Final Tally, Location of the final battle and next steps
The summer campaign has burned white hot, and now, at last, the smoke parts just long enough for us to draw breath before the Final Battle.
For 13 weeks, from the Prologue to the eve of the last great clash, the war has raged across club tables, kitchen counters, cellars, garages, store boards and distant battlefields. When the scribes finally gathered the scrolls, counted the grudges, checked the boasts and wiped the blood from the ledgers, the number was almost absurd.
1,014 battles.
One thousand and fourteen games fought in the name of glory, treachery, vengeance and the Jade Staff. That is no small campaign tally. That is the sort of number that makes veterans nod, rivals mutter, and campaign organisers stare into the middle distance while wondering how on earth they are going to process all the results before Monday.
It began simply enough. A small muster in a half-sleeping wargaming club amongst the Alps. A few familiar generals, a few familiar grudges, the usual dice, the usual threats, the usual laughter. Then the first allied clubs answered. Then more commanders heard the call. Soon the flames of war had climbed beyond the mountains, crossed borders, crossed languages, and eventually crossed the ocean itself.
Each week the reports went out like ravens from a fortress under siege. The old forums stirred. Veterans gathered. The tale was read in English, French, Italian and German. Some cheered as their faction rose. Others cursed bitter defeats, blamed the dice, accused their rivals of cowardice, and demanded more blood for the next report. The war had found its audience, and the audience did what every proper wargaming audience should do: they picked up dice and joined the fighting.
Before long, the distant fronts outnumbered the original musters. We lit the first torch. The community turned it into a wildfire.
And now here we are, sitting before a mountain of notes, battle reports, score sheets, half-remembered heroics, shocking massacres, miserable defeats, stubborn draws and victories that will no doubt grow larger every time they are retold. There are tales here fit for tavern songs, grudges that will survive into the next campaign, and losses that will be blamed on treacherous dice until the end of time.
So let us open the great ledger one final time before the last battle drums begin.
Battles week by week:
- Week 1: 41 battles
- Week 2: 36 battles
- Week 3: 39 battles
- Week 4: 48 battles
- Week 5: 75 battles
- Week 6: 78 battles
- Week 7: 63 battles
- Week 8: 114 battles
- Week 9: 75 battles
- Week 10: 93 battles
- Week 11: 85 battles
- Week 12: 86 battles
- Week 13: 181 battles
- Total recorded battles: 1,014
- Campaign length: 13 weeks
- Average battles per week: 78.0
- Median week: 75 battles
- Quietest week: Week 2 (36 battles)
- Busiest week: Week 13 (181 battles)
Of those 1,014 battles,
368 came from the campaign core. These were the games fought by the Zurich group and the players closest to it: club nights, home tables, kitchen campaigns, cellar wars, garage grudge matches, store games and visits from allied clubs we knew personally. Not every one of those battles was fought in the clubhouse, nor did it need to be. This was the beating heart of the campaign, the circle where the first banners were raised and the first map hexes were stained with blood.
That heart kept beating because the campaign was not built only on grand 2,000-point set pieces. Many of those games were fast, savage Border Patrols and skirmishes, the sort of brutal 500-point clashes that can be squeezed into a weekday evening and still give everyone something to shout about afterwards. They kept the map alive. They made small advances matter. They turned minor roads, ruined towers and nameless valleys into places worth fighting for.
Tally of weekly games. The first week we had an extra holiday and we were motivated, but we could not keep the momentum. The Community started to get involved very soon, with spikes in weeks 5, 6 and specially 8th and 13th. The final spike was the rushed attempt to break ties and do a final push for the victory.
Then the wider world answered.
The remaining
646 battles came from the community beyond the core: allied clubs, old forum generals, distant warlords and readers who followed the weekly reports, grabbed their dice, and sent their own battle tales back to the front. Across Austria, Italy and the wider internet, the classic 2,000-point battle remained a mighty engine of war, with full armies marching out to decide the fate of territories they had never seen, but were now determined to conquer.
That is when the campaign stopped being merely ours.
Every submitted result pushed the front line forward. Every battle report added another scrap of smoke, steel and sorcery to the story. Every commander who joined made the war larger than the map that started it. The core raised the signal fire. The community answered with armies.
Now, let's focus on the next milestone of the Campaign:
The Siege of Nagronath.
The banners are raised. The grudges are written. The Jade Staff waits in shadowed hands.
The campaign is not quite over.
The Final Battle waits.
The Two Sides
The Stakes: The Siege of the Jade Staff
How to Participate
