Warfare 

Matt, I cannot tell you how happy the statement of “my sample size is not statistically significant” made me. On behalf of the communities that use such statistics, thank you.

If I played at your table, I would be that one player who always wanted to raise an army and create my own kingdom.

That feel when you realize Matt almost got 2 million dollars from a Kickstarter just to print a book and run a Stream. We love you, Mr Colville.

I think a good cinematic example (correct me if I am wrong) is the in The Lord of The Rings, The Battle at Helm's Deep when you are referring to the idea of "Battle" and then "Encounter" being synced together. At least, that is what I immediately imagined, since you have the two forces of armies fighting against one another, while our heroes move about and deal with Encounter issues. Granted, there isn't much of a BBEG on the field in that particular example, but maybe that was just the GM trying to spice things up!

"What kind of behavior are we trying to reward on the part of the players?" This is an excellent question that I hadn't thought to ask. It's not only good advice for DnD but for storytelling in general. Thanks so much for posing it, Matt!

If a single spellcaster could defeat an entire army, then who would bother raising armies? You'd have a spellcaster arms race. Which is a possibility, I suppose. As far as I am concerned, arcane spellcasters would be like the heavy artillery or air support in modern warfare. That is, their primary functions would be to prevent the enemy concentrating their forces at any one point and to soften up enemy lines in preparation for an attack. A single Wizard (etc) cannot themselves charge an army, occupy territory or successfully harry a routed force. A corollary of this is that opposing forces might have some kind of struggle to attain "arcane supemacy" on a battlefield before deploying ground troops in the same way that modern armies struggle for air supremacy. If this contest does not produce a clear victor, it's probably the case that the spellcasters on each side will basically cancel each other out. To put it another way, if you haven't established arcane supremacy before the battle, the spellcasters are likely to be occupied with fighting each other. You could have a magical duel (ie. an encounter) over the top of the battle (ie. mass combat) as the party's spellcaster takes on the court Wizard of the evil Duke. if the duel is resolved before the battle ends, one of the sides now has to deal with Cloudkills and Meteor Storms cast by the victor.

This sounds like so much fun. Matt Colville, only YOU have made me actually look forward to war in my worlds.

“It takes men to hold the field” and “ Morale holds the day “. EXCELLENT

'' An army of donkeys led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a donkey. '' -Genghis Khan Will there be general units and other officers?

When I was reading rules, I was a bit sad that Infantry cannot attack cavalery (thinking about pike troops sticking it to charging knights) Then i realised that, I can totally create reaction, whenever cavalery attacks them and they succeed their defense, they can strike back, maybe make it just power roll.

I love the, "That just made them angry" ability.

"It takes men to hold the field" reminds me of the quote "Shardbearers can't hold ground" from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives.

I also imagine a shock troop attack from dragonborns would be perticularly nasty as they could release their breath weapons in the first shock attack they do and really do some damage.

This sounds to me lot like Total War: Colhammer!

My favorite part of this video is when you mentioned asking the players, "well I don't know, how *will* you get an army?". I LOVE that part of DnD, when you just place yourself in the world and try to solve a problem through your imagination and not with the character sheet or the Player's Handbook :)

The best MC rules I've played was written by Decipher for the LOTR RPG, and it was their second stab at it. Their system worked well, because it balanced hero impact with other factors of large scale battles (types of units, terrain, supplies, etc.). Heroes were also allowed to just do cool hero things without being unit commanders.

3rd edition had massive amounts of Mass battle rules. The official wotc D&D 3.5 SRD go to is the Miniatures Handbook. It has about 50 Pages only on mass combat.

My players have just rallied the Cloud Druids, The newly formed Modron / Hobgoblin Enclave and the Dradukar - Vampiric Black Dragonborn, all in an effort to lay siege to the realm of Savage and Sentient Termite-humanoids who live in 300 foot tall mounds. So needed this!!

I think it should be giant ants for Dwarves... since they can also use them while tunneling their mines...

Hey, I saw this shirt (and the guy in it) at that depressing mall today.

Veterans of the Psychic Wars? Classic reference Matt. Well played

2 Million LETS GO!

10:40 Dwarven Cavalry riding goats into battle is right out of The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TpsFWBzDHkk.html So yes, despite those movies' flaws, it was pretty cool.

Tall shirt sizes! Thank you to whoever made that happen

Thanks for discussing this. I am perhaps one of the outliers, but I'm actually really interested in a good mass combat system. So I am glad to hear there is a basic one in this book, and will certainly back your Kingdoms book.

Alert!! The Kickstarter is ending 1 hour sooner than you think! 9AM PST = 8AM PDT. The United States enter Daylight Saving Time this Saturday evening!

Cannot wait for this and the next book now. The idea of holding huge battles with my friends or friends I make on the future is do exciting I'm giddy. Thanks again Matt for expanding the DnD verse

Become a Colvillain today! Get that Kickstarter to 2 million!

Dwarven Calvary ride War Geese.

5:30 All Craigs go "Huh?" at the same moment

I don't know when I'll be getting the book, but after this video, you've guaranteed that I'll using this in my campaigns for a long, long time.

As a huge Dominions fan, this warfare system sounds AMAZING.

With your system its easy enough to allow your players to influence the battle in the background. Say they're fighting the bad guy above his keep and the Wizard wants to launch a fireball into the valley below to help the army, you could give them a one-turn power buff to account for the wizards assistance. Or say the fighter flew into battle atop a metallic dragon, this gives your army a morale boost

What we used to do in 2nd edition was, if we wanted to wade into the melee of a mass combat, the DM would prepare a bunch of enemies and cut out small strips of paper of enemies names and stats on it, throw it in a coffee can and mix it up, and we would pull out 2 enemies each, for the players to fight individiaully. Then 1 more enemy per round would join, up to 5, and the players (who knew the rules well) would run their own combat scenarios between the enemies and could retreat, cast spells, etc. The DM would supervise, and sometimes hit players with a fireball from an enemy wizard, or maybe a bless or haste from a friendly buffing cleric or wizard. When all the monsters were defeated, we had won the combat. It was pretty darn fun the few times we did it.

Gosh just reading "ELITE HEAVY INFANTRY" and abilities like "SHOCK TROOPS" makes me so friggin excited! So I guess it really fulfills it's purpose. It just sounds so damn cool.

I feel you Matt, I would **LOVE** to do a D&D or Pathfinder game that has management elements. But finding a group that enjoys the same thing or is willing to "sit that part out" without feeling that they're losing out is next to impossible. It is horrible when half the group really doesn't want to do any management stuff, even if it's just loot processing and distribution. But then they insist on sticking through it (complaining every second they're not distracted on their phones) because they're afraid of "not getting a fair share".

Have been world building for just over a year now and used the world for DnD from time to time. Warfare has been one of the greatest challenges to translate into the game. The way you describe your book resonates exactly with what I have been trying to make on my own. I will probably tailor many things to suit my setting but this has sparked my interest in finishing a part of my world I have postponed far too long. Thank you Matthew you are going to make my world much more immersive!

I'm so excited to get this book! Thank you for your commitment and passion Matt! As well as everyone helping to make this project happen.

at the risk of the wrath of my waifu, i have ordered your book.

As a first time D&D player, I've allways been atracted to wargames. This is a great oportunity to try a mix of both and possibly make the jump to it

i love your ability to make everything you do and are doing seem fun and interesting. Cant wait to try out this Risk-like war system!

When he started talking about shock troops, my mind immediately went to a troop of bugbear shock troop assassins that can gain advantage on elite troops, and specialize in dodging/avoiding some type of unit. Even if it's not in the book I now I can probably alter a unit to fit that role! Thank you Matt for making a reference for making battles more fun and easier.

Wow! I just downloaded and have been reading the PDF during quarantine. This is great material. In my homebrew setting I have a volcano that has blotted a swath of the map for 300 years to be uninhabitable and overrun with undead. I never knew what I wanted to do with that blank slice of the continent. I do now! So many ideas. I can't wait share this with my players. The cursed volcano will go dormant and there will be a blank country for them to do, well... Whatever they want. This book is gold! Thanks.

Really enjoyed Priest, last couple of chapters really hit me, thank you for the experience Mr. Colville. Working on Thief now, keep up the amazing work!

This warfare system sounds incredible. When I first started war/RP gaming, I couldn't afford rule books and didn't know anybody who owned them, so I was constantly inventing and tweaking my own ground-up homebrews. This sounds like the warfare system I was always striving to create but never managed to come up with on my own. Brilliant.

I'm really curious how a Druid stronghold would work. Druids are usually against Civilization to some degree, so it's fascinating how that would work from a role-playing perspective :D

Zombie units would probably never have to roll morale checks.

I'd love to support you but I'm a poor college student. Keep up the good work.

Yay! Please pass along our gratitude to Lars. Appreciate how much of himself he's pouring into this.

To be fair I never have fallen into the camp of the "a 5th level caster can end armies" in no small part because a 5th level caster will run out of fireballs after 2 casts. (maybe around 5 if your using spell points like we do at my table.) I always felt that Battlemages (*units of mages around 5-6 level*) should be a thing, however they themselves wouldn't be able to single handedly change the tide of battle. Somewhat in countenance to my previous statement I do think that Champions (*9-12 level Fighters, Wizards the like*) should play pivotal roles in the battle. a 10th level Cleric can practically make a unit immortal for the period of that battle. A fighter of that level can decimate an enemey unit while just walking through, and a wizard, or sorcerer could either artillery barrage an enemy, summon more allies to field (less possible in 5e then say 3.5 but still is to a degree.), or altering the battlefield to their favor (turning a massive incline of land to mud when the enemey unit charges, and then having your archers, or magical adepts pummel them with projectiles)

i play a lot of war games myself and having run a major war scenario in my campaign the idea of having a battle and an encounter at the same time would have been so much better. i definately had lost a few players attention by the end of the battle and was feeling like running a war was something i would never do again. this makes me more confident that i could with more prep and a better system it could be fun for everyone. now i just want the full book on warfare rules. keep it up Matt you are an inspiration to the community!

My guy wrote a wargame for dnd. What a legend!

the dwarfs would clearly be rideing large boars :D

I love this channel so much.

It's incredible... I didn't think I would be this excited to try this system...it seems that you have the ability to get me hyped about almost everything... amazing, thanks Mr Colville

I just backed the Kickstarter! Really love your content. Will have to make a fake "stronghold" until I get your rules, my players just decided to make a tower with griffon riders to their base :) but luckily enough you gave us something to work with! Thx for giving me confidence to DM, your videos helped me a lot and my players send me last week a text the day after our game, about how much they loved the session, such a great compliment. Cheers from Austria.

Holy word count Batman fighting Armies to reduce their size of dice type is amazing!!! This describes what fifth edition DND is after all we’re not playing 3.5 this isn’t second edition this is a streamlined very fast to play version of dungeons and dragons!!!! Bravo!

Warfare! The day has finally come, dawn has risen, and Matt's Idea's are legion!

"when they dont feel obligated to manage a unit... there's no positioning, we're not manipulating these units in 2d space..."

Great first 10 minutes! Bought the book but wasn’t super interested in the warfare rules until this video! As DM, I like narrative adventuring, so warfare and units sounded too different, but you explained how they work together!

I'm really excited for this book. I was getting ready to run a war a while ago and every one was excited. But it never happened and in retrospect I needed better rules. I can't wait to use this for my group! Thanks Matt for making this

I love this! I'm currently running Tyranny of Dragons for my players and I definitely think these rules will help spice up the final battle!

A way that i was planning to do warfare rules would be just to play out the battles as best i can re-create it in Total War Warhammer, and then just narrative it out to the PC's, so they need to decide where to help out. I know pretty well how hero's change a battle in Total War, so i could figure out how their interference would likely change things. Paladin runs over to group of routing soldiers, and gives them a place to rally behind (Him), keeping them fighting and re-doubling their effort with the Paladin, so that side now holds and the enenmy can flood into the gap and close the door to flank the rest of the army. The Gunslinger can target the Cavalry that has been causing a lot of damage, harrying them back and slowing their charge long enough for the archers to get a volley into them and break the charge. The Rouge flies across the battlefield to harass the artillery crew that has been causing a lot of damage to the army. More a narrative fighting than the turn-based of normal D&D. Kind of like giving big buffs or de-buffs to a group they join.

Nearly $ 2 MILLION DOLLARS on your Kickstarter!!!

I'm glad you've been making these for so long. Ive just been working through the backlog; they're extremely informative and useful.

I can already see ideas forming around some of the units that are listed. Some as they are, and some reskined. The more I hear about this, the more I am excited about it.

I have given your war system a try in a big city battle and It did all the things you said it would, it also dragged the session to a stand still. I see now that this was my error! I had a map and tokens for every unit! I like the narrative system much more! I have backed the KS and looking forward to the book.

This is really cool to find after going from watching Total War: Warhammer 2 gameplay, then to getting back into D&D right after and wondering about this sort of thing exactly. Might just pick up a copy :D

No system could ever be exactly what I want. But i don't want a perfect system. I want you to do the work polishing details, and inspire me to think about what I do want.

Thank you for keeping such a high standards in informing supporters about incoming project. And ... dwarven heavy cavalry rides on rams.

I don't think my players would be interested in managing an army or going to war - maybe help out in a war or take over one battle, but they would want to move onto the "find magic items and kill things" pretty quickly. However! I have always felt lacking in the army department. I have no idea how to run an army. If my players come across a battle or piss off a ruler well enough that they send troops after them, I wouldn't know how to implement that or make their actions seem like things soldiers would do. I think these rules would help me enrich that part of my world. Given that and your stronghold rules (something that I know my players would love), I'm buying your book. Thank you for putting in all of this effort!

Dwarves on steppe horses like Huns/Mongols. That was the transformational empire in the background of the West Marches game I am running (thanks to you). Mountain goat or mountain sheep or huge boats, all could be fun, but the vast cavalry of the Khazhad Khan, that was what fires my imagination. Looking forward very much to this book . . . and the next one!

You know this, Matt. But your production quality is through the roof. It just pops out of my browser.

Something I noticed while looking over the unit cards the other day was that, while the system is quite simple, it has a little to much rolling dice for what is there. Namely I don't see the reason for having two attack stats (power and attack) and two defense stats (toughness and defense). These stats on most of the cards are similar on any unit, often only differing by 1 point. I don't see any reason these can't be rolled together and remove the idea of "missing or hitting" altogether (or more frankly if a unit fails to inflict a casualty that is the same thing). This would have the advantage of speeding up the abstraction of the battle without losing the core of what you are trying to do. Of course I concede that I may be missing something here but I suspect that it was included simply because that is how combat works between two characters and you wanted the system to rhyme.

11:03 the thought about ethnic groups fighting and being different is so cool to me! Started reading the Witcher “They won’t believe, thought Cornet Aubry. They’ll never believe me when I tell them about it. This square is fighting in a total encirclement … Surrounded on all sides by cavalry, being torn, hacked, pounded and stabbed … And the square is marching. It’s marching in line, serried, pavise by pavise. It’s marching, trampling and stepping over corpses, pushing the élite Ard Feainn Division in front of it … And it’s marching.” The Mahakam Volunteer Army was ready to march through hell. The human Brugge Companies could not survive a heavy cavalry charge, but not only did the hardy dwarves, but they marched THROUGH them!

I want to say, as a Usonian... A United States-ian, that I understand why a lot of players may find it distasteful, as we're a land of people working out our own individual problems; we have that individual not group mentality. Still, a decent amount want to be movers and shakers.. I wonder how relatively popular the Stronghold rules will be, outside of the States... My friends and I will be exploring them, nonetheless...in fact, we already have been. Thank you for creating the Warforged units my DM used.

I like the idea that different weapons do different things. Take the Halberd and Glaive for instance. According the book, they're the same thing, right down to weight and price. But if you look at actual halberds and glaives, they're quite different. A halberd has a spike on the opposite end of its head, while a glaive is basically a sword on a stick. So I let Halberds have the option to do either piercing or slashing, depending on which side of the head you're using. Even if you go into the esoteric difference between a poleaxe and a halberd, there's a difference. The halberd does slashing/piercing, the poleaxe does slashing/bludgeoning, since there's a hammer head where the halberd has a spike

I'm only ten minutes into this video and I already feel way more equipped to run a skirmish with my mid-level players. I am so excited for the Strongholds book. Just hoping I can keep everybody busy until it comes out and they can use it!

Kingdom building is something that I love. Like, I could spend a whole session just setting up a keep or township. Hours and hours just deciding where farms are, blacksmiths, houses, stables, training grounds. Yea i may be a little boring lol

Your videos are helping us build a great campaign and we can't wait to start our sessions after we finish our current campaign. We also can't wait to get your book and implement all the stuff you have in there.

This is one of the things I've been most hyped for in following your channel

I almost want to throw this into the game as a form of mini game. I love these ideas. Thanks Matt!

I prefer having it in the background and the players are like some elite crack unit that needs to... land on endor and shut down the power shield so the main force can win the day... that kind of nonsense

Matt, I just backed your kickstarter (all swag pledge). Keep up the good work, and I hope you make it to 2 million!

I love the reference to Blue Oyster Cult in the description of the Dalrath Hounds

I was very skeptical of warfare but my buddy's longtime friend who's a DnD fanatic asked me to at least try it out at his mancave. And I did. The first thing I noticed at this mancave was the ridiculously amazing looking and huge lego setup with hundreds of lego miniatures (that's when I realized legos are amazing for tabletop...though expensive). I also realized he had brought another 30 more players for his homebrew DnD script using legos. I later found out the guy was a super rich dude that had spent at least million on legos and DnD as a hobby and he was really into theatrics. this was the best Dm I've ever seen and everything that night was amazing. That being said, I still don't like warfare in tabletop...I just like going on a hard journey with my party...and just looting stuff and going on a quest.

"A 2001 video…" I think you're about 17 years too late… (Sorry. I'll see myself out now…)

I funded at the super stream supporter level because i wanted to support all the aspects of this project I was most interested in, but the play test is what I'm most excited for. I gotta admit, the warfare portion gave me the most pause, but after this update, I'm just as excited to try and implement it into my game.

You can fit more dwarfs into the same space than you can humans. So, humans are always potentially locally outnumbered. This factor is why cavalry is in big trouble if it stops in contact with enemy infantry. This factor also makes Kobalds and Goblins much more effective.

1:58 Incorrect. 3.5 did release a book titled Heroes Of Battle (not sure about other editions). It's a fairly small book and one of only 2 in its series. I own it and while I haven't used it yet (my group just isn't into large-scale combat), I have read it and it's pretty good. It covers a lot of rules of course, but it also goes into having entire campaigns based around armies, different military tactics in a fantasy world, and how to run a military adventure for a group of PCs. It features subsytems on leading groups of soldiers and siege warfare. It also features lots of feats that might be convertible to 5e. As always, a great video Matt. I look forward to your book!

Dwarf elite heavy cavalery riding boars would be cute, yet terrifying

The warfare rules sound amazing! 😀👍 Looking forward to getting this!

"shard-bearers can't hold ground" is my most recent introduction to the "you need men to hold the field" idea where one given hero can be a a true force of nature, a terror on the field, but alone, they're just one man, and one man can be overwhelmed. (well, person really, but just "man" sounds better, but there's no reason it couldn't be woman, non-binary person, gender-less elemental, or whatever.)

I made a pledge for your book on your Kickstarter, can't wait to get it! Congratulations on the huge amount you raised!

Do a "the thing" video, u have mentioned u r fan before. It wpuld be great to get ur in depth thoughts on it.

Holy crap. This isn't just good D&D stuff to play around with, it makes me think of my writing, too. How to write warfare better. This is just so cool. HYPE!

Heroes of battle was a great 3.5 supplement about how to work warfare into a still character focused game.

That wizard fireballing a unit, definitely one of my fantasies though I understand pine fireball won’t do it. That’s why my favorite units are caster units, one fireball might help but 20 will really, really Put the hurt on an army :)

So dang excited for Strongholds & Followers, the miniatures, and the stream!! You rock Matt!!!

The more of your videos I watch, the more I want to work with you and game with you. My skill set works for your company setup.