Your Grace, my Lords, my Ladies. I bring insights of all powers within the War of the Five Kings that ravages Westeros. But more specifically, I bring knowledge of the campaigns these would be kings lead on the realm. My little birds bring me information to amend our war map, and they speak also of new pretenders of titles. Let’s waste no more time.
Fun lore skit aside. This article is about my ideas for what CMON can do to create expansions for the A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game. From meddling with the Tactics Board designs, to making a Map Crawl Campaign mode and even your own Commander, Tactics Decks and Units.
Tactics Board
There has been some conflict over how the NCUs should be used in game, the recent changes to the NCUs forces you to activate NCUs and due to this less 3 NCU lists have been made. Could the Tactics Board be better to allow for more creative lists designs in terms of NCUs?
Pyat Pree is such a unique NCU adding a 6th zone of the board and guaranteeing a 3 NCU activation against a 3 activation list. Could we expand the game and add in faction specific zones to the tactics board or redesign it completely where you and your opponent places 3 Zones down each creating a game specific board? How would this work? What would be the point? Is it worth investing in cards that could change?
+ 1 System
This would be whoever is first player for the round, before the round begins, place a Tactics Zone from their list down. Each player picks one Zone when designing lists.
3 : 3 System
Before the game begins but after deployment, each player starting with the Second Player places a Tactics Zone down until a Tactics Board is created from 6 Zones.
Both
Once placed, shuffle the zone tokens face down, and starting with the First Player place a token on each of the Tactics Zones leaving one without a token. Flip these tokens to find the placements of the Tactic Zone counters. So this is needed as we would lose the effectiveness of Tactics Cards that require a specific Zone held to gain a benefit. Thus White Harbour could be the new Crown Zone in one game but then gained the Coins in another or perhaps even none at all. Perhaps we could even implement a picking system similar to picking the objectives cards for Fire and Blood instead?
The Tactic Board/Zone Deck
Just like Pyat Pree’s card called The House of the Undying, each Tactics Zone card would be for a location in the world of ASOIAF. For example, the backing of White Harbour for the Starks, Lannisport for the Lannisters, Storm’s End for Baratheons, Fist of the First Men for Night’s Watch, Hardhome for Free Folk, Meereen for Targaryens, and Pyke for Greyjoys. I would even include some locations as Neutral Tactics Zones that anyone can take due to their frequent exchanging of owners like Harrenhal, Deep Wood Mote or even King’s Landing when you think about it.
Each zone would have its own unique effect like making the opponent discard a Tactics Card with The Twins zone to represent their Counterplotting and betrayal. Maybe give the Bags Zone to Highgarden to represent their wealth or the vast amounts of soldiers they can send off to pick up the spears of those that have fallen. How about an effect to give out abilities like Vicious from the Dreadfort or +1 Movement for Ashermark.
Campaign Map
“I thought the battles would be the hard part.” – Robb Stark
A Song of Ice and Fire has never been about just the battles, and the forces of the Five Kings campaigned across the majority of Westeros and potentially could have reached every corner of the continent. I do believe there should be a narrative campaigning system for 2+ players. THis can be on the small scale like the struggle in the North after the Starks were slaughtered for control. Or the large scale to find out who sits upon the Iron Throne. What we would need is a Campaign Victory System, Maps, and Progressive Rewards.
However there can be much much more, like an in-game currency for you to purchase units that you can gain from taking areas on the map or by gaining extra benefits on taking something like a port or a mine. You could also have NCU actions for the actual campaign game like Jaqen H’ghar being sent to slay a character or Tywin sending for an alliance with a major house. There is so much potential for creative expansive rules to fully flesh out a large narrative campaign or even league.
As an example here is how I would design a small scale campaign game.
Small Scale
Theme: “War for the North. After the toppling of the Starks at the Twins, the North is in chaos with many houses vying for control and the title of Warden of the North. Raise your banners, summon your advisors, and march to claim the Throne of Winter before another house seizes it.”
Factions are open in this campaign as many factions may lay claim to the North, be it through conquest, marriage or diplomacy.
Campaign Turns. Each player marks a hold with their counter to represent where their Commander has made their seat. Each then takes it in turns to move their counter to any adjacent zone to one you control, if the zone is not marked, mark it with one of your counters, if it is marked then you must engage in combat with the player that controls the zone.
After every game, each player receives 1 Campaign Point. If you win the game you receive D3 Campaign Points. If you draw in a game then you both receive 2 Campaign Points. Once someone reaches 10 Campaign Points, they must win one more game with the enemy Commander destroyed to win the campaign.
To further expand on this, each zone could have specific bonuses, or you could make it a slow grow campaign by starting with 25pts and gaining a random unit before each game or by introducing a purchasing system. You could have a Treachery Deck like the Warhammer Fantasy multiplayer gamemode, or even give NCUs as rewards when taking specific zones that each have a campaign ability to play to represent the diplomacy side of A Song of Ice and Fire.
I think there is definitely more to discuss here, and I will make a homebrew version of these rules for you all to play and enjoy.
C.Y.O
Create Your Own. This could work in any narrative game, or even competitive at specific events. Many people have wanted to create their own Characters, Units and Tactics Decks within the game, what if you could create your own?
There is a game I love to play called Stellaris, and when you make your race you pick a bunch of Civics which are essentially race specific buffs/debuffs that make up the uniqueness of your race. You start with 2 points and you can’t have less than 0 points. Each buff somes with positive or negative points. Some are -4 points for a powerful buff and thus you would need to take some negative debuffs that would balance this out.
I would follow this system with making abilities for your own Commander, Attachments, Units and perhaps even making your own Tactics Deck. For example, Relentless is a powerful ability and I would make this worth -4 points for it to go on your Commander thus meaning you would need two negative buffs or one that would bring you back to 0 or higher like the Qyburn ability Violent Reactions.
These are just some of my ideas for expansions to the game. All could have some influence on the Casual, Narrative and Competitive playerbase. What would you design for an expansion to the game?
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