Warmachine Alpha Campaign Design

I bought my boss a Cygnar battlebox to get him hooked on Warmachine and he's become my most reliable opponent. We play roughly 4-6 games a month against each other but since we started playing Steamroller scenarios, he's only beaten me twice.

I've offered to give him a slight advantage but he'll have none of it. He is a glutton for punishment.

I got an idea this evening and thought that maybe if I disguised the advantages in a campaign setting he'd be more willing to accept them and it also would help me work on bettering my strategies playing a little from behind.

He's also a gambler so I figured I can tempt him with something like if you destroy your opponents Capital they have to buy you a Colossal or an Army Box as a prize.


I envision each number above as a game. You start the campaign at #1 and with each win you move into your opponents zone. When you lose, you move back one space. As you move deeper into your opponent's territory they get advantages. What those advantages are, I have no clue yet which is why I need some help.

I figured that Specialists seemed cool and would like to try them. If you're not familiar with specialists (actually, I'm not too familiar with them) Here's the rules from the Masters 2015

Specialists: Players with the Vanguard benefit can add a supplementary list of models/units (specialists) to each of their army lists. Specialist lists are completely optional but cannot exceed 20 points per list. These models are not used unless a player decides to substitute them for models/units in the corresponding base army list in accordance with the specialist rules.

As far as number of lists for the start of the campaign I'm not sure how many lists we should have but I'm thinking 3. If your caster gets assassinated you cannot use them for 1-2 games, not sure yet.

I was thinking of these possible Defensive Bonuses. Any suggestions would be appreciated:

• Regroup: Choose your Starting Position
• Counter Attack: Choose to go First or Second
• Reinforcements: Increase your army point total by +2
• Surprise Attack: Give a unit Ambush 
• Homeland: Adjust terrain in some way
• Propaganda: Increase the CMD of your units by +1 when checking to flee
• Stronghold: Choose an Objective from Steamroller 2015 and place it on the map
• Intel: Choose your opponents Warcaster/Warlock

Not sure if any of those above would be broken but you've also got to remember that we're both amateur and play for fun.

I'd also like to give some sort of bonus for the winner of each match that isn't as beneficial as the defensive ones but will give the winner an interesting option and chances for new strategies.

I'm enlisting the help of the Privateer Press Forums to see what ideas they can come up with to make this campaign really fun but also not have it so off balance that it's not fun to play. Hopefully I get some good responses and can tweak the campaign so it's fun for us.