Mighty Empires Game

[Tiberius]

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!

[Stormwind]

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 =<

[cjbennett22]

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.

[Tiberius]

Ahh yes, this is where this posts belongs.  Thanks for moving it to the proper place.

Ha, sucks that you killed Mighty Empires .  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!



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".

[cjbennett22]

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.

[Dave]

If Adepticon had a MoW event I'd play. ::nudge::  ::nudge:: Say no more...

[honestmistake]

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.

[cjbennett22]

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 

[cjbennett22]

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.

[Tiberius]

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...

[cjbennett22]

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.

[Dave]

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.

[Tiberius]

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!

[Gorrin]

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

[Gorrin]

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