The path ahead…

Way back when when the first shots were fired, a plan was set ahead of us. Time now to cast an eye over what has past and what is yet ahead.

Now into June and on the verge of the last weekend, we had forecast that all gangs would have played four games. We have had some drop out and one or two join. Where we stand at the moment is on the cusp of the end of the first phase of action.

Uptown has certainly concluded all of it’s games for the first half of the campaign. Downtown however, is completing it’s games for cycle 3, with one of three games played for that cycle.

Now, the first part of a Dominion campaign is called the Occupation phase and is all about focusing taking over unclaimed territories, for that, I put together fixtures to reflect everyone having a fair crack at being the attacker/defender and ensuring that everyone played everyone in their part of the sector with the idea of getting a bit of variation from the multiple games.

At the mid point of a Dominion Campaign is a period called downtime. Essentially this is a period of pause. However, it has some very important aspects that should be followed very carefully so I am going to go through these.

1. Fighters Recover – this is self explanatory. Any fighter in your roster that is currently in recovery is taken out of recovery.
2. Captives are Returned – all captives are released back to their gangs, the gang that had captured them received half of their credit value rounding up to the nearest 5 credits.
3. Experienced Juves are Promoted – any Juve that has received five advancements is promoted to a Champion. Please see rules about how this may require you to rebalance your gangs should any of you be fortunate to have any juves on that many advancements!
4. Fresh Recruitment –

The key point here is that the 250 credits can not be spent on existing members of your gang. It has to be used to purchase new fighters and/or hangers-on. None can be added to the gang stash. You can, however, supplement with existing credits from your gangs stash if you so wish.

To simplify, what I am going to ask is that during down time, players will submit their use of the 250credits to me to check before giving the go ahead – just to make sure it meets the requirements as it isn’t 100% straightforward.

The takeover phase.
After downtime we then head off into the new phase known as the takeover phase. Instead of making challenges for unoccupied territories, your gangs will now challenge their opponents for territories they own.

For purposes of the campaign, this phase is going to be more important to record certain stats for each game. I will go through this more closer to the time.

Currently, the plan is to bring all of the current gangs together from both Uptown and Downtown and have them all battle it out for the various titles that will be up for grabs.

Dominator – the gang with the most territories at the end of the campaign.
Slaughterer – the gang that has taken out of action the most enemy fighters during the takeover phase.
Warmonger – the gang with the most victories.
The Creditor – the gang with the highest wealth at the end of the campaign.
The Powerbroker – the gang with the highest reputation at the end of the campaign.

How long will the takeover phase last? The first phase was 4 cycles of 4 weeks, with each player expected to complete one game per cycle. I propose we repeat this system but open up a little more wriggle room. Gangs will be expected to play a minimum of four games in the four cycles and a maximum of 6.

So, I hear you think, if Uptown has finished it’s Occupation phase, what of Downtown? Well, we have an interesting dilemma. In theory, the 3rd cycle could be wrapped up quickly with two games left to play.

Instead of the last cycle, we could have each gang roll on the House Favours chart and be assigned a territory that is linked to their gang for boons, from the Downtown territories, otherwise randomly roll off one from the rest for the remaining gangs. It’s not ideal, but it would bring everyone up to the same point in the campaign and at the same time.