On the Campaign Trail

Matt and I have been playing 40K for about a year now (since we started playing again that is). As I've mentioned before we've mostly played Annihilation games using Pitched Battle deployment. This has kept our interest for a while, largely due to us both having a good choice of armies and individual units to keep our opponent guessing. However, we want to start varying the rules a bit and both like the idea of a campaign where each battle has an influence on the next. So I decided to draw up our first campaign. The point limits for each battle are fairly low with the aim being that we can get the whole thing done within a day. We've found that now we're familiar with 5th edition we can get a couple of games totalling around 5K points done within a day

The basic structure consists of four battles: a 500 pt initial skirmish, two 1000 pt battles and a final 2000 pt decider. This means we'll play a total of 4500 pts over the day which should just about be possible with time to change the board around. The image shows the structure of the campaign. I'll be using my Wolves and Matt will take Blood Angels.

Battle 1
One chapter's patrol will happen upon a border guard from the opposing chapter (randomly determined who discovers who). The patrol must attempt to annihilate the border guard in order to prevent the incursion being noticed. The border guard are deployed in the centre of a 2x2' board with the enemy deploying anywhere else as long as they aren't within 12". The scouting party then takes the first turn. No units can be placed in reserve. The game continues until once side is wiped from the face of the map.

This battle should be fun because we've decided to ignore the force organisation chart. I imagine it won't take long at all as once one side has the upper hand it will be difficult to stop them. Quick and bloody!

Battle 2
The winner of Battle 1 calls for reinforcements, supplies and ammunition and pushes into enemy territory. The enemy sees the vapour trails of the incoming drop pods and sends a force to seize the supplies.

This will be a 1000pt Seize Ground game with 3 objectives. The winner of battle 1 gets to pick the location of 2 objectives and the loser places the third. The winner of battle 1 gets to keep any models that were still alive at the end of the first battle so may therefore start with more than 1000pts. Neither side may deploy any units and instead may bring as much or as little on in the first turn as they like. The winner of battle 1 will get the first turn.

Other than what I've mentioned about this will follow the usual Seize Ground rules with a standard 5-7 turn game length. The winner of battle 2 is now on the attack with the loser defending (for the purposes of the final battle).

Battle 3
Both armies have tasked their allies with patrolling the perimeter of their defences so as their enemies push forward they meet an unexpected foe. The winner's remaining forces from battle 2 are all they have to fight a full 1000pts of an allied army (in my case Tau and in Matt's IG).

Standard annihilation with the winner of battle 2 taking the first turn. The idea here is that whilst the extra forces in battle 2 should've made it easy for one side to achieve victory it will be difficult for them to win battle 3. This should prevent one side achieving victory in all four battles.

Both of our alternate armies are very shooty so it should mean we thin out the marine armies pretty well before the final battle.

Battle 4
The attacking side (winner of battle 2) launches a planetstrike on their enemy's base. We're playing it as a Planetfall mission from the Planetstrike expansion. We both liked the idea of using the expansion as it sounds like absolute carnage. Again the winner of battle 3 will get to keep any remaining forces to add to their 2000pts whilst the loser will just get a fresh 2000pts.

The number of battles won by each side determines how many points they'll have to select strategems. With both sides getting 3 pts plus an additional point for each victory.

I hope that all made sense, i'm sure it'll become clearer when we're actually playing. I'm really looking forward to trying this out. There's an obvious problem with allowing models to be carried forward to the next battle there's the issue of what to do when we don't have enough figures to allow this to happen. This encourages us to select armies that are pretty different for each battle. The problem comes in the form of the Troops selection. I'm going to need to take GHs in all the battles and Matt will probably want jump pack assault troops in all of them too. We'll have to see what happens but I don't image there'll be much left at the end of the first battle and it's unlikely the marine army will be the victor in battle 3. Just have to see how it pans out.

The planetstrike game should be fun. As I've mentioned I've bought an Imperial Strongpoint from GW so we'll have plenty of scenery for it. I like the idea of setting up a fortress and then seeing if your opponent can navigate his way through your defences.