I'm Still Here? Wow...

 Well over a year after my 'triumphant return' to blogging.  What a mess...

Anyway, it is time to return to my mad ramblings.  In recent times, I've been tearing my way through archives of old official Mage Knight scenarios and campaigns.   Some of them seem pretty fun, especially the older stuff where it was clear the developers and writers were doing things by the seat of their pants.  The lore especially can across as pretty whack, though there was an emphasis on mixed warbands and 'little guys' that I find very appealing.  A lot of the 2.0 scenarios, though, well, even accounting for players bringing in domains for their own spice, they're just bland.  They got better around the time of Nexus, and like Nexus itself, was really more a final blaze-of-glory push that came too late.  

This 'research' came about since I was mining for ideas for putting together a more serious campaign concept than the lolrandom Fort Nerdicus set.  My initial concept is an attempt to bring Mage Knight back to its roots, at least from my own perspective:  an emphasis on hodgepodge warbands made from whatever a player could slap together from a starter and some boosters instead of monofaction, finely-tuned juggernauts that just can't help but steamroll everything but other juggernauts.

The core conceit from a lore standpoint is one I've discussed before:  The Apocalypse Dragon and friends showed up, the Land got rekt, but the baddies were defeated at great cost instead of the spiteful end of things that officially happened.  Players represent minor warlords that are picking up the pieces.  From a rules perspective, I'm trying for very simple initial restrictions:  Campaign armies start at around 800 to 1000 points, but no more than 2 unique figures.  All sets are allowed, and the 'Vintage' ruleset I concocted would be run so that 1.0 figures would be relevant; it became very clear that at least in the lore, the old figures did not just up and vanish no matter what the official tournament rules said.

My big hangup is trying to find a way to include reinforcements in a way that doesn't enable a player to immediately slap down a pack of heavy-hitting uniques or something after just one or two games, but also doesn't add any more complexity to the army requirements.  The goal would be to build to such a point after time and have a glorious big Conquest battle where everybody pulls out all the stops in the late- and endgame.

I'm also running the idea of a campaign map as opposed to either a campaign tree or the four-scenario monthly sets that Wizkids ran.  No real hangups, just haven't really cooked up anything yet.  Since this is going to be a slow simmering work instead of cranking it out right off the bat, I'd be open to input on this part, plus any other suggestions.

Well, that's it for now.  Hopefully it won't be another year before I talk about this stuff again.  Now go forth and conquer!