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Hi All,

Some of my personal most favourite times in the hobby occurred during the third war for armageddon and the 13th Black crusade... Whilst GW at the time made a bit of a hash of the impact of the results, and many retcons in between have occurred, they were still fun, fairly heavily narrative driven - whilst also giving another consequence/edge for competitive games, I still think they are some of the best ways to engage and interact with the setting.

Obviously, Covid will probably keep something like this happening any time soon, but another big narrative campaign with some setting consequences would be great. Octarius seems like a no brainer of a setting really to have a campaign that can have impact, progress an aspect of the story/setting without breaking the setting if Tyranids or Orks were to win, it would just mean the doom clock is ticking ever closer to midnight

Any specific fond memories/battles or ideas for future events?

Not 40k but during the Season of War campaign, one of the weekly bonuses was that Battleline units regenerated and could come back after being destroyed. As such my unit of 10 Chaos Warriors killed 10 Freeguild Guard to secure us the enemy deployment zone, and then proceeded to kill the other unit of Guard as well as both regenerated units for good measure, earning themselves the nickname "The Butchers".

I'm still surprised / sad that the battle for Konor didn't have a follow up. Vigilus, Charadon, Octarius, even the Psychic Awakening could have been really nice with a proper Campaign. Konor itself seems to have been less relevant fluffwize than all the others and came too soon after the restart of the game. Many armies were running on bland Index rules while others got their Codex during the campaign putting them ahead of the others creating frustrations. Still this was the first time in 15 years of playing I thought about leaving my garage and visiting an FLGS to play

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
I'm still surprised / sad that the battle for Konor didn't have a follow up. Vigilus, Charadon, Octarius, even the Psychic Awakening could have been really nice with a proper Campaign. Konor itself seems to have been less relevant fluffwize than all the others and came too soon after the restart of the game. Many armies were running on bland Index rules while others got their Codex during the campaign putting them ahead of the others creating frustrations. Still this was the first time in 15 years of playing I thought about leaving my garage and visiting an FLGS to play

Agreed. Konor was a lot of fun despite its limitations, and it generated a pretty positive atmosphere as it gave people a reason to come out and try the new edition together. I was hoping GW would make it an annual thing. Seems like a great way for them to beta test some oddball mechanics and push the plot forward just a smidge each year.

I think stuff like the Psychic Awakening and so on is an attempt to tap into that spirit, though I'm not sure how successful it was.

The Armageddon Campaign is my favourite of the big narrative campaigns, because it wasn't "the end of the world" like Storm of Chaos or the 13th Crusade, both of which I figured shouldn't really have been events in that way.

Armageddon is important, but it's not the end of the Imperium if it is lost.

But what was great was how the campaign spurred imagination and sort of showed how to look at a conflict and really think it through to make a cool campaign with linked battles. Lots of themed armies like the Steel Legion or Speed Freaks gave people the chance to make interesting new forces, with some genuinely cool mechanics. I don't recall any of those armies being really over the top gamewise either.

And the battle report in WD over two issues with the battle for the tank factory and the simultaneous battles on other tables around has to be the gold standard for awesome battle reports. Gorgeous armies, great scenery and a narrative side to the reports. Just gets you hyped and gets you thinking about battling in a hive city or the ash wastes, and I think that's the great strength of these campaigns.

The actual games and how they were reported was just a fun side show for me, a reason to report some of my stuff and imagine my dudes as being part of something bigger. I think the expectation now would be that the system would be rigorous and "fair" and I'm not sure you can really manage that or that it is a reasonable expectation, so I'm sure there'd be a lot of upset people if they tried to do it, just like there were in the past.

They tried again with Medusa 5, but to my mind that just wasn't as compelling for whatever reason. Maybe it was just that I was older, I dunno.

I think when you get older and get less free time because of work/studying/families, having a campaign give you more points for painting, building or playing with new units is a bit of a pain. For Konor I just didn't have the time or energy or money to be buying/building/painting brand new models every week or so to bump up Team Chaos's points. For Season of War I was gladly buying a new unit for my Slaves to Darkness.

The Eye of Terror was my favourite, just I think because it was the first one that involved proper social media (forums etc) making it a truly global event, and there was so much skullduggery that took place.

From memory, the Disorder side (bad guys!) were much better organised at planning where to place victories. Someone had worked out the formula that GW were using to 'flip' planets and therefore directed people to post their results against those sectors and planets. So you wouldn't waste posting your results against Cadia for example, because it would need massive volumes of results to shift ownership of the world.
In contrast, I think the Order faction were massively disorganised, again stretching memory here but you ended up with two 'ruling councils' that, hilariously, had the same acronym for their title, and they were giving contrasting orders about where to post Imperial victories. So the response ended up being muddled. I think, but can't be sure, that their were disorder 'Agents' that were interfering in the Order areas and helping to confuse things still further. Honestly it was so funny, the life was definitely imitating the art.

I think the outlier to this was the Eldar faction, which managed to organise their campaigning quite well.

I think at the end there was a fairly comprehensive Disorder victory, but then Andy Chambers and GW backtracked on their earlier promise of the result helping to shape the game universe, and I think (?) declared it as an inconclusive result.

There was a really, really good thread over on Warseer (I think written by Hellebore, who also posts here) that is well worth a read if you have the time. I shall try to find a link to it.

The Great Rift status quo makes sense as a sort of alternate ending to the 13th black crusade. That's what I like to think - that Abaddon won and the warp rift spilled out gradually over the galaxy leading to the split Imperium.

I wasn't really involved in the online side of things for that one, but it does make for a great story after the fact.

My personal dislike of it is that I'd understood Rhana Dandra/13th Crusade/Da Big Fight/The Wolftime to all be referring to some future apocalypse, just like "the end of the world" in general. And breaking them into different events kinda broke that mythic feel to me.

But it's a minor thing - I just felt that the 13th Crusade should have stayed something that would happen in the near future, rather than something that ended with a bit of a let down.

I wouldn’t say no to another, however….

I’d prefer them to run it over say, three different planetary systems, and not necessarily in the same parts of the Galaxy.

This would allow for all the armies to get involved, without feeling like a narrative stretch (for instance, if your campaign is set in and around the Cadian Gate, Tau and Nids feel super out of place.

Have the outcome of each feed into the genuine background. It needn’t be Galaxy shaping consequences as such. But it should feel permanent.

I can’t speak for others, but I’d be quite chuffed if I could point to a timeline entry in a Codex and say “I helped that happen. It was ace!”

I loved Armageddon, regardless of outcome. It just allowed some guidance on where and how to fight battles. i actually built a 4x4 oil rig for a fight (dad used to work on them) and remember using it as a base for a conflict between my marines and buddies orks (there was a location that had offshore platforms IIRC)

I recently purchased the Vigilus risk game just to use the map for campaigns.

The problem with the recent campaigns was they had a buy-to-win element, wherein sales contributed points. Inevitably this just led to a situation where the most popular factions - Order and the Imperium - just rolled over everybody else by sheer weight of player numbers. I think that one week in Konor that Chaos won, people just assumed GW flipped it on purpose to make it look like they'd ever had a chance.

Sure the EoT/SoChaos/Medusa/Phoenix Crown (lol) systems weren't free of issues either, but it did at least feel like other factions had a chance.

I remember an armageddon campaign back in 3rd edition and it was a blast. Loved that!

Man, EoT was fun!

In the end Disorder won with Dark Eldar coming out as the top faction from that side.

I laughed really hard when the Forces of Order devoted resources to fight for a Imperium prison planet.

The scale of that is something I would love to see again. With the lore as it is now they could have a conflict large enough to mean something but not large enough to drastically change anything.
I would really like to see a "gold rush" type scenario. Something of value is located and whoever can get to it first is given a major strategic advantage.

 Arbitrator wrote:
The problem with the recent campaigns was they had a buy-to-win element, wherein sales contributed points. Inevitably this just led to a situation where the most popular factions - Order and the Imperium - just rolled over everybody else by sheer weight of player numbers. I think that one week in Konor that Chaos won, people just assumed GW flipped it on purpose to make it look like they'd ever had a chance.

Sure the EoT/SoChaos/Medusa/Phoenix Crown (lol) systems weren't free of issues either, but it did at least feel like other factions had a chance.

I mean, that's probably by design - they want people who buy Astartes to feel like they're "winners" for having bought from them.

SamusDrake wrote:
I remember an armageddon campaign back in 3rd edition and it was a blast. Loved that!

That brought me to 40k. Particularly story about small group(7 or 13) dreadnoughts vs over 100 ork walkers.

Just need about 4 more dreadnoughts and i have finally all dread army.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I wouldn’t say no to another, however….

I’d prefer them to run it over say, three different planetary systems, and not necessarily in the same parts of the Galaxy.

This would allow for all the armies to get involved, without feeling like a narrative stretch (for instance, if your campaign is set in and around the Cadian Gate, Tau and Nids feel super out of place.

Have the outcome of each feed into the genuine background. It needn’t be Galaxy shaping consequences as such. But it should feel permanent.

I can’t speak for others, but I’d be quite chuffed if I could point to a timeline entry in a Codex and say “I helped that happen. It was ace!”

Totally agree. Explaining why every faction under the sun is fighting for the same solitary system has always been a bit of a pain for my gaming groups. Pointing to notes on a timeline and feeling like you contributed to it sounds awesome.

Arbitrator wrote:The problem with the recent campaigns was they had a buy-to-win element, wherein sales contributed points. Inevitably this just led to a situation where the most popular factions - Order and the Imperium - just rolled over everybody else by sheer weight of player numbers.

Yeah... That was also at a point in time where marines had their 'dex while no one else did, right? If anything, I feel like a Konor-style campaign could be an opportunity to give a little lore love to the factions that aren't getting new books or models that year.

I think that one week in Konor that Chaos won, people just assumed GW flipped it on purpose to make it look like they'd ever had a chance.

I definitely remember reading the lore updates that boiled down to, "The imperium curb-stomped everyone this week. As a result, chaos successfully did what they were planning in the first place, but they grumbled about it a little." And then when chaos apparently started winning after such decisive losses, it kind of begged the question, "Why?"
(Theoretically the missions could have really favored chaos that week. I don't recall which mission that was.)

tneva82 wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
I remember an armageddon campaign back in 3rd edition and it was a blast. Loved that!

That brought me to 40k. Particularly story about small group(7 or 13) dreadnoughts vs over 100 ork walkers.

Just need about 4 more dreadnoughts and i have finally all dread army.

It was 17 Dreadnoughts and was in the fluff "officially" the largest gathering of Imperial Dreadnoughts for a single battle.

If GW ever reprints that story better rethink that claim seeing 14 isn't even hard to do in 2k games anymore

tneva82 wrote:
If GW ever reprints that story better rethink that claim seeing 14 isn't even hard to do in 2k games anymore

They’ll probably just add a 0 to both figures

 Pacific wrote:
The Eye of Terror was my favourite, just I think because it was the first one that involved proper social media (forums etc) making it a truly global event, and there was so much skullduggery that took place.

From memory, the Disorder side (bad guys!) were much better organised at planning where to place victories. Someone had worked out the formula that GW were using to 'flip' planets and therefore directed people to post their results against those sectors and planets. So you wouldn't waste posting your results against Cadia for example, because it would need massive volumes of results to shift ownership of the world.
In contrast, I think the Order faction were massively disorganised, again stretching memory here but you ended up with two 'ruling councils' that, hilariously, had the same acronym for their title, and they were giving contrasting orders about where to post Imperial victories. So the response ended up being muddled. I think, but can't be sure, that their were disorder 'Agents' that were interfering in the Order areas and helping to confuse things still further. Honestly it was so funny, the life was definitely imitating the art.

I think the outlier to this was the Eldar faction, which managed to organise their campaigning quite well.

I think at the end there was a fairly comprehensive Disorder victory, but then Andy Chambers and GW backtracked on their earlier promise of the result helping to shape the game universe, and I think (?) declared it as an inconclusive result.

There was a really, really good thread over on Warseer (I think written by Hellebore, who also posts here) that is well worth a read if you have the time. I shall try to find a link to it.

I wrote that thread about the Eye of Terror campaign, its mechanics, and the results. And the most updated version is here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

We are already participating in a global campaign...if you play certain tournaments and/or are part of the 'playtesting' scheme.

The outcome of these limited comp games directly affects your armies!

GW Ironically being better at taking results and applying them down the line than they ever were for storyline purposes.

Iracundus wrote:


I wrote that thread about the Eye of Terror campaign, its mechanics, and the results. And the most updated version is here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

Ah, apologies Iracundus for attributing that to someone else.

Brilliant stuff, that's my evening reading sorted

 Mr. Burning wrote:
We are already participating in a global campaign...if you play certain tournaments and/or are part of the 'playtesting' scheme.

The outcome of these limited comp games directly affects your armies!

GW Ironically being better at taking results and applying them down the line than they ever were for storyline purposes.

Rather by buying models. Sales team is one that decides what gets nerfed and what buffed

Iracundus wrote:

I wrote that thread about the Eye of Terror campaign, its mechanics, and the results. And the most updated version is here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

That was one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Nicely done!

It goes to show how much effort GW put into the game and background, and the level of involvement they could get from the community world wide.

I also think of where our technology was back then, and this kind of world wide campaign was nothing less than impressive. The stuff to limit cheating, sector-level events, and how to make battles more relevant.

brainpsyk wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

I wrote that thread about the Eye of Terror campaign, its mechanics, and the results. And the most updated version is here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

That was one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Nicely done!

It goes to show how much effort GW put into the game and background, and the level of involvement they could get from the community world wide.

I also think of where our technology was back then, and this kind of world wide campaign was nothing less than impressive. The stuff to limit cheating, sector-level events, and how to make battles more relevant.

I had a read through that thread again and it's still thoroughly entertaining.

What amazes me is that there was still obviously a lot of ill-feeling about that campaign and the result, even many years later! Really shows how invested in it people were at the time.

I found the stuff about the two factions arguing about the use of the acronym absolutely hilarious. And, it was amazing how it kind of represented how we imagine the Imperium to be; a giant, monolithic organisation that was slow to react, meanwhile the forces of disorder had a keen Machiavellian intelligence guiding them to victory!

 Pacific wrote:

brainpsyk wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

I wrote that thread about the Eye of Terror campaign, its mechanics, and the results. And the most updated version is here:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/392010.page

That was one of the best reads I've had in a long time. Nicely done!

It goes to show how much effort GW put into the game and background, and the level of involvement they could get from the community world wide.

I also think of where our technology was back then, and this kind of world wide campaign was nothing less than impressive. The stuff to limit cheating, sector-level events, and how to make battles more relevant.

I had a read through that thread again and it's still thoroughly entertaining.

What amazes me is that there was still obviously a lot of ill-feeling about that campaign and the result, even many years later! Really shows how invested in it people were at the time.

I found the stuff about the two factions arguing about the use of the acronym absolutely hilarious. And, it was amazing how it kind of represented how we imagine the Imperium to be; a giant, monolithic organisation that was slow to react, meanwhile the forces of disorder had a keen Machiavellian intelligence guiding them to victory!

To be honest I think it was mainly a lot of Imperial sore loser players who drank the Imperial Kool-Aid and could not stand the idea of the Imperium actually losing a world wide campaign. For example, there was never any such uproar over any other world wide campaign before or since, because the Imperium won all of those. It has only ever been the one in which the Imperium officially lost. Then they went around spreading all sorts of misinformation. I've read all sorts of rubbish explanations from Disorder being given "secret" information by GW, to single players losing the whole campaign for Order because they lost their tournament game. I remember someone on Warseer saying he saw people at a con shortly after the official results talking to Andy Chambers trying to convince him that Order had "really" won, despite Andy Chambers' already published WD article saying otherwise.

In the Eye of Terror campaign, it was less about the Imperium player base being a giant monolith but more that it was a fragmented player base that refused to listen to anyone else or that considered their local interests first beyond the larger goal. That's what led to individual small Imperial player groups staying put in their chosen little warzones, refusing all attempts to get them to move elsewhere, and driving the Imperial Control to extreme levels. They patted themselves on the head for salvaging a low priority warzone, while other far higher warzones elsewhere fell into anarchy. It was not helped by some Imperial players seemingly adopting the Imperium's xenophobic stance, flinging insults and antagonizing Eldar players, to the point where I recall some Eldar players saying they would not lift a finger to aid the Imperium and would just fight in the Webway to accomplish Eldar goals.

There were a lot of big egos too. For example during the time midway through the campaign when Disorder was running riot through having figured out the campaign mechanics, the Forces of Order on the GW campaign forums were in a mixture of shock, denial, and panic. There would be people popping up on the forums unilaterally declaring themselves supreme leader of all the Forces of Order, demanding everyone obey, and flinging out orders that were completely ignored by others (some of whom in turn would go on to try and declare themselves supreme leader etc...). There is a reference to this on a bit of retrospective review in the form of fiction on the old hipcat site:

"Such was the fear and confusion that people felt that each day a new madman arose: screaming for unity or demanding that he be put in charge of the forces at the Imperium’s disposal. There were so many of them – some preaching heresy and some simply egomaniacs that the in the end the governors and princes and the had them all arrested and shot. If any man dared raise the call for unity or dared stand on the steps of the temples and declare himself leader of the Imperial forces then he was swiftly arrested and shot, according to martial law."

http://web.archive.org/web/20031104093843/http://hipcat.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/retrofiction.htm

The campaign mechanics were figured out on the various groups and forums, but any players not active on those would not have necessarily known about it until the WD wrap-up article, so I could see why some might have been surprised by the result. Unlike all the other campaigns before or since, the Eye of Terror campaign was the only one in which explicit mechanics existed that allowed a smaller faction (in terms of RL players) to fight and defeat a more numerous faction. It was not purely about raw number of wins but of where they were placed. All other campaigns were basically straight numerical grinds which made them then an inevitable Imperial victory given that Imperial factions are the most numerous in players, and sometimes hard locked players to their RL geographical area. This meant that any warzones that had few players relative to other zones, such as the Armageddon 3 warzone that players on the continent of Africa were assigned to, barely moved at all and became uninteresting stalemates.

The worldwide campaigns I think were a good way to drum up player enthusiasm. However I think the stakes of a campaign could have been made less apocalyptic and also the different factions could have been spread out more. So instead of all factions dogpiling into one area, it becomes more like what the Tau had in the Eye of Terror campaign, with their own little corner. In other words, maybe in one sector it is Imperium vs. Orks, while another is Imperium vs. Tau, etc... The Imperial players have to make choices about where to concentrate their efforts across multiple warzones, and Imperial factions could also be seeded with individual faction goals (which may or may not align with the Imperium goals as a whole), so there could be actual Imperial vs Imperial fighting. That would have helped break up the Imperial monolith of players to prevent them from totally overwhelming all other factions in numbers.

I think GW is passing up an opportunity to get players motivated in the development of background lore through such events. It's basically getting people to develop lore for you for free as unpaid writers. Things like Mordax Prime being taken by Orks and Bellis Corona being attacked by Tyranids were canonized by later mentions in Codices. Even the Tau voluminous 3rd sphere expansion was a result of this campaign and them being left to run unchecked in their warzone, though I have heard at least one player argue GW would have just written in a 3rd Sphere expansion anyway regardless of the actual result (this is an unprovable "what if?" scenario).

That sounds like it was a lot of fun for the Disorder side.
I seem to remember that the Konor campaign didn't actually represent any faction well that wasn't Imperial and GW just did whatever they wanted with the "lore" additions. Like the one planet Chaos actually won was suddenly a Death Guard world instead of just Chaos because Death Guard were the new Big Bad and I just sat there with my Slaanesh Iron Warriors thinking "wut".

 Gert wrote:
That sounds like it was a lot of fun for the Disorder side.
I seem to remember that the Konor campaign didn't actually represent any faction well that wasn't Imperial and GW just did whatever they wanted with the "lore" additions. Like the one planet Chaos actually won was suddenly a Death Guard world instead of just Chaos because Death Guard were the new Big Bad and I just sat there with my Slaanesh Iron Warriors thinking "wut".

I think that campaign was a sad joke, and utterly opaque so not surprising it didn't get much overall traction with the player base. I also personally suspect the only reason Chaos even won any planets at all was due to GW wanting some suspense in the story, and there would have been none if it had been an Imperial clean sweep of all 5 planets in the star system (which I suspect was the case due to no clear mechanic to give less numerous non-Imperial factions a chance). The Imperium had won the first 2, so I think GW "gave" Chaos the next 2 by just declaring Chaos won them. I saw no particular reason why Chaos would have suddenly come back from behind to win 2 planets in a row after losing the first 2 decisively. This left the final planet seemingly up for grabs, though predictably the Imperium won. No raw numbers were given or available for analysis so the entire system was opaque beyond a bland progress bar, and thus potentially susceptible to GW fiat.

This thread isn't complete without a mention of the first global 40K campaign: the Battle for Ichar IV during 2nd edition 40K, shortly after the release of the original Tyranid codex.

Like later campaigns, the result (one tendril of Hive Fleet Kraken defeated at great cost) was incorporated into the background--although, because the 3rd ed Tyranid codex was so slim, IIRC it wasn't until the 4th ed codex that you got the full story if you'd missed those old White Dwarf issues with the actual campaign results.

I remember going thru the forums for the 13th BC campaign for the forces of order, and it was a mess.

But I put that on GW. In my 30 years playing 40k, I find the Imperium players (painting with broad strokes here) are the people wanting to be "the hero", not heroes, just the singular hero. While Xenos/Chaos players are there for the anarchy, and if organizing causes more anarchy, then they're all in. Whereas in an actual Imperial WZ, there really would be 1 person in charge (Logan Grimnar, IIRC), which never really materialized/galvanized into a single team/person because of the hero syndrome. So GW expecting unity in the Imperium player base was asking too much.

It really is kinda funny how flipped the psychology of the campaign was. Imperium being disorganized while ostensibly under the orders of a single leader. But FoDisorder were organized, but the lore has their campaigns failing because their warbands constantly go off to do their own thing.