Ticket To ... WAR!

As part of our recent silliness with Book of War, my oldest and I decided to do a mash-up with Ticket to Ride ... creating ... Ticket to WAR!  

Each side chooses a capital city--in the game below, the Necromancer ruled from Moscow while the living held Paris.

Battalions, represented by single miniatures, spawned from the capital cities at a cost of 5 wild cards.  Battalions could shift from one city to another by playing the necessary train cards to complete that route (e.g. 4 green).

Each turn players could choose to draw two cards or complete a route, just as in a standard game of Ticket to Ride.

When enemy armies occupied the same city, we would shift scales to table-top war game level and fight the battle out using Book of War.  Retreating forces would be displaced to an adjacent city.

Apparently there is no game, however charming and pacifist in its sensibilities, that the folks at my house cannot transform into a bloody, tooth-and-claw struggle! 

Book of War: Campaign Follow Up

About a month ago, my older daughter and I played a half-dozen sessions of Book of War, by Daniel "Delta" Collins, as part of a linked campaign set in "The Realm"--our D&D campaign milleau.


Her younger sister acted as judge as we used blind movement to shift our troops around a hex map, probing, retreating, and attempting to draw our foe into the battle of our choosing.

I played three human barons, their knights, soldiers, peasant levee, and human mercenaries, while my daughter commanded heaps of goblins, orcs, and wargs led by ogres, a minotaur, and a half-orc warlord (sent against the kingdom as mercenaries in the employ of the Master of the desert nomads).  Most fierce among her troops were her wolf-riding goblin archers, who could dash, loose arrows, and dash again, dancing out of range of my slower troops.


What made this campaign especially exciting was the shared continuity with our six-year-old D&D campaign.  If Baron Sherlane was pulled from his horse and crushed by ogres ... well, he wouldn't be around to act as the characters' patron any longer!  Likewise, if the eastern side of The Realm was overrun and its folk put to the sword by marauders, the PCs could lose homes, friends, and loved ones in our linked RPG.  We were playing for keeps!

The final results were most satisfying.  We each won two engagements (one large, one small) and rather than one faction being thoroughly broken, each of us were bloodied enough to withdraw to better ground and send out scouts--a stalemate.

What this means for our campaign world is that The Wildwood Inn, that walled compound and last bastion of civilization in the wide eastern forest, was overrun with fell folk and has become a stronghold of goblins and worse.

Further north, The Old Forest Road has been cut, further isolating Castellan's Keep where it stands upon the very border of the wild.


The barons must set a constant watch upon the margins of the wood as goblins and wolves slink out by night to terrorize isolated hamlets and many farms are abandoned as folk flee west toward safety.

These developments clearly spark adventure for our heroes!

• Castellan's Keep will need resupply soon, and swords will be needed to guard the carts
• Bounties are being offered on goblins raiding out of the wood
• Rangers are needed to dare the wood and spy out the enemy and their numbers
• A small team might be dispatched to The Wildwood Inn to capture or kill an enemy leader
• The village of The Downs has become a fortified camp and the baron's will need proven allies to oversee the building of a pallisade and day-to-day management
• Chaplains, healers, and scouts are in great demand
• Old enemies, such as the death-cult of Orcus or rebellious Baron VonHendricks, may take advantage of the crisis in the east to advance their own plans

What mass combat systems have you tried over the years and have you settled on a favorite?

Anyone else out there ever tried Book of War? 

Book of War: The Dogs of War

My oldest daughter and I have been playing Daniel "Delta" Collins Book of War recently (simulating D&D combat on a mass scale where 1 figure = 10 men) and we decided to take a break from our regular campaign for a pickup game.

This time she chose to build a force composed entirely of dogs, giant wargs, and wolves!

Against her I arrayed archers, medium foot, dwarves, heavy foot and crossbow troops (visible below from left to right).

The match played quickly (simplicity and fast play are part of the appeal of Book of War) and the humans were able to drive The Great Pack off, limiting their predation of the fields men know ... at least for now.

In proper D&D fashion, we talked about the skirmish on later truck rides and let story emerge as a product of gameplay (rather than a script to be followed).  This was cool because we got to discover it together.  

It turns out that the mastermind behind The Great Pack is this little guy ("Napoleon" by name).  

He's one of those little dogs who is firmly convinced that he's a big dog.  What's more, the little fellow is gifted with a notion of politics and enough savvy to manipulate larger, dumber dogs into throwing off their collars and turning upon the two-legged oppressors.  

So driven is Napoleon in his quest for domination that he has even convinced his mastiff henchmen to ally themselves with their traditional enemies: the wolves ("After all, aren't we truly all part of one breed?  And who benefits from our animosity?  Isn't it the two-legs who set us against each other?!").  Though Napoleon's forces suffered a defeat, we are sure that we haven't heard the last of him or The Great Pack.

Has anyone else tried out Book of War?
Do you have another game or system that you use to simulate mass combat in D&D?