Warmachine Map Campaign Example

There have been some questions about how exactly the map works during the campaign.  I'm going to run through a sample turn just to make sure it's all clear.

Here is the base map for the campaign:

Click on the map for a larger version.

You can see the starting grids for each of the faction pairs.  To re-cap, the pairs are:

• Cygnar/Trollbloods
• Protectorate/Circle
• Cryx/Legion
• Khador/Skorne
• Retribution/Convergence
• Mercenaries
• Minions

The Mercenaries and Minions factions are "fillers".  A player associated with one of those factions would be assigned to a normal team that was short on players.

Keep on reading to find out more!


In our example, we'll have the following players:

• Cygnar (Hickman and Harry), Trollbloods (Frank)
• Protectorate (Scott) and Circle (O'leary)
• Cryx (Doug) and Legion (Chris)
• Khador (Nick) and Skorne (AJ)
• Retribution (None) and Convergence (Jason)
• Mercenaries (Andrew)
• Minions (None)

Because of the amount of players in this example, Andrew would be assigned to the Retribution/Convergence alliance.

Once the league begins, games can take place at any time.  Two (or more) players of different factions just have to meet and agree to play a map campaign game.  Once the game is over, the winner will choose a row or column on a faction grid and territory will be gained or lost based on that selection.

Example Turn One

For the first league game, Chris (Legion) plays Scott (Protectorate) and wins.  The grids start off looking like this:

Cryx/Legion on the left.  Protectorate/Circle on the right.

This is where it might be confusing to some people.  Let's look at the Cryx/Legion grid first.  You can see that they border each of the four other faction pairs.  They border Protectorate/Circle along the bottom edge of their grid (R, Q, P, O, N, M).  Protectorate borders them also along the bottom with (M, N, O, P, Q, R).  The alignment of the grid doesn't matter as much as the letters.

Chris chooses column "O" for his win.  When you win a game with "neutral" borders (ie neither player has an advantage) the winner player advances two boxes down the column he chose and one down each adjacent column.

The national grids end up looking like this:

Chris is advancing into Protectorate territory.  This might be more easily understood if we rotated the grids and placed them adjacent to each other:

Obviously because of the placement of the five factions, there's no way to align these grids so that they match up like they do in the above example.  It's just not possible, which is why the letter/number grid system is in place.

So let's assume the following games and results (all 25+ point games):

Cygnar (Hickman) wins against Skorne (AJ) and picks column C
Cygnar (Harry) wins against Cryx (Doug) and picks column 2
Circle (O'leary) wins against Convergence (Jason) and picks column 14
Nick (Khador) wins against Mercenaries (Andrew) and picks column 26

The map ends up looking like this:

Click on the map for a larger version.

Example Turn Two

Now it gets more complicated.  There are rules for "positive", "negative", and "mixed" borders that can start to come into play.

Let's assume a re-match between Chris and Scott.  This time, however, Scott wins for the Protectorate.  He gets to choose a column.  If he chooses the same column "O" that Chris chose before, he only gains back one square.  You can read the section on Negative Borders to see why.

Instead, Scott does the smart thing and chooses column R.  It involves both Neutral (since R is still on the original border) and Negative (since Chris controls territory within the Protectorate border).  I'll go through the step-by-step process:

1.  Scott chose column R and gets two squares because of the Neutral border rules.
2.  He then gets one square in column Q as well.

This is just the part where we do the "Neutral" border stuff.

3.  Now we look at the rules for negative borders.  Column P is adjacent to column Q and it is further "behind" the lines than Q, and therefore eligible to be moved.  Column O is the same way.  It is further behind the lines than P, so it moves.  Column N does NOT move, because it was not behind column O.

After the "Negative" borders are resolved as well.

If you're Chris, you're thinking to yourself "I took four territories when I won, but I just lost 5 when he won!  What gives?"

The idea is that you can push rapidly forward down a single column, eating into your enemy territory, but you risk losing a fight on a flank where you can lose a lot very quickly.  You have to balance out rapid advances (which can take a lot of territory as we'll see in a second) versus protecting yourself.

The borders if the grids were rotated.

Let's look at another rematch.  This time, Hickman again beats AJ (no offense, AJ!  Just need an example).  He again chooses column C.  Here are the pre-game borders:

And here's what happens after he advances into Column C (and therefore the adjacent columns as well, per the rules):

You can see that by picking the same column, Hickman was able to take 5 territories.

So that should be enough for basic examples.  I hope you've learned something about how the grids align, how advancing is handled, and how the league in general should operate.

Of course I'll be (pleasantly) surprised if my players read all this.  Some might... but most probably won't.