to do all by myself with no strategy or thought so 2 people with a thinking process going would probably take 2 hours.
-
I've thought off and on about these lovely tiles for a while but now that GW has stopped doing them it's taken the wind out of my sails for anything elaborate.
-
there are a few sets still on ebay! ;)
I keep looking as I would love to have a few more villages until I have more villages than cities but those are even harder to come by being only released as part of the river expansion sprew. I still don't understand fully why they killed it off as they still have the 40k version to make money off of especially with BFG coming back and 40k still going strong.
-
I've thought off and on about these lovely tiles for a while but now that GW has stopped doing them it's taken the wind out of my sails for anything elaborate.
Wait, this is coming from a guy currently painting several out of print warmaster armies? This the specialist games! Everything we have GW has stopped doing! ;D
-
For those that enjoy the ME/PE modeling aspect, I'm going to be casting up empty/blank hexes that will be of correct proportions to slot into existing collections (Sorry Grandma Wendy but you can't IP "hexagons" as much as I am sure you'd like to :D). I find myself needing to build new crazy stuff like giant multi hex hive spires, coastal cliffs, arbites archologies, etc and find the lack of a blank to be a PITA. I figure they may be handy for people interested in ME as well. Remind me around the end of year to see where we are for those that are interested.
-
I have always wondered if it would be possible to run a multi planet campaign combining 40k, 40k epic, BFG and even necromunda. But since I don't play any of those games and I have enough difficulty getting my own campaign going....... :P
Something like that would be soooooo much ME!!! LOL
-
For those that enjoy the ME/PE modeling aspect, I'm going to be casting up empty/blank hexes that will be of correct proportions to slot into existing collections (Sorry Grandma Wendy but you can't IP "hexagons" as much as I am sure you'd like to :D). I find myself needing to build new crazy stuff like giant multi hex hive spires, coastal cliffs, arbites archologies, etc and find the lack of a blank to be a PITA. I figure they may be handy for people interested in ME as well. Remind me around the end of year to see where we are for those that are interested.
Good to know, Jimmy. I might be interested in some!
-
Use Battle Masters to decide battles in your Mighty Empires campaign. You can additionally combine it with Pirates of the Cursed Seas pocketmodels.
Playing actual battles with Warhammer might slow down the Mighty Empires game too much. And some people even try to avoid battles in order to get the campaign-map gameplay to continue.
I have made some slight modifications to the rules to play the battles with BattleMasters (from MB) rules.
http://toco.be/homerules/battlemasters.html <-- The PDF is here.
-
I try not to think of all of the battles as SLOWING the campaign down. The campaign is just the thing that keeps everyone coming back together and invoking a randomness to each battle. I put heroquest and Man O'War together with Warmaster into a mighty empires campaign just to break up the monotony of warmaster battle after warmaster battle. Playing those small lopsided battles that a campaign would inevitably create are the battles that will somehow add influence onto the larger battles yet to come in ways that the players will only be able to guess at.
When the players finally get to play a large all out battle I would imagine there is a lot of excitement in the players even if its only because they had to go through so many of those small, very difficult to set up, games. It's not so much the individual battles but the story line that I am after when it comes to campaigns. The warmaster battle honors and "battle scars", the Man O'War crew upgrades, the hero quest hero items and their warmaster upgrades. That is what a campaign is all about.
When the players become emotionally attached to a hero or unit or a ship then the campaign has done its job. When a player actually, honestly fears one of his opponents units or ships because of previous engagements you know its working. :)
-
^ Absolutely. It's really about telling a story, and getting to be a part of that story.
Toco, I do really like the idea of the Battle Masters battles through. I need something easy to teach my friends with, and they know battle masters, so they will not be as intimidated. Maybe someday they can graduate to warmaster.
I will be checking out your stuff. I am trying to home brew other armies for battlemasters, (High Elves, and separating orcs and chaos). Are there any resources already out there for that?
-
For those that enjoy the ME/PE modeling aspect, I'm going to be casting up empty/blank hexes that will be of correct proportions to slot into existing collections (Sorry Grandma Wendy but you can't IP "hexagons" as much as I am sure you'd like to :D). I find myself needing to build new crazy stuff like giant multi hex hive spires, coastal cliffs, arbites archologies, etc and find the lack of a blank to be a PITA. I figure they may be handy for people interested in ME as well. Remind me around the end of year to see where we are for those that are interested.
Actually this is happening about "now". If anyone's interested, give me a PM. thanks!
-
I will be checking out your stuff. I am trying to home brew other armies for battlemasters, (High Elves, and separating orcs and chaos). Are there any resources already out there for that?
Yes, in my PDF. All Warhammer races are there to us in BattleMasters.
--> http://toco.be/homerules/files/BM_Custom_MightyEmpiresArmyLists.pdf
-
For those that enjoy the ME/PE modeling aspect, I'm going to be casting up empty/blank hexes that will be of correct proportions to slot into existing collections (Sorry Grandma Wendy but you can't IP "hexagons" as much as I am sure you'd like to :D). I find myself needing to build new crazy stuff like giant multi hex hive spires, coastal cliffs, arbites archologies, etc and find the lack of a blank to be a PITA. I figure they may be handy for people interested in ME as well. Remind me around the end of year to see where we are for those that are interested.
Actually this is happening about "now". If anyone's interested, give me a PM. thanks!
so...this happened ;D
-
Oh very nice!
-
Great work. But I'm still using the cardboard version of ME.
-
Toco, do you have the original 2 sided cardboard punch outs or your homemade type? I found a bunch of pdf's online that had everything and I almost made them and put them on magnet sheets.
-
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2016/11/21/gate-of-stars-map-campaign-part-1/
I know it's not the same thing but I love how they've used 28mm warhammer bits in order to create little "cities" on this map. Very much up my alley.
-
That is very cool! Too bad I hate the AoS universe too much. Also I had thought the AoS world was all weird with different "realms"? I guess this is just one of those many "realms"?
Anyways, it is beautiful! I dream of building something like that someday!
-
yeah, wow.
that is so much work!!!
Though I don't hate the age of sigmar stuff, I still get a rash from the way warhammer fantasy ended :( Cant bring myself to even think about it. I love my big warmaster armies too much anyhow. I would love to play with that map though, cant imagine what their models look like after the work done on the map!
P.S. I cannot for the life of me name any of those bits! ha
-
Very evocative! However, it's just any other fantasy world to me so far. Give it a few more decades of fleshing out and I might consider engaging with it gamingwise. ;)
-
Someone's been watching a bunch of GoT (and I don't say that as an insult)!
pretty cool!