I think these village and war mods are too involved. I'd like to see a war mod that remains somewhat flexible and light.
For instance, there could be a number of "totems", effectively control points, scattered around the map. They could be captured in a few different ways, from merely being nearby, to some procedure requiring special resources. When you respawn, you appear at a totem controlled by your team. The goal would be to first capture all totems, then wipe out the other side. The presence of mobs would force nearly-defeated teams to try to capture totems, less they be finished by creepers.
There are a few overhead elements this would imply; teams, chat channels, presumably some kind of new block for totems and it's related behavior. Virtually everything else would remain unchanged; players would build defenses around totems however they feel is necessary.
I'm thinking totem captures could be something requiring as much as an hour a piece; you might begin a capture by placing a block by the totem, and then preventing the defending team from removing it. Naturally, you can't spawn at a totem under siege.
The number of totems, teams, and players could be a pretty wide range. Two players with a dozen totems, two teams with one flaglike totem each, ten single-man teams with a single totem each, or a battle royale with three teams among 20 players on a map littered with totems.
As for the placement of these totems, they would presumably be on the surface, but floating or subterranean totems would work fine as well.
Possibly, a pregame period could allow the teams to place the totems wherever they like within certain ranges.
Other little plugins to this come naturally; maybe a bank for gold storage, so that the teams get a small trickle of metal, gunpowder, arrows, and other useful supplies, as long as the gold is there. Missions to steal enemy gold could be a separate tactical layer. Other plugins could be anything; connections between totems, totems granting special abilities to teams that hold them, neutral mob totems that spawn monsters until captured, FFI systems for traps so your dispensers only dispense arrows to enemies, helmets that disguise you as the other team(s)...
Despite all that though, the basics are all clear to a new player immediately; get your totem, get the bad guy's totem, hit the bad guy with pointies.
Man, now I really want to host this mod.