Settlement Conquest

Settlement Conquest is a variation on the Settlement Management rules. Conquering new territory works much the same as managing other settlements, with a few changes detailed below.

Hexes

Conquest makes use of a variant map which is divided into Hexes. Each Hex equates roughly to a day's travel (under ideal circumstances), or the areas within the direct influence of a single settlement.
A player conquering new territory often begins with less territory than an established household would, often as little as a single Hex. In addition to building Settlements and Developments, conquest is about expanding the Hexes that a player is considered to be in control of.

Capturing Hexes

A player can take control of a Hex in several ways, some of which are listed below:

• A Justicar can Fabricate a Claim targetting a Hex of land and will capture additional Hexes depending on how successful their check is.
• Each time a Settlement under the player's control progresses to the next level (Hamlet to Village, Village to Town and so on) one Hex (adjacent to the Settlement if possible, or the nearest possible otherwise) comes under the player's control.

Occasionally when a player attempts to take control of a Hex they will meet resistance. This may require deployment of a player's Men-at-Arms, direct player intervention, or other means to resolve.

Travel Time in Conquest

Because this system uses a finer scale than normal, a more detailed approach to movement and transport of supplies is used. As mentioned previously, a Hex represents the area that can be crossed in a single day of travel under ideal circumstances. However this is only true when moving between two Hexes connected by a Road. Moving between two unconnected Hexes takes two days, and dense or difficult terrain may take longer still. Some features, such as cliffs or rivers may be impassable entirely until a suitable development is created.
Roads can be created by the Create Roadway Council Action, depending on terrain. In addition, Docks allow travel along waterways at a much faster pace, up to 5 Hexes a day.

Supplying New Developments

Creating new Developments normally requires a Settlement Check, as detailed in Settlement Management Sessions. However, in the Conquest phase of settling a location, access to materials is less guaranteed. As a result, most Developments will require access to raw materials to create or upgrade. The difficulty of creating these developments will be based on number of days of travel to the nearest source of that resource - buildings will need supply of Lumber and/or Stone, for example, while an Apothecary will need supply of Herbs, and so on.
Note that a Development that is being used as a target for the Seneschal's Establish Trade Routes action cannot also be used to supply materials for building developments in your own lands. However, if the new player controls a suitable way of importing supplies, such as a Port, a new functionality is added to that action, allowing the Seneschal to import resources, paying 2 Revenue to satisfy the resource requirements for a single Development (difficulty would then be based on the distance from the Port to the site of the new Development).

Councils and Council Actions

Obviously, with a conquest representing siezing new land, it is likely that a player will have much less than a full holding behind them. As a result, their Councils and Council Actions are dependent on the size of their largest Settlement:

• A Hamlet may make a single Council Action, which must be made by the player character in charge of the settlement, however if that Action could target multiple things, or might gain additional targets or other benefits depending on its degree of success, its targets and other benefits are limited to one.
• A Village may make a single Council Action, which must be made by the player character in charge of the settlement.
• A Town may take a single Council Action, however a Council may be assembled to allow characters with expertise to act on behalf of the character ruling the settlement. If the owned territory contains other settlements it may make up to one Council Action for each settlement, each of which must be made by a different Council Member, to a maximum equal to the number of Council Positions. A Town's Council can only contain the 'standard' Council Positions.
• A City has access to its full Council and all of their Actions. A City's Council can commission new Council Positions where it has need to do so.

Sprawl and Vassals

The maximum amount of territory that a single Holding can contain without penalty is twenty Hexes. For every five (or part thereof) Hexes beyond this they suffer an upgrade to the difficulty of the Income checks of each of their Settlements - which is likely to lead to Crime and other difficulties, as their House becomes steadily less able to manage the land under their control. This is referred to as 'Sprawl'.
The solution to this is to appoint Vassals. Choose one Town to raise to Vassal status. That Vassal immediately gains control of its own Hex and each adjacent Hex you control, and can be given control of any number of additional Hexes you control. From this point onward, whenever you take control of a Hex adjacent to that Vassal and not adjacent to your own Hexes, that Hex will come under the Vassal's control instead. Vassals will contribute income via tithes as covered in the normal rules, and may sieze their own land.

Army Movement

Every Army has a Support value that represents the amount of support they need to be kept fed and supplied. This value is 1 for every 1,000 points of Warmaster Units in the army.
During each Settlement Management Sessions the Leader of each Army makes a test of their Leadership (or other applicable skill) against the Support value of their Army, upgraded once for every five Hexes between the Army and the nearest friendly Settlement and modified by terrain at the DM's discretion - the resulting s is their Strategy value for the month, keep track of this on the army's page.
An Army can move a number of Hexes each month equal to 3 Hexes + its Strategy Value (taking into account terrain features as normal). An Army can exceed this value by making a Forced March, increasing their Movement by any number, but decreasing their Strategy Value for the remainder of the month by the same amount.
Whenever an Army ends a Move within a number of Hexes equal to their Strategy value of an enemy Army or Settlement they may choose to initiate combat. If they are also within the Strategy value of the enemy Army this will result in a Pitched Battle, otherwise it will result in an Attack.
Whenever an Army ends a Move within Strategy range of an Enemy Army but not within their own Strategy range, the Enemy Army may choose to initiate an Attack instead.
An Army which is made up of more than 50% Cavalry increases their Strategy Value for each unit of Cavalry beyond 50% when calculating available Movement and their own Attacks, however they decrease their Strategy Value by the same amount when determining if an Enemy Army is able to launch an Attack against them.
When calculating its Support Value, an army may ignore the cost of one formation of Infantry with the Skirmish rule for every non-Skirmishing Infantry formation in the Army.
Armies move in ascending order of Strategy Value (that is, the army with the lowest Strategy Value moves first, and the army with the highest Value moves last, allowing them to react to the movements of less strategic armies).

Army Recovery

• Formations which lose 1 or more Units must pass a Leadership check from the highest available commander, with a difficulty equal to the number of Units lost. They recover 1 Unit for each s. They may test again after each battle, or an upgraded check at the end of each council session if they do not fight that month.

• Formations which are destroyed completely must test as described above, except that they test against c instead. If they do not recover any stands, the Formation and all of its composite Units are permanently destroyed.

• A character who is killed in battle takes a Critical Injury, and may be captured, depending on the outcome of the battle.

Healers and Recovery

• Each Healer attached to the Army can heal once after each battle or council session.

• Healers have the Ranks of the development they are drawn from, and use the Support value of the Army they are in as their Attribute.

• Each Healer can either replace one Formation's Leadership check with their own, or after a Formation's Leadership check has passed, add an additional number of s equal to the Army's Supply value.

• Each Healer who is not affecting a Formation's healing can provide medical care to one character to attempt to remove a Critical Injury.

Off-screeen Battles

When battles occur between armies that do not include any player characters or close contacts, they can be resolved without needing a full warmaster game. To do so, combine the Army's Supply Value and the Leadership of its leader (if applicable), then add the following bonuses. The army which rolls highest wins.

• The Army with the most stands of Cavalry gains +b, unless their enemy has enough stands of Phalanx to outnumber the Cavalry 2:1.

• If an Army has enough stands of Minmoths to match the enemy's Cavalry stands 1:1 they gain +b.

• The Army with the most Siege Engines gains +b.

• The Army with the most stands of Ranged units gains +b.

• The Army with the most stands of Skirmishers gains +b.

• The Army with the most Characters gains a bonus to is Leadership equal to the difference in Characters.

• If at least 25% of the stands in an Army have Minmoth support, they gain +b.

• If at least 25% of the stands in an Army have a Special Rule (Terror, Fanatic, Bodyguard, Elite, etc), they gain +b.

• If at least 50% of the stands in an Army have a Special Rule (Terror, Fanatic, Bodyguard, Elite, etc), one of their d is upgraded.

• Each unit of Household Knights adds one s to the check.

*This house uses the first number until its Lord returns from engagement elsewhere.