For the last 2 years from 2021 til the end of 2023 I've been playing a Warhammer 40k campaign with my good mate Scott, We used a tile set I made from MDF 60mm Hex's and the planetary empires campaign rule set.
The Battles were resolved with Epic Armageddon because I had sworn off of regular 40k for cost and disagreeableness towards the rules. A steady 2 years of Imperium vs Chaos lead to a slight Imperial land victory but dominant Chaos control of the Void space.
I Integrated Battlefleet gothic and Aeronautica imperialis into the campaign to give certain bonus's to supply or deactivating certain map infrastructure.
Coming to the middle of 2023 I started to get an inch to play fantasy when I realised that Fantasy was not just 40k with swords instead of Lasguns and Knights instead of space marines. This lead me down a path that lead me here, Jordon inspired me and I had to find the rules. I've been obsessing over campaigns for some years now, after leaving Boltaction where we played a great sequential narrative campaign around the battle of Kursk I delved into Blackpowder and eventually Epic Armageddon.
So here we are, after years of swearing off fantasy and declaring it was not for me as a wargamer, I was watching some Lord of the Rings as I turned 30 and BAM, here I am. I played some 8th edition fantasy on Tabletop Simulator and got into Total war: Warhammer, but the Game felt too small. I didn't want to play 6 hr games like in my Old 40k days to get the feeling and I get tired now and I could feel my tactical grasp slip as the battle went on, I loved the speed and scale of Epic, so I started to explore Warmaster and that was that.
Warmaster and Mighty Empires
Playing Total War: Warhammer I really enjoyed the campaign, though I sucked at it. I wanted to play a fantasy/Medieval setting and I knew my previous campaigns would not help me much in designing my own ruleset. I decided on Mighty Empires, Scott was always down to play whatever, a total bro. We hammered out a few games of Warmaster, demonstrating my inability to teach properly but Scott's a patient man, bless him.
Now we're starting the campaign post haste, and as of the time of writing we've already played 2 'years' of the campaign, effectively 6 movement/Battle phases and 6 Economy, magic and event phases.
ManOWar and a final note
So the final piece of the puzzle is ManOWar, I 3d Printed the models from the great community and got the rules from them as well. When Mighty Empires came out in 1990 there was no Warhammer Naval wargame, though allusions to playing homebrew Naval wargames within the Mighty Empires rules and admission by those responsible for publishing them tells me they did have an early version of ManOWar in circulation within their own gaming group.
I ended up printing and painting a High Elf, Chaos Dwarf and Empire Fleet. There's also some Orc stuff somewhere but we don't talk about them. Within the campaign any naval actions fought, we fight using the ManOWar ruleset.
Final thoughts
I'm excited to start this chapter, I've not really delved into the Fantasy lore just so I don't get too stuck in a certain mindset regarding who did what/when/where and why, that WILL hamstring me and was one of the reasons I moved away from Historicals, I AM the guy to let history stop me, even if I'm not the kind of 'Well acktually' kinda guy in public.
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