I've seen a number of campaign systems introduced over the past two years for WHFB and Warmaster. While they all show a great deal of creativity, they also seem to require some tweaking and balancing, as with any new game, to get the rules in order.
So, I thought I'd propose a simple way to use many existing board games as a basis for a Warmaster of WHFB campaign. You can start with the base system, and than add optional rules to suite as you go along.
First off, what kinds of board games will work well for a campaign? Basically, any board game that gives you some sort of generic troop marker. Two examples of this are Games Workshops Mighty Empires and Parker Brother's Risk.
In Risk, your army units are reduced to simple representations, you can cluster them on one region of the map, or spread them out over multiple regions. In Warmaster, you have 'banners' and each banner is worth a certain amount of points. In both cases, you will use existing game system mechanics for gaining troops, moving troops, etc. Each player decides what race he will play before the game begins. To keep things simple, the races have no differentiation in board game play.
So, where does Warmaster or WHFB come into play? Resolving battles.
For a simple case, when forces come into conflict on the board, instead of rolling the dice or comparing something on a chart to determine the outcome, you play a game of Warmaster or WHFB. Rather than using a fixed conversion(1 Unit in risk = 500 points of warmaster, for example) I suggest taking a page from a netcampaign I'm in.
Step 1: Calculate the ratio between troops, for example in risk, say I have 4 'pieces' on the board and you have 6. Dividing 6 by 4 yields a ratio of 1 to 1.5.
Step 2: Decide on how to use the odds.
2a:You can use them to adjust the size of the armies(for example, if both players like 2000+ point battles, 2000 points is assigned as the base, the 4 piece player gets 2000 points(1*2000)and the 6 piece player gets 3000 points(1.5 * 2000).
2b. You can choose to have an equal fight, but multiple the victory points by the odds(For example, both players fight with 2000 point armies, the 4 piece player gets 250 victory points, the 6 piece player gets 200 victory points. The 6 piece player multiplies 200 by 1.5 and ends up with 300 victory points and so wins the game)
Step 3: Play the battle
Step 4: Determine who wins. Different board games can have different levels of victory, a short summary of suggestions follows:
This gives you a simple system that can be easily adapted to many board games. As you play, you can add on house rules for different armies and races.
Now, there are a number of problems with this type of system:
1) Lack of time to play all the games dictated by a turns movement
2) Lack of time to play any of the games dictated by a turns movement
3) An expert tabletop player can beat a novice tabletop player, even if the novice player
is an expert at the board game
To address these issues, here are my suggestions:
1) Set a limit on the number of battles resolved in this fashion a turn. For example, each turn, a player is allowed to issue one challenge to play a board game type battle. All other battles are resolved using standard board game rules.
2) If a player is running short on time, as an option allow him to decline challenges. A player who declines a challenge should suffer some sort of negagtive in the board game battle resolution. For d6 systems, perhaps a -1 to his roll(or for d6 per unit systems, 1 less d6). For charts, I'd suggest the results are 1 rank worse on the chart for him.
3) You can have the Warmaster/WHFB results influence, but not dictate the board game results. A major win would give the player a signifigantly better chance of winning the board game battle, a minor win would give a better chance, and a draw would give no chance. For example, in a d6 resolution system, for a major win the player gets +2 to his die roll, a minor win gives him +1, and a draw nothing.
***Disclaimer: Anyone is welcome to post these ideas, in whole or part, to a website, magazine, or whatnot. I would ask that you credit me for the inspiration, but its more important to me to see the free exchange of indeas and information than to be given credit for an idea.