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Hey guys does anyone know what happened to the summer things GW used to run? Like the Eye of terror and the likes? where did these things go?

the last time I saw something like that was before I even started. I use to flip through the eye of terror magazine and think of all the cool stuff that I"d be able to use one day.

I havn't heard of any sinse then. Ardy boys is the only thing I know about. it sounds like they just put more effort behind games day and other big events that are for 'everyone' not just the elite gameing community.

Does anyone miss them?

Months of hype, then you play in games that are just like your normal games, only they relate to a confusing and/or stupid campaign system, then after it finishes you can look forward to a couple of years of people talking about how lame the ending was.

Erm.....I think you misunderstand the concept of these campaigns, they were in no way for the gaming elite only. In Armageddon and others of it's ilk, players sent in their induvidual results for games they played to create a huge database of wins and losses to see which side won. They also involved new minis, books and loads of events at GW stores. All in all, they were ace, at least when I played in them. Is planetfall next year not going to follow this formula?

Edit: sebster in before me. I think I answered one of his questions though...

Yeah, but the results give the mathhammer folks a lot to do for a few weeks. Fun to watch!

I blame the Tau. All the major conflicts of the galaxy that need to be resolved, 13th Black Crusade, hunting the Red Corsairs, battles around the Ork/Nid mess Kryptman setup, etc. etc. None of them viable for a summer campaign because Tau cannot get to them at all, so you instantly alienate a sizable chunk of your customer base just by proposing it. Instead they have to invent some lame pseudo-event (Medusa V) that has to be near Ultramar, and thus makes alot of the other races/factions questionable, but at least they have ways of getting over there.

No you are wrong.

It is everybody else's fault that they can't find a campaign near Tau space.

The main problem with the summer campaigns was the blatant cheating.

sebster wrote:Months of hype, then you play in games that are just like your normal games, only they relate to a confusing and/or stupid campaign system, then after it finishes you can look forward to a couple of years of people talking about how lame the ending was.

Kilkrazy wrote:The main problem with the summer campaigns was the blatant cheating.

Exactly the points. Most of the endings seem to be rather forced and don't seem to follow the results. Durring the Ammogeddon campaign all I ever saw was the "evil" side crushing the daylights out of the "good" side...mostly because the eldar were fighting for the orcs. *shrug* But in the end good wins over evil and nothing in the fluff changes.

Phoenix wrote:But in the end good wins over evil and nothing in the fluff changes.

I think this is what frustrated me the most. I liked the concept of the campaigns, but when it comes down to it, the 40K universe is just too large for GW to allow sweeping fluff changes, thus no matter what happens in the campaign, nothing really significant changes. Maybe it's announced in a WD that one group or another gets some special wargear as a result, but nothing tourney legal.

I dunno, I think it was a good rough concept. I know it really showed me the scale of the hobby world-wide, I never really knew there were that many dice-holders out there. Sure, there were problems in execution. Sure, the results seemed a bit stilted. I won't argue that the execution was lacking. And it seems a shame that they decided to ditch the idea rather than strengthen the weak points. However, I'm sure it cam down to an examination of cost of the events vs. sales generated.

And one thing you have to admit, it's hard to hold single campaign that covers every race in 40k. The Imperium itself is involved in HOW many campaigns overall? They've got more combat fronts than any single entity has a right to be holding it's own on. And the eldar are manipulating the futures of HOW many other races? And the tau are trying to bring how many other races to the greater good? Yeah, etc... You aren't going to get all that into one campaign. Period. Someone's going to get lumped in.

As far as the cheating, yeah. It happens.

I think that there were some enjoyable aspects. It gave an opportunity for GW to come out with some new material, people started new armies and enjoyed them for a while, a lot of conversions were done and skill exhibited. I dunno, some will scoff and say that I am just trying to find a silver lining here, but really I just think that it's my perspective. GW is a marketing company for Citadel miniatures. It's their job to sell stuff to us. NOT to make things enjoyable for us. You could argue that one would lead to the other, but I guess not in their math. Anyway, I just don't expect them to put on these events for us to enjoy. I don't expect them to give us something like that. So when I find something that enters my jaded vision and I actually see something enjoyable about it, I'm appreciative that it got through to us despite their best efforts.

Eye of Terror was awesome. Lame ending aside, but you can't deny how you could feel it like electricity throughout Games Workshop and the gaming community for a whole summer!

Splitting the Forces of Order vs Disorder and plotting on web boards just added to the fun, and then checking the planetary systems every day as well!

I know that Medusa V wasn't very popular amongst most of the Dakkaites, but we had a blast with it over on the B&C. We had special army badges, and secret forums that only loyalist / chaos marines could enter, and secret plans, etc. It was a lot of fun.

One thing that nobody is mentioned is the recent sacking of the GW web team. Without people to do the web stuff for the campaign, it'll be hard to run.

I think the summer campaigns are like Apocalypse: the people that think they'll like them find it awesome, those that immediately think its stupid don't have their minds changed. I never participated in them, although I like the source books and the fluff and the new models. As others have said, it was nice to just see excitment in the community, at all levels.

Polonius: are you serious? The web dev team got sacked? You mean the same people who re-did that web site here recently? Wow. How draconian. How freakin bloodless. Now, I know some people hate the new site for a lot of different reasons, some of them quite valid. I certainly have my own issues with it, mostly concerning bandwidth. However, the people who actually hammered that site together were most probably not to blame for the result. I would think that the folks designing it would be more responsible for the actual final product, not the guys coding it up.

Yes, for thos eof you wondering; my knee CAN jerk higher than that.

I was hoping Dave Taylor or any of our other GW staff would have popped in here and said something.. I am a bit disappointed that none have.

Pariah Press wrote: I know that Medusa V wasn't very popular amongst most of the Dakkaites, but we had a blast with it over on the B&C. We had special army badges, and secret forums that only loyalist / chaos marines could enter, and secret plans, etc. It was a lot of fun.

I tihkn one of the porblems with Medusa V was that the outcome was never in any doubt. The world WAS going to blow up, people were just fighting to complete a few things before it blew up. Another problem came with the whole "worlds end on a daily basis" in the background of 40k. If worlds are constantly ending, why should we care about Medusa V, a no-name world in the scheme of things? It really lacked the gravity of something like the Cadian Gate falling and spilling out a horde of Chaos dudes to ravage the Imperium or the Orks blowing up Armageddon and then going on a humongous world-blowing-up bender as a result of their success.

grizgrin wrote:Polonius: are you serious? The web dev team got sacked? You mean the same people who re-did that web site here recently? Wow. How draconian. How freakin bloodless. Now, I know some people hate the new site for a lot of different reasons, some of them quite valid. I certainly have my own issues with it, mostly concerning bandwidth. However, the people who actually hammered that site together were most probably not to blame for the result. I would think that the folks designing it would be more responsible for the actual final product, not the guys coding it up.

Yes, for thos eof you wondering; my knee CAN jerk higher than that.

Well, I guess i'm just repeating what I had heard second hand, so take my comments with the usual grain of salt. The web team was fired before the new webpage. The new thing was designed by an outside company, not by GW internals. there's not just enough staff to maintain the site.

two_heads_talking wrote:I was hoping Dave Taylor or any of our other GW staff would have popped in here and said something.. I am a bit disappointed that none have.

We only get a moment to breeze through the multitude of forums on the internet throughout the day in between projects, so we can easily miss something like this. Please don't get too disappointed! If there's a thread you would like us to specifically comment in just drop us a PM and we'll get there.

In regards to summer campaigns, I think we find ourselves in a no-win situation. While many have enjoyed the fun of them and recognized their purpose (an excuse to play more games for customers, an avenue to deliver product for us, inspiration for all) the sheer amount of work and energy that went into them was... well really, really damn big. It consumed staff. It was the kind of effort you could trade off for far more work on an existing army's codex or armies book and model range (which gets far more 'want now!' feedback than summer campaigns).

This doesn't even begin to get into the internal company logistics of trying to coordinate a summer campaign across the globe where it's not always 'summer' and the participant's work, vacation, and holidays utterly conflict from country to country. It's a scheduling nightmare of the highest order, which again creates for more headaches rather than more bang.

Then there's the whole dance of trying to create an event that is inclusive of everyone's armies... On one hand everyone wants a voice and to make a difference, on the other hand a bit too many people get into bickering of, "Well, that's dumb, why is army X at this particular battle? That makes no sense given the background."

Then there's the 'wow!' factor. A global campaign is mind-bogglingly awesome... the first time you do it. Much feedback from both customers and staff point to it becoming a bit dull the 5th time in a row you do it.

So what we're left with is coming up with is a different avenue to deliver the background, the alternate scenarios and missions and structured game-play a summer campaign brings with it but in a manner that is not so overly burdened with logistics and juggling that it becomes soul-crushing.

Given that framework - what would you guys, the avid and rabid hobbyists like to see in place of global campaigns?

CorporateLogo wrote:I tihkn one of the porblems with Medusa V was that the outcome was never in any doubt. The world WAS going to blow up, people were just fighting to complete a few things before it blew up.

It was especially pointless for Chaos because their victory conditions were such that if the spase marienz (hurr!) won they automatically lost. And as we all know, spase marienz nevar loose hurr!

Chris Gohlinghorst wrote:
So what we're left with is coming up with is a different avenue to deliver the background, the alternate scenarios and missions and structured game-play a summer campaign brings with it but in a manner that is not so overly burdened with logistics and juggling that it becomes soul-crushing.

Given that framework - what would you guys, the avid and rabid hobbyists like to see in place of global campaigns?

Chris,

Thank you for a very thoughtful response that quite illuminates the staff perspective on this issue.

Personally, I would like to see background delivered through greater frequency in Codex releases (as you noted, Codex updates are quite near the top of the now now now list of desires.) GW has certainly shown some willingess to include new fluff or explore different aspects of background (i.e.: Renegades as opposed to Traitor Legions in the CSM Coodex,) and the current format certainly has the page count to allow for this.

Although this would be somewhat limiting in terms of the quantity of new background delivered, I would think that most vets have a pretty good handle on the 40k fluff given years of exposure. The biggest complaint against new fluff is that it almost never does anything to advance the story line (see several remarks in this thread) and has no relevance. Unless GW makes a policy change, pumping out large quantities of background is unlikely to appease any part of GW's customer base. For newer players, there is already the existing background, as well as the new stuff put into Codex releases, which seems to provide GW with an adequate sales pitch for the time being.

As someone who has been in the GW for about a decade now, if the company is exploring ways to deliver more background in an engaging way, the best method I saw was its inclusion in White Dwarf as the basis for different scenarios and battle reports.

The other question then is how to deliver new scenarios and structured play. I do not really have any particularly great ideas about how to accomplish this on the scale GW would be dealing with, but I would suggest that the release of experimental Chapter Approved missions for RTT use at the organizer's discretion (assuming that a full official 3rd/4th edition RTT packet is still a ways off) would provide a good outlet for keeping an important series of FLGS-centered event fresh and capable of drawing players, while giving staff the flexibility to try out new scenario/mission ideas as 5th edition matures.

Alpharius Walks wrote:
The biggest complaint against new fluff is that it almost never does anything to advance the story line (see several remarks in this thread) and has no relevance.

I seriously doubt in our lifetimes we will see the monumental culture shift it would take to push forward the time-line in 40K.

Rather, I'd expect to see the previous 30,000 years slowly refined and filled in that will give new light, perspective, and interpretations to the currently existing background. That's a truly enormous playground to work in.

Personally (and this is just my own personal bias and view, nothing to do with my employer) I've never seen a set-in-stone universe suddenly have it's time-line get advanced successfully (the bazillion Marvel universe reboots come to mind). At least in the literature and games I've read and played it usually marks a large disenfranchisement with the fan-base. Now there's probably a larger debate of whether this is a psychological phenomenon or just the craptastic way said storylines were pushed forward - which should be saved for a completely different thread

Something that might be do-able is limited mini campaigns involving only 2-5 factions. They need to be short and not involve too many players and the burden on the studio staff of collating the results should be kept to a minimum.

For example, you could do a campaign where Orks attack a Tau world. The fighting causes a Necron tomb to open, and a nearby Eldar craftworld takes an interest on the side of the Tau. Dark Eldar take advantage of the confusion to start raiding. I just threw that off the top of my head and obviously no Imperials or Chaos are involved -- another campaign could handle them.

The whole thing should be easier because with fewer factions there are more limited victory conditions and fewer players involved.

Each mini campaign could last two months and you could run 6 a year. Even with limited factions in each campaign, everyone could get some loving and the range of opponents could be mixed up to let everyone fight everyone else at some time..

I also suggest a limit on the number of games each player can enter for the campaign, maybe one a week. The blatant cheating in Medusa V was players making up a ring of sock puppet opponents and racking up 5 or 6 victories against them every day for several weeks.

I'm pretty sure the summer campaign this year was replaced by the Lucky 13s campaign (see here).

I however don't think this campaign has been much of a success so far. Even calling it a campaign is a stretch, it's basically just one event every month or so.

Actually what I'd like is new ways to use the armies I have that are neat without sucking. LATD was good for that. 13th company, uhh not so much. lol

Simple force org re-alignments are IMO good for the game in many ways, and while you can dress it up with all the fluff you want...I know it won't change.

The end is near! Forever...

I haven't heard of Lucky 13s, and I couldn't find any info on their site just now.

It was a mistake for GW to close down their forums. I used to visit regularly and find news.

natedogg710 wrote:I'm pretty sure the summer campaign this year was replaced by the Lucky 13s campaign (see here).

I however don't think this campaign has been much of a success so far. Even calling it a campaign is a stretch, it's basically just one event every month or so.

Hi guys

Nope, the US Lucky 13s Apocalypse campaign was not designed as a replacement for a "summer campaign". It is called a campaign because the six mega-battles have a narrative that is impacted by the results submitted, changing the direction of the next battle. Hence the delay between each battle, so that the next scenario can be written.

So far we've averaged over 2,500 reported players at each event, pretty successful when based against the slow burn we intended. The most exciting thing for us has been hearing about the additional events and activities store managers/owners and excited hobby champions have been running in conjunction with the evolving storyline. When you see a group of enthusiastic hobbyists take an idea and make it their own...that's success.

Also, by limiting our input to the collection of results and writing of the next scenario, it limits the negative impact on logistics described in Chris' earlier post.

I hope this help add some more clarity.

Cheers
Dave

Thanks Dave, good info for the American players.

I'd like to know what happened to the WHFB campaign Nemesis Crown. Since it seemed to vanish with no published results in White Dwarf or online.
I played a few games at my local GW saw the results changing the campaign map every week. Then nothing.

Any one else remember that one?

Thanks a ton for the feedback Chris and Dave! If the ROI in doing campaigns isn't high enough, then I certainly understand cutting them. I think there are ways to run smaller, more focused affairs while still appealing to all of the aspects of the gaming community.

I would look to Medusa V as your starting off point. I know the internet buzz wasn't good, but most of that was due to two reasons: no new sublists, and a bit of a forced plot to bring all the factions together. Based on what you've said and GW's current philosophy, there is going to be no new campaign sublists, and massive, epic, galaxy wide campaigns are unlikely given the static nature of the story.

So, to avoid those complaints, I'd focus smaller, bite sized campaigns. Highlight a few factions at a time (Orks and IG vs. Tau and Dark Eldar), but create the possiblity of "support theaters," where non-involved armies can play games far away from the campaign, but there is still an effect (games count half, whatever). So in a damocles or third sphere type campaign, An Eldar on Nid battle might help sway things, even if neither is involved in the featured fighting. Bringing every army into the front now and then with featured status, and/or by increasing how many armies are featured, can assure every player that their day will come soon. Additionally, doing some non-Imperium centric campaigns is a dicey proposition. Virtually every vet has an imperial army, while many beginners have only a single army. Doing Nids on Eldar sounds cool, but there are a lot of gamers without the requisite forces.

As for sublists, I know they are gone. Instead, steal a page from Bell of Lost Souls, and release Campaign Apocolypse Data Sheets! I won't even take a lot, just a few to define some new formations in the campaign. You can create some really neat new rules for a fighting force while realisitcally being less worried about balance. to use my above example, assuming Tau and DE are clearing out IG and Orks, you could include:
Farsight's Cadre: Farsight, 3+ crisis teams. All Suits get furious charge and any model armed with a flamer may use it a power weapon.

Human Auxiallry Cadre: Ig squads with tau upgrades and devilfish.

DE Slaver Raid: Archon, Raider squads. Formation gets flank march, etc.

Basically give hobbysts some new armies to play in at least big games, as I figure the overlap betweetn apoc players and campaign players is pretty high. You can even introduce new special characters, apocalypse only, for the durations of the conflict (like the fortress of arrogance). If you want to raise the stakes, make all the new datasheets legal for the campaign, but the winning side can use them after the campaign.

Chris Gohlinghorst wrote:Given that framework - what would you guys, the avid and rabid hobbyists like to see in place of global campaigns?

Codexes. I'd like to se 3rd edition codexes updated for 5th. Seems like the area where resources could be best devoted to.