Campaigns order for a beginner player

[Tmark]

Hello there! Planning to play all campaigns eventually! Should i play all the novice ones first or should i got with chronological order despite many of the earlier ones being intermediate-expert?

Thanks in advance!

[Peats]

The South Guard is an easy campaign for starters.

Don't follow a chronological order, that would make you start with The Rise of Wesnoth (I think) which is very long and quite tricky.

[Vetgirig on Linux]

Do the novice ones. Heir to the throne is the classical campaing for Wesnoth.

[Sinnie]

A tale of two Brothers was created as a 'tutorial' campaign if I remember correctly.

[Tmark]

Thank you all! Beginning with A tale of two Brothers.

[crazy-ivanovic]

And be careful. If a campaign difficulty level is called "challenging" it really is... Easy should be reasonably easy, but even normal might already be a challenge for many players.

[Celtic Minstrel]

The first few campaigns on the list (when viewing unsorted) are generally considered suitable for beginners. In addition to Two Brothers this also means An Orcish Incursion and The South Guard.

Heir to the Throne is also fairly beginner friendly but is quite a bit longer.

[Citronvand]

Is there no official Drake campaign? Feels like there is a lot of Human campaigns.

[Britannicus]

A few general things up front: Do not choose challenging, it is too hard for most beginners. I would recommend to try and play without save-loading, i.e. if you lose/♥♥♥♥ up, start the scenario from the beginning. This can be very frustrating, but the feeling of accomplishment and the satisfaction of beating a tough level more than makes up for it.

As to the order: I would recommend starting with A Tale of two Brothers, since it is arguably the easiest campaign and by far the shortest.

Second I would suggest An Orcish Incursion, which is a bit longer and harder (harhar), but also still pretty much a tutorial. After that, The South Guard is the first "proper" campaign, still very managable for beginners, but much more challenging, interesting and varied than the first two, even featuring a branching path near the end.

After that, it's really up to you. If you are enjoying the game and think you are in it for the long haul, definitely go for Heir to the Throne. It is a very good campaign that teaches you a lot about Wesnoth and touches (if only briefly) on almost all the factions.

But if you are already tired of humans and elves, you might try Descent Into Darkness or Liberty, both of which feature chaotic factions (Undead and Outlaws) and are imo much better and more interesting than the first four campaigns.

[Ronnie]

Yes this game can be a challenge the time limit is what I am not a fan of but I guess that's part of the strategy element and rewards the player for finishing early. I finished alongtime ago the Heir to the Throne thinking that was it more or less but recently saw this game on steam decided to play it saw the other campaigns doing tale of two brothers the second mission is a challenge on hard difficulty....

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally posted by Citronvand:

Is there no official Drake campaign? Feels like there is a lot of Human campaigns.

That's correct, there's no official drake campaign yet. That's being worked on for the next major version, but I'm not sure when that will be (a year? less? more?).

[RJJameson]

Originally posted by Tmark:

Thank you all! Beginning with A tale of two Brothers.

Good choice. A good second one would be An Orcish Incursion.

The South Guard always struck me as having too many special rules/scenarios for a true beginner, despite the fact that it is billed as being an introductory campaign. And while Heir to the Throne is frequently cited as being a good beginner campaign, I think this notion should be readily disabused by the massive volume of threads on the old forums written by new players who got on happily for a while before being completely destroyed and demoralized on the scenario "The Siege of Elensfar," or sometimes "The Valley of Death." I would recommend Heir to the Throne as a good second or third campaign.

[dadoo]

If played on Beginner, Liberty can be very suitable for those used to hex-tactical games but are unfamiliar with BfW. Though not the easiest "easy" campaign of the list, most of its scenarios will feature competent and/or powerful AI allies and in my opinion a lot more relaxing on the experience than An Orcish Incursion or The South Guard.

Most Loyalist/Rebel campaigns can be quite hard due to the proliferation of Undead opponents in their scenarios, even those billed as "Beginner", making them a little misleading to a newcomer unaware of the EXP system. The fact that the unit manual also only shows units that you've directly seen in the game also hinders new players.