ScrapYard Armory

The Chaos Campaign system is a personal favorite of mine.  The fast playing abstract campaign system has successfully been ported to almost every era in the BattleTech universe from the Jihad to the historical conflicts of the Succession Wars.  The newest entry into the Chaos Campaign ecosystem comes courtesy of The Wars of Reaving sourcebook.

For a complete review of the sourcebook, Chaos Reaving excluded, visit OurBattleTech.com.

The Chaos Reaving rules annex brings a new dynamic to the Chaos Campaign system.  Instead of a collection of individual tracks, the Chaos Reaving campaign provides a build-it-yourself framework that promises to allow players and gamemasters to play out any Clan faction on any number of worlds involved in the Wars of Reaving.

As a build your own system, the Reaving Campaign presents a menu of choices for the players to select from.  The final sum of these parts make up the individual battles the players will fight as they navigate through their custom length campaign.

BattleField Setup

The first selection to be made is the location for the track and there is a long list of target planets to choose from.  Most of them are specific planets but there are two generic options (Deep Periphery and Occupation Zone) to cover all potential targets.  Each location has a table of information for players and game masters to utilize to spice up the battle.  Each mission will use the Warchest Points and Map Sheet Tables.  Optionally, there are weather conditions, advanced terrain features, gravity, and temperature for those detail minded individuals.  Further into the details are purely roleplaying elements such as the Star type, travel time to the jump point and others meant for an adventurous game master to weave a set of battles into an epic yarn.

With no less than fifty locations to choose from, players are sure to find an interesting location or two to battle on.  The available locations feature an impressive array of optional terrain and weather conditions that ensure that no two planets will seem the same.

The Warchest point cost per location is the base cost per mission on that planet and ranges from 200 to 700 points which covers a wide enough range to accomodate those with a flush warchest and those that have not been so fortunate.

Options

The options section is the next step in mission construction.  Players (or game masters as we will see later) select from a range of options that either help or hurt the players to generate War Chest bonus opportunities (or penalties).

Options present a way to tweak the risk/reward curve for the mission.  You can select a bonus which will decrease both the upfront cost of the track as well as the reward for successfully completing the objectives.  Alternatively you could pay more upfront in order to make an additional reward available to you if you are able to complete your objectives.

This presents new avenues for cash strapped commands to continue the campaign or for the more adventurous to increase the potential windfall.  An important note, these options are selected before you know your objectives or your opponent.

By selecting up to two options, you can create an interesting mix of conditions and potential Warchest Point bonuses.  For example, you could take the seemingly impossible bonus of doubling the opposing force size then temper it by increasing your own force’s skill level.  The end result is +100 Warchest cost for the track and a possible +500 in Warchest Points if you can win your objectives.

There are twenty-one options to choose from.  Seven are cost and victory deductions while the rest add to the cost and potential awards.

The available options are often mirrored from positive to negative with some special positive options.  It is up to the player to keep things interesting as the campaign moves along.  After giving the available options some thought, I like what I see.  While you can very easily treat them as linear elements (help me or hurt me!) when combined you are treated to unique conditions and a delightful selection of possible combinations.

Special Rules

As expected for a campaign involving the Clans, Honor is a prominent feature of the rules which borrows from the Dezgra point system originally published in Total Warfare.  The Honor system presents another resource for players to manage.  Since Dezgra points would carry over between tracks, you will be as concerned with your units current honor as much as their pilot damage, experience points, and ‘Mech repairs.

Each faction in the Reaving campaign follows an Honor level specific to the era allowing for unique situations when your opponent does not match your own units Honor level.  The Honor rules are in my opinion a critical piece to the the Reaving Campaign and provides that special flavor that makes the system unique among other Chaos Campaigns.

Other rules including Forced Withdrawal, Salvage, and Isorla round out the mandatory special rules.

Additional Special Rules

Even more special than above, these additional rules are a tad out there.  While some of them are rather benign and carry no Warchest point impact (Dropping Troops, Special Unit Rules, etc.) others can break any track open.  Care should be taken when exercising any of these rules.

Ultimately, common sense should prevail when shopping the Additional Special Rules section.  I think it would be more reasonable for a Game Master to select these for their players.  Inappropriate use of the Operational Timeframe or Betrayal special rules potentially breaks the game and may quickly ruin the difficulty level of the campaign.  These types of special rules don’t seem to fit the pick your own track construction.  Without context, a turn limit on a track does not fit.  Only when you consider its implications in the light of your objectives and terrain does it become a meaningful addition.

Objectives

The center piece of any track are the objectives.  The Reaving Campaign always begins with one, Win your Bid where you attempt to cripple or destroy your opponent.  From there you can add up to three additional objectives.  There are twelve objectives to choose from ranging from destroying a particular building to escaping the battle with a percentage of your force intact.  Each additional objective increases your base cost while providing additional avenues for Warchest point gain.

The range of objectives is fairly standard.  There are no wildly creative additions to the list which is to be expected due to the standardized format of the campaign.  Suffice to say, you will not find anything more than the usual suspects in the objectives made available to you.  While your objectives will guide your overall strategy, the most thought provoking decisions will be made agonizing over the Options section.

I am happy to see opportunities for a well balanced force to be put to good use.  A fast light force has a great chance at acing a track with a destroy the target objective combined with a force preservation objective.  Available campaign selections that will detract from a player force made exclusively by Daishi variants is a plus.  Even so, almost all of the available objectives can be exploited by an ultra heavy death star type force in one way or another.

Opponent

The opponent section is brief and includes a quick table describing the Warchest point adjustment for an opposing force greater or less than the player’s force.  The actual opposing Clan will depend on the players to figure out from the information contained in the sourcebook.  There are three political balance tables available (for three different years) to find an opponent.  However, if you need to know who was fighting who at such and such a time, you have to consult the other 190 or so pages of the sourcebook.

Then again, since this is a make your own adventure campaign you should design your battles as you like them.  Playing Jade Falcons and hate the Steel Vipers?  Go get ’em.

Setting Up a Game

The next section is a generous double page of concentrated examples that give players a feel for how this whole pick your own campaign system works.  There are three different perspectives presented; a basic campaign with a friend playing the opposing force, a more complicated campaign with a friend picking and playing the opposing force, and a campaign where two players go head to head with a game master moderating the action.  Each example goes a little further into the details and are fantastic and approachable introductions to the thinking behind building a track.

I believe that these examples provide a view into the original intent of the author.  It is fun to see how Mr. Rome thought things would shake out as players sat down at the table to construct their campaign.

Downtime

Activities between tracks are exactly as you would expect with some key changes.  You will be repairing units, healing pilots, and acquiring new equipment in order to keep your force in fighting trim.  You will be dealing with Support Points like in other Chaos Campaigns with some Clan related differences.

The Clan milieu takes center stage when it comes to acquiring new units.  Clans don’t “buy” their weapons of war, they use their merchant caste to trade for them.  This major change from the standard Chaos Campaign really makes it feel like a Clan centric campaign and will make for some careful consideration by the players as they weigh their need for equipment versus their greed in the hunt for a Diamond Shark quality bargain.

The Good, The Bad, and the Clans

I’m happy to see the Chaos Campaign format move to new ground in The Wars of Reaving.  While I enjoy seeing a pick your own track system there are potential pit falls to avoid.  In most cases, the guiding hand of a game master is absolutely necessary in order to keep the campaign balanced and fresh.  A numbers minded player generating his own tracks may fall into a dull loop of maxing his Warchest points through a careful mix of options and objectives.  Analysis paralysis is a real threat to creativity and fun in this case.  The Chaos Reaving can be a perfect tool for game masters though.

The Chaos campaign provides near infinite re-playability value and is the best bang for your buck than any other Chaos Campaign offering to date.  If you are a fan of the Clans and plan on getting the sourcebook anyways you are getting this system thrown in for free.  The modular nature of the system ensures that you can generate a campaign with the size and detail that you want.

The critical thing missing from Chaos Reaving is that spark that makes certain tracks in the rest of the series absolutely spectacular.  It’s the wow factor that can never be duplicated by a modular pick it yourself system.

In the end the greatest strength of Chaos Reaving is also it’s greatest weakness.  While modular, scalable, and replayable it will never be able to trump the creative offerings of the best of the Chaos Campaign series.  That is not to say that Chaos Reaving is not worth your while.  There was obviously a great deal of thought put into the available options and objectives and the potential combinations thereof.  The only way to fully explore the hidden fruits of this campaign system is to get down to business and play it out.  I’ve always had a soft spot for the Jade Falcons, maybe its time for a Reaving campaign of my own…