REVIEW: Mighty Empires

Mighty Empires is Games Workshop's latest campaign supplement for Warhamer Fantasy Battle. It costs £30. The box is minimalist indeed; it contains just six chunky sprues and a rules booklet. Each sprue holds eight tiles, making for 48 in total. They come in several varieties including mountains, rivers, forests, farmland and others. They are bigger than I expected at around 2.5" each. The tiles are double sided and are constructed with interlocking lugs, so that maps can be built and taken apart easily. Making the map itself is one of the most enjoyable things you can do with this set, regardless of playing games with it.

Each sprue also contains several markers. There are 72 pennant banners, 24 castle bits, 12 city bits and 12 mine bits. These are pegged into slots on the tiles so the map could conceivably be hung vertically on a wall.

All the bits come unpainted and would really benefit from a lick of paint. The booklet shows some suggested paint schemes which look quite tasty.

The booklet is somewhat disappointing. It looks promisingly thick but that is only because it is printed in several languages. The English version is only 5 pages long. Older gamers will go misty eyed at the memory of the original Mighty Empires game but most will agree that the campaign rules were a game in themselves and overshadowed the battles that they were supposed to support. At least this shorter version revolves around the battles. The basic idea is that you play games to gather empire points. These points can then be spent to capture tiles, build cities and expand and improve the empire. Events keep the players on their toes.

As I said, the rules are very short and simple but brevity is the soul of wit, so they say, and I'm willing to try them out before condemning them. Games Workshop have stated they want players to use Mighty Empires as a starting point for developing their own campaign rules. I'd like to give this a shot using my Chaos Horde against Gary's Dark Elves once I get the tiles painted. Hmm, which scheme to go for - Naggaroth or Norsca?

I give Mighty Empires a provisional 7 out of 10. I may revisit this score when I have painted the pieces and used the rules in a campaign.

Scores

All of my reviews end in a score out of ten for the product. The table below explains what that score means.

• 10/10 Perfect, absolutely nothing better
• 9/10 Excellent, highly recommended
• 8/10 Very good, recommended
• 7/10 Good
• 6/10 Above average, some problems
• 5/10 Average, some good points some bad points
• 4/10 Below average, some redeeming features
• 3/10 Poor, major flaws
• 2/10 Very poor, avoid if possible
• 1/10 Absolutely appalling