Vanilla raids, rebuilt into a war that escalates, counters, and loops.
Assault Force turns Minecraft's one-off raid into a six-tier campaign that spans your whole save. An illager host descends wave by wave — break a wave and it escalates, die and it steps down. Win all the way through and you shatter the endgame, then a guerrilla phase begins and the cycle restarts.
It adds no new blocks, items, entities or data packs. Everything is built from vanilla content — AI goals, attribute modifiers and a handful of mixins.
What makes it different It doesn't get harder by piling on mobs. It gets harder by removing every cheap answer vanilla left you.
Dig a shaft? Vindicators work as combat engineers — ladders up your wall, scaffolding in the open, straight up to you. Dig a hole? Evoker vexes phase through walls, and vindicators mine through blocks. Jump a trench? They take no fall damage and path across without breaking stride. Kite with a crossbow? Pillagers double their range, back off to keep distance, and switch to a true arcing lob after repeated misses — dropping shots over your cover. Stand and trade hits? Witches heal their allies and throw level-III debuffs; Illusioners stack seven of them at once. Just stall? From tier 6, members carry Totems of Undying and drop signature death potions when killed. Wall yourself in? Nothing this mod spawns will ever appear within 200 blocks of your respawn point — but they will march in from beyond it. The six waves The six waves, and how big they get:
T1 — Scout Squad: 3 members, health ×1.00, +0 armour T2 — Pillager Squad: 17 members, health ×1.00, +0 armour T3 — Pillager Platoon: 20 members, health ×1.00, +0 armour T4 — Pillager Battalion: 32 members, health ×1.15, +2 armour T5 — Illager Legion: 56 members, health ×1.30, +4 armour T6 — Assault Host: 92 members, health ×1.50, +6 armour The roster spans pillagers, vindicators, witches, evokers, illusioners and ravagers. Riders are drawn from the ground pool, so they add no extra entities — an evoker on a ravager is paid for by one fewer illager standing on the ground.
How the campaign flows Day 3 — the first wave arrives (configurable) Clear a wave → the next tier arrives 1 day later Get killed → the host de-escalates (floor T2, never back to T1), and celebrates at your death point for 60 seconds Ignore tier 1 for 3 days → the next wave is 6 days out instead Break tier 6 → Hero of the Village X for 30 minutes, then a 3-day guerrilla phase — after which the cycle restarts at tier 1 Progress is shared server-wide: one tier, one timer, one focus player. Kiting the host onto another player is a legitimate tactic.
What they actually do Combat engineers (vindicators) — build ladders against walls and stack scaffolding in the open, then climb your shaft. A three-block pit or a tower top is no longer safe. Anything they place is logged and restored when the wave ends.
The whole host climbs — any member standing on a ladder or scaffolding climbs it.
Gap jumpers — from tier 4 they carry Jump Boost and clear 2–3 block gaps.
Diggers — vindicators dig through dirt and grass, and stone underground, carving a path to you.
Pillagers kite and lob — they retreat when you close in, shoot from range, and switch to a high-arc lob after three straight misses.
Witches support — besides damage potions they buff their own allies, and switch to lingering potions from tier 5.
Evokers have three abilities — fangs, vex summoning, and a bodyguard skill: corner one and it summons axe-wielding vindicators to protect it. Summoned vexes are immortal by default — kill them or they keep coming.
Illusioners are debuff machines — they apply debuffs on a timer and actively circle outside melee range, so you cannot simply rush them down.
Death potions — from tier 6, a dying member leaves a debuff on its killer: Weakness, Poison or Harming.
Faction-scoped potions — buffs only affect the illager faction, debuffs only affect players. A single Strength potion no longer lets you reverse-sweep an army, and they can't friendly-fire each other with splash potions. This applies only to the mod's own potions: yours and other mods' are untouched.
Spawn protection Nothing this mod spawns will ever land within 200 blocks of your respawn point.
The centre is your bed or respawn anchor, or the world spawn if you never set one Tested in true 3D distance — a horizontal-only check would turn a mineshaft directly below into a safe room If no valid spot exists outside the bubble, the mod waits and retries rather than quietly spawning inside it Because the default spawn ring (48–64 blocks from the player) sits entirely inside that bubble, the ring is pushed outside and the host marches in from beyond it — instead of spawning and standing still.
Villager delivery Break tier 6 and villagers start delivering gifts.
How it differs from the vanilla Hero of the Village gift:
Requires — vanilla needs line of sight to the hero; here it works unseen Items — vanilla uses a per-profession loot table; here they are random from the whole item registry Interval — vanilla is 30–330 seconds, random; here it is a fixed 5 seconds Limit — vanilla has none; here it is 20 per villager Sleeping villagers — vanilla won't deliver; here they are woken up to deliver "Random from the registry" means command blocks, barriers and spawn eggs can all drop — that is deliberate.
Delivery is time-limited: breaking tier 6 opens a 10-minute window. Once it lapses, delivery stops until you break tier 6 again. The window is saved, so restarting the game doesn't buy you another round.
In-game config screen Everything is tunable from inside the game: Mods → Assault Force → Config.
160 settings across 20 sections Drag sliders, click toggles — changes apply instantly; press Save to write the file Per-tier rosters (unit counts for every wave) on six sliders per row Search box that filters across all sections An "unsaved changes" marker and one-click restore for the current section A built-in command cheat-sheet with copy / transcribe to chat You can also edit config/assaultforce-common.toml directly if you prefer.
Commands /assault status Show the current state /assault wave <1-6> Summon a specific wave /assault wave next Summon the next wave /assault wave clear Dismiss the current wave /assault guerrilla <n> Summon n guerrilla squads /assault guerrilla clear Remove all guerrilla squads /assault tier <1-6> Set the current tier /assault hero <amp> [sec] Grant Hero of the Village /assault teleport Trigger a regroup /assault kill Remove every assault entity /assault reset Reset all progress /assault gift Show villager delivery status /assault gift unlock Force a delivery window open /assault gift lock Revoke the unlock /assault t6reward Grant the tier-6 reward directly /assault spawnprobe [n] Spawn-point probe (debug) All require permission level 2.
Installation Install Minecraft Forge 1.20.1 (47.x) Drop the jar into your mods/ folder Launch the game — the config can be tuned in-game or in config/assaultforce-common.toml Server-side installation is enough for multiplayer; singleplayer just needs it on the client. No dependencies beyond Forge itself.
Compatibility Nothing new is registered. Zero new entities, blocks, items or data packs — the collision surface with resource packs and other mods is minimal. Potion filtering is scoped. It only affects the mod's own tagged potions; yours and other mods' are completely unaffected. Existing saves keep working. Both new mechanisms only affect newly generated content, and the config file auto-fills any missing keys. Vanilla Bad Omen is kept. Captains carry the ominous banner by default — killing one gives you Bad Omen and can trigger a vanilla raid when you return to a village. This is intentional; set captainBannerChance = 0 to disable. Restart-safe. A half-finished battle is never restored: tagged leftover entities are cleaned up on every launch, and the next wave is scheduled from saved timers. Verified running alongside Xaero's Minimap / World Map, JEI, Curios, Mekanism, FTB Ultimine and others. Notes for existing saves If you cleared tier 6 on a version before 1.2.0, you will start already past the delivery window (that clear happened days ago, per the new rule). Use /assault gift unlock to reopen it manually, or simply break tier 6 again.
License: MIT — use it in modpacks freely, no permission needed.
Issues and feedback: please report them on this project's issue tracker.
