Peregrine wrote:You can find some stuff here and there, but the problem with doing a campaign like this in
40k is that most battles end with 90% or more of both armies destroyed (unless one side is getting wiped off the table by a stronger opponent, which is its own kind of bad). You'll very quickly have one or both sides run out of units and then the game stops being fun.
That's why there's big reserves. It's not one thin line on map. Cold war commander resulted in pretty mauled sides often(well short of one side having attrocious rolling in command tests)
Also 2nd ed is bit less deadly especially since it's 4 turn games and stuff are moving less fast(basic movement for
IG is for example 4", 8" if they forego shooting) and transports are death traps so rarely used. Less issues with alpha strikes with
LOS ignoring stuff or drop pods coming down. With good amount of terrain and lack of D weapons stuff quick tabling don't happen.
Also did I mention if one side felt he was going to get mauled he might basically not even try to win but get away in good order. Basically give up battle but scenario would be one designed for fighting withdrawal. This also reduced casualties as getting outnumbered didn't mean neccessarily your entire force getting wiped.
While reserves exists games themselves tend to be reasonable(after all you just bring in reinforcements!). If one side runs out of reserves fast and it's clear it's going to be mobbing up...Well doesn't that sound to you "campaign won, time to start new one"? We obviously won't be playing campaign to "last ork standing wins"
The old campaign was won by brits(grumble grumble) when they used gained artirelly superiority to do series of hit&run attacks against motorized battalions to deadly effect basically robbing russians of fast moving infantry. With basically only tanks and some foot slogging infantry left they were hard pressed to archieve strategic goal anymore so waved in white flag(retreat wasn't much of a option anyway except maybe for some tanks. With roaming british mechanized columns between you and home good luck foot slogging into safety!).
Yes it's not fun if you end up in situation where you can only bring in small token force against full size army but that's why armies are lot bigger than you field on table. However what campaign did result in:
a) you didn't simply field up best units all the time. There was only so many T-90's russian force HAD so if you ran out of them he had to deal with more numerous T-80's and T-72's. So you prioritized where you wanted to put in your T-90's.
b) you cared more about your troops and had to weight in "victory in this game or survival of unit" choices. At what point it's not worth taking a risk to win even at the expense of my units? In standard game who cares if succeeding in winning game means losing most of your army including
HQ. You won! There's no drawback in it so go for it. Now you have to consider that "yes if I attempt this I MIGHT win this game but odds are good I lose one of my few land raiders in it".
c) it gave you characterful scenarios right off the bat. You broke through and sent in force to hunt down enemy artirelly support? To prevent reinforcements stopping that plan put in delaying forces between you and your spearhead! Or the above mentioned "fighting withdrawal".
Obviously campaign had it's own problems but overall it was great fun and don't see any critical "cannot do it" for
40k. Especially 2nd ed which isn't near as deadly. Also guess we could put in some sort of "5+ guy recovers". Maybe with extra penalty if you died in
CC(on principle you are more certain to be securedly dead when getting mauled by power fist. Enemy can more easily check are you dead or wounded. Plus in 2nd ed getting to
CC takes a while and wiping out large number of models in it is harder as well).
Maybe it fails, maybe it won't. Don't know until one has tried it!
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Stormonu wrote:I think the Forgeworld books have some of that information, though its usually for specific battle campaigns (such as the Badab War). Might be some in the various Imperial Armour books as well.
Specific campaigns would be just fine as it would give me some guide lines. The books are so expensive though that simply buying randomly hoping it MIGHT have what I look would be bit expensive though. That's why if somebody has one of those books that has good info I would appreciate if they would tell. Book price isn't unreasonable IF it has the info I need. It's less tempting idea to buy them blindly.