Expansive History of Mighty Empires | GW's Tabletop Total War

#warhammer #boardgames #gamesworkshop

Ever want to rule the entire Warhammer world? Well with 1990's Mighty Empires you could! Or at least you could try, unless your armies died in the snow or your own wizard accidentally opening a chaos void on top of your farms. This is the history of Games Workshop's globe spanning game of empires and conquest; a tabletop ancestor of Total War: Warhammer; and a campaign system for Warhammer and 40K!

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:38 Tiles and Kev Walker Art
03:25 Gameplay
05:28 Diplomacy & Espionage
07:12 Campaign Map
07:49 Mighty Miniatures
08:08 Dragons & Dragonrage
09:09 Dragon Masters
10:38 White Dwarf & More Minis!
12:16 Albrecht Altdorfer & the Battle of Alexander at Issus
13:00 New Editions
14:47 Summary
16:02 Cute Skelleys?

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[herrferret]

Can we all agree the production quality on this channel is magnificent. 🔥

[frthlvfchrt]

Back in the mid 90's, me and my gaming group managed to get 3 sets of this together, build a stupidly massive board, and spent the summer holiday getting rules wrong, cheating, and making 'alliances' that rarely lasted through a single campaign season.

[rhelyk]

You should have mentioned that when GW released the 2007 plastic tiles, they also put a scanned (and fully official) PDF of the original rulebook online for people to use, it's still easy to find it.

In the early 2000s some of the older Fantasy players brought this into the game store on a random saturday and pulled in a bunch of us 40K regulars. Most of us had no idea what we were getting into and I'm not even sure how many sets they'd combined, but they ran a massive 10 player Mighty Empires game as essentially a convention game for pretty much an entire day. 20 years later It remains one of my fondest memories, just absolutely stupendous fun! Even people not playing stood around watching for much of the day as banners were moved and towns were sieged.

A few years later a friend used his own set for a 6-man map based 6th ed map based campaign run using General's Handbook, which was a stripped down version of ME. Spent a couple months stomping banners around a hex map and fighting out games of actual WHFB when the armies met. I really miss those days, only one of those friends still has his WHFB army and we got together a few times this summer to play 6th ed for the first time in a decade. Strangely enough it gave me the excuse to print out a copy of the PDF so we could start a proper campaign. Mighty Empire lives on!

[aquilaprimedesign]

I would gladly welcome a return of this game and a modern version of EPIC!

[philipdutre]

I always felt that Mighty Empires drew big inspiration from "Setting Up a Wargames Campaign", a book written in the 70s by legendary wargamer Tony Bath, and which was based on his experiences with running the "very first fantasy wargaming campaign" set in Hyboria in the 50s and 60s.

[Joth]

In the early 90's me and some friends played at least two campaigns of ME, playing out the battles using the WFB3 rules. It was lots of fun! However none of the campaigns ever lasted beyond year 4 or so, as by that point most of the map was discovered and occupied and every month resulted in at least one, probably several battles. And resolving those battles sometimes took weeks as everyone had to wait for the battles to be played.

One of those campaigns resulted in the biggest WFB battle I think I have ever played, and it played out in a very typical 3rd editon way! My dark elves clashed with the skavens, each of us involving several banners, resulting in about 4800 points of Dark Elves fighting over 5000 points of skaven. As this was year 3 or 4 each of us had at least one lvl 25 wizard and max level spells were... insane. And models still had Cool, Willpower and Intelligence stats.

The battle began with one of my wizards summoning a unit of skeleton horsemen, who were fast, etheral and moved through terrain so they very quickly charged the skaven line and since they caused fear the ratmen had to test on their Cool or flee. Skaven Cool was... 5. They broke. Nearby units had to test for panic. Which was also a Cool test. So some more broke and since he had SO MANY TROOPs that they were packed together some very quickly fled off the board.

The next turn my cold one riders charged his skirmish lines. Cold Ones cause fear so the skirmishers broke and fled straight through a big unit of skaven warriors... who panicked and fled... and at this point a third of his army has broke off the table.

I finished the leftovers by summoning a Vorpal Hurricane of Chaos and watched the swarm of black holes disintegrate them.

You really needed a Game Master to play 3rd edition or things got out of control quickly!

[musashidanmcgrath]

One summer holidays, back in the 90s, 6 of us(Dwarf/High Elves/Wood Elves/Empire/Bretonnia/Chaos) set up a crazy campaign combining Mighty Empires/Man O War/WFB/Realm of Chaos warband rules/WFRP/Warhammer Siege. The scope of the campaign was insane and needless to say we barely scratched the surface before the end of the 3 month summer holidays. :D
The idea was to start on the Mighty Empires board, with each of us having a 'capital city'. Attacks on the city would be resolved with Warhammer siege rules. Ocean/river encounters would be Man O War rules. Open battles were WFB. Skirmish encounters were ROC warband rules(Mordheim didn't exist then), and special characters/champions/wizards could go on sidequests using WFRP rules. We spent more time changing the board and setting stuff up than actually playing. 😅 It was amazing though. If you had years to play and a massive room with all the boards set up separately it would be the ultimate campaign.

[garfieldv]

I have an original game. Right now I’m running a game via messenger with 3 mates. The best thing about it? Each player can only see a small amount outside their own empires. True fog of war.

[s.g.]

Bloody hell, I remember Might Empires. I feel much older now realising it was way back in 1990 lol. Thanks for that

[chrisgesell]

This box was a favorite epic game. 2 Sets to play 4-5 players is a must. I loved the game, but many of the complicated random issues you mentioned bothered me endlessly. I now have made a playable new version of the game along with some new pieces. I have stripped down the game to be a board game only. Exploration is now done by rolling 3 dice. 2 Dice tell you what you have found, the third determines if something might be independent or Barren or an Event. Instead of the crazy event table, i created event cards that give you a choice. The locals seem unhappy. Do you push on ignoring them or do you forgive their taxes? I also added 5 different possible victory conditions to replace the the part of the game which dragged on to fully wipe everyone out. Will you try to complete epic side quests while trying to maintain your empire? Will you acquire legendary traits such as Benevolent or Militaristic? Or can you gain control of 4 of 6 mage towers. Or capture 2 opponent capitals. Finally custom dice made the combat just take a couple rolls without requiring math and pretty crazy outcome tables. Effectively turned exact points into rounded 100s, or whatever scale you want to pretend. The basic concept of Mighty Empires certainly captured my attention as a youth and decades later still has me thinking about it. Thanks for this piece, it filled in some gaps that I noticed, such as odd tiles and pieces I didnt know about.

[michaelmitchell]

Some brilliant Russ Nicholson art in the video!

[Stevo]

I once created my own version of this for our 40k Campaign. I drew out the hex board on a sheet of A3 paper and pinned it to a cork board. We used coloured pins to represent our armies and maneuvere around the map between games. Certain pointa on the map granted in game benefits. Such as preliminary bombardments if a player controlled the artillery hex or extra Heavy support choice if they owned the tank factory.
It was great fun, we played mamy games, but never finished it. If we tried, we would still be playing today!

[eisenphx]

Fond memories & 2.5 copies on my shelves. Really have to get this on the table! Hm, maybe I should solo it?

[MajorSvenGaming]

I remember this being all over white dwarf back in the day. I had no idea it was a board game in its own right. I would be all over this nowdays.

[paulwalker]

Many years ago I had a couple of sets and many metal stars including the walls and Skaven. I wish I had kept and didn't sell so cheaply when I needed some money at University. Happy days.

[PaintedThumbVids]

My gaming group has started a Mighty Empires game. We are resolving some of the battles with Warlords of Erehwon, which is another Rick Priestley creation.

[LaBibliotecaEterna]

Why no one else is talking about this game!?!?!? Is wonderful and great!, I would need to check how available they are.

[Emsworth]

I had the original ME and lived the detail it went into. Even to the name generation table for different species towns etc...

[manofaction]

At first, you had my

Subbed for this video alone!

[marcocd]

Wow I can’t believe you’re covering this game! First WHQ and now this! Can it get any better? I had the original ME in the 90’s and loved playing it, I used it as a standalone game. One of my first GW games after the original HeroQuest. You can barely find any Mighty Empires content online, so this is definitely appreciated! Amazing channel, sir!