End of Turn Four!

Well it's the end of turn four and the map looks a little different.

For a start there are three new realms!

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Results 

Let's examine the current state of play.

1. The Tempestrians are still at the top of the pile despite a few setbacks. The new Chaos Dwarfs have been kicking ass with their Beastman allies and serious losses have been made. 
2. The Empire have taken second place despite wining almost no games. This is more, I think, to do with their enemies being distracted while they expand than anything else. 
3. The Beastmen have had only two enemies up until now and so have been able to expand undeterred. That's one of the problems with a map campaign. Outer armies can gain a real advantage. But the Nippons are closing in now from the south west to put them under pressure. 
4. The Tomb Kings have lost five realms this turn. They are in serious jeopardy and now have the chaos forces of Fell Glen to reckon with PLUS an imminent Spider Goblin attack on their capital! It really isn't looking good for them! 
5. Although certain good but annoying friends have been convinced that the Knights of Ebon Scar are overpowered, they only showed a slight growth this turn but have a fairly stable position in the far north.
6. It's about time but the Dwarfs have finally mostly overcome the disastrous move my friend Joao forced on them several campaign turns ago. They're now doing very well against the Orcs and The Wood Elves and look to continue if those rivers don't stop them moving their armies. 
7. The Warriors of Dunkel Schloss, my friend Mike's army, are doing reasonably in games but have neither expanded nor contracted their realm. With their northern border relatively unguarded, anything could happen< but their alliance with the Spider Goblins could well lead to the destruction of the Tomb Kings. 
8. The Chaos Daemons are likewise stable, but with two new Greater Daemons behind them and a more fully fleshed out backstory, surely good things must happen! 
9. Despite winning almost every game, the Spider Goblins continue to struggle to capture ground. They need to move early this turn to maximise their growth potential. 
10. Their allies, the Orcs have not grown either. They win games but they need to push outward. 
11. Paradoxically, the Chaos Dwarfs have actually lost ground! Now with two new enemies they could start to lose it even more! 
12. The Wood Elves, like the Tomb Kings, are in serious trouble. They are surrounded and are losing ground FAST. Perhaps an alliance is in order. But who would join with them?
13. After doing well last turn, the random events really screwed the Ogres, making them fall behind. Hopefully the new enemy of the Beastmen will take the pressure off. 
14. Still looking forlorn, the Vampire Counts, instigators of this whole war are still in bad shape. They've recaptured their fortress but need to really expand before they can regain their position near the top.
15. And down at the bottom are the Skaven. But with loads of new units, they are definitely on the way back up!!!!

As for the three new armies: Dark Elves, more Warriors of Chaos from Fell Glen and the Samurai of Nippon; well... we'll have to wait and see!

I've set them up with their own realms now and placed the starting armies. The tricky thing here was to not give them too much of an advantage. Bear in mind that their closest enemies now have an opponent where there was once a safe line of nothing that they didn't need to defend. Those enemies are suddenly going to need to redeploy their forces to deal with the new threat.

Stats 

Here are the stats so far for the armies:


And the players:

Interestingly I have really increased my proportion of wins. At the end of the last turn I was on 14:17, wins:losses and Gill, my wife, was on 10:7.

Now we've switched places with her falling back and me pulling ahead. Mike too, is falling back a little on his success.

Having only played one recorded game, Joao is still surging ahead, as per usual.

Randomness 

Now then, I have noticed that randomness has taken on too great an effect at the strategic level in this campaign and I'm going to severely cut back on it this turn.

Last turn each race rolled for a Random Effect. Several of these had catastrophic effects on their success - possibly setting them back for several campaign turns.All this achieves is that it minimises the impact of actual in-game and campaign movement strategy. So I'm doing away with it completely.

The other major crapshoot with randomness is the principle of each racing moving one at a time in an order determined by random.

This means that an race that moves first on the map will snatch up enemy realms and pin enemy armies in place before they can react, gaining a huge advantage. This advantage isn't because the player is a cunning general but purely because of the random order of movement.

Hoping to minimise this I have decided to make a list of each races armies and minimise that instead.

That way, Orc army 1 might move before Dwarf army 1 but Dwarf army 2 might move before Orc army 2.

With that in mind, here is the order of movement for Turn 5:

Daemons

Beastmen

Dark Elves

Skaven

Daemons

Tempestrians

Tempestrians

Vampires

Empire

Dunkel Schloss

Dark Elves

Beastmen

Dwarfs

Orcs

Dunkel Schloss

Beastmen

Men of Stone

Skaven

Tempestrians

Spider Goblins

Spider Goblins

Men of Stone

Tomb Kings

Tempestrians

Dark Elves

Nippon

Chaos Dwarfs

Wood Elves

Empire

Men of Stone

Ogres

Empire

Dwarfs

Spider Goblins

Ogres

Dwarfs

Orcs

Nippon

Beastmen

Empire

Vampires

Tomb Kings

Beastmen

Empire

Daemons

Spider Goblins

Chaos Dwarfs

Tempestrians

Dwarfs

Dwarfs

Skaven

Orcs

Ogres

Nippon

Tomb Kings

Orcs

Tempestrians

Tomb Kings

Dunkel Schloss

Beastmen

Tempestrians

Dunkel Schloss

Men of Stone

Wood Elves

Fell Glen

Chaos Dwarfs

Fell Glen

Daemons

Tomb Kings

Fell Glen

Tomb Kings

Chaos Dwarfs

Wood Elves

Empire

Men of Stone

Vampires

Each time a race comes up they get to move one army of their choice. Once moved, that army can't be moved again that turn.

Once an army has been brought to battle by another army it cannot move even if it hasn't moved yet.


Strengthened Alliances

One last thing.

Last turn I decided to conduct movement more in line with the alliances present on the map but felt I didn't do it as much as I could have.

Here are the different alliances who should be coordinating their efforts:

The Civilised Realms 

Tempestrians
Empire
Dwarfs

The Chaos Incursion

Chaos Dwarfs
Beastmen
Chaos Warriors
Daemons of Chaos

The Hordes of Disorder 

Skaven
Ogres
Orcs
Goblins

The Undead Nation 

Vampire Counts
Tomb Kings

But also bear in mind that the Goblins and Warriors of Dunkel Schloss are currently in league.

Let's get to it!!!