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So im starting a campaign soon, and was wondering what the Dakka World thought of some of my ideas!

In essence, its an escalation league (campaign) I have two planetary empires sets, and a good gaming group. Im starting it at 500 points and im trying to get a good set of rules up that is fair to every race, and every player (we have 4 Champs of Tournaments in the area, and 3 of them are teachers of the hobby and help folks learn and one is a never ganna loose a game no matter what, kinda guy) im one of those guys, and since i know there is going to be upwards of 20 people in this set up (9 of them i know are new to the hobby and maybe have 750 points and a smidge of an idea what they wanna do) i had a few rules i thought would help ....keep some of the more experienced players from making tactical misjudgements and smash some newbs!

1) There will be tournaments at the end of each "point cap" In example: we are moving to 750 from 500 next week, and before we do, we do a 500 point campaign tournament. Prizes May or may not exist depending on feedback of the month of 500.

2) there will be "Fixed" slots. things you choose at the start of the campaign, that when the slot is available, before you fill it in with anything else you have to take that one thing, a good example is say SM! he decided his dedicated HQ was going to be a Captain (wargear is not necessary to dedicate) his one troop dedication will always be tac marines, his one fast will always be a landspeeder squadren (though for most the time it will be a single speeder til points go up) his one elite will be a dreadnaught, and his one heavy will be a predator. Loadouts are not necessary for making sure you "always" bring that, because i figure an army can change its tactics, like the predator was all HB and autocannon for this game, but next game his predator is all lascannons. So by dedicated i mean, when he brings an HQ he has to bring that captian, his "general" of sorts, and when troops come,(as they should) one is the Tac squad, if he brings fast/heavy its a landspeeder and predator, before he can take ANYTHING else. Im hopeing this cuts down on people switching lists and "prepping" to take down specific opponents they know they will be fighting afor hand. and encourage people to learn how to use things they think are cool and to help keep some people from ganging down newbies who might not have more then what i used as example

3) no special characters. No eldrad, mehpiston, nightbringer, no special characters whatsoever. they really muck things up in smaller games (bjorn in a 500 point game anyone?) and honostly, i want to encourage to the new players the STORY of 40k! Not every battle that was epic had Logan Grimnar and his Wolfgaurd in it, or vulkan he'stan burning the things to the ground, or the swarmlord munching things up! I want people to make a general and an army that is theres! for the love of that army!

4) Talking about the general, at the start of the game you will get to have 1 HQ option, its going to be the "you" of your army, the leader, he will be present every battle until he either dies, or you win! The story of this board is simple, every army is scouting out a secter of univers that either went ghost (no responces from it) or warpstorms wavered off and now is open for exploration again. This general is leading a small scouting squad to it to check it out. To give some more "Fluff" ot the campaign, if the general falls in combat, at the end of the game the player will roll a D6 for him, on a 1 the general succumbs to his wounds and actually dies, on a 2-6 he was just wounded or uncouncious and regains himself/herself in the next game. However if he had died, then next "week" on the campaign list the player wouldnt be able to expend any extra points from either being out tiled' or manufactiroriums, as the extra "resources" are going to equip their new commander sent down. Im hopeing this gives people some fun little "Side" point in some battles to go after, especially if they might not be looking at a win for the game! a good moral victory will add some fun i think

5)Me. I hope to be the lynchpin at helping iron out any problems in the campaign, if so and so thinks "TFG" is bring a tournament only set up every time, ill take care of it so no one has to worry about getting smacked around when they are purposly bringing easy stuff for the new guys. (again hopeing the dedicated thing will help limit that abunch)


What do you guys think? what have you seen in succesful campaigns? anything i should work on to make that outline better (as it is JUST an outline) Anything you think i should tweak a little bit. I have a 3/4 of the tournament people helping to make good story battles other then just the standard Battlemissions, Spearhead, City, Planetstrike and the standards from the book (we play some cool mission battles in our tournaments we are making into available to play battles for people) and they are behind helping the new players to learn.....


So again! Help me out with thinking of some cool things we can mesh, i dont plan to get this thing up for about another 3-4 weeks maybe, some people are trying to rush it but i want some good set ups first

Campaigns are something I've always wanted to try but never had the coherent group to execute. Here's some of my thoughts:

- The "dedicated" slot idea seems a bit odd to me. While I suppose it keeps people from tailoring their army one way or another (to a degree) it's a bit unwieldy. I may be confused with this one, however. I do like the dedicated HQ idea though, where every game has the same commander unless he dies. That's a cool one.

- You're going to want a few Apocalypse-type mega battles in there. Big climactic points of a campaign should be suitably apocalyptic. Big team games also let you take advantage of the number of plays (but 10v10 might be hard to manage)

- How about no special characters until after you've bought your dedicated general? Some folks might have an army built around a Special Character, like Wazzdakka in a biker Ork army, or a Deathwing player and Belial. You could make exceptions for some folks like this though.

I definitly have some appocolypse battles in mind, but im waiting on that one, its going to probably be the finale to the event, i was thinking about opening with one but ultimitly thinking about against starting like that do to the fact i have about 18 players "marked" down for playing, and about 9 of them have....played exactly 1 game. so im more about helping them learn then dropping on them people like me who have a couple super heavies and my buddie who has a thunderhawk, we will save that for when its near its finish!

As for special characters, i do plan to make a few exeptions, but i still dont desire to have them, i have seen them abused way to much. Just tonight one of the guys trying to help me get this running for new players played a new player with a 500 point list...and brought Bjorn the felhanded. he gimped the rest of his list but Bjorn still ran about doing insanely awesome things, until he started walking him backwards across the table to let the guy actually do something! but still it was silly! and alot of special characters are just that, special and NOT necessary for an army to not only be enjoyable but good! (mephistion, Eldrad, Abaddon, Deciver, Calgar) but i do agree some special characters need to be used because how the change an army (Vulkan, Baleil, kantor, shrike) but i was also thinking of just letting the people choose a Captain, or equivalent character of their own, and just GIVE them the rule to the same effect, in example, i make Fir'eye Je'stro a salamanders captain of my own make, and taking him makes my armie salamanders, and he gets the Vulkan bonus's (just not the vulkan stats or wargear) so its a bit more fair, and you can have a little flair, though on that one im still not sure...Ravenwing and Deathwing are the only setups i can seriously think would be totally gimped and hurt by not being able to take special characters...so i might just make the exeption for them

as for the dedicated slot...i still kind of like it, as again if you just started a new army, have only 700 points....as example you started a brand new Ork army, you only gots One boss, he isnt a pklaw boss, you have on unit of nobs and they are the Black reach nobs (not kitted out to be super nobs) and two units of boys, one truck, and one looted wagon a buddy gave ya cause he dont play "insert army" anymore and you had tested you looting skills on it....you really dont have alot of options to work with til you get more stuff right? but me? i personally have 15000 points of Space wolves, i have forgeworld stuff on top of it! so i have some REALLY nice options on what i can do....its not fair if everytime i run a game my army...this scout force that was supposed to survive on what it has until the next reinforcement (i.e. point upgrade) Changes every battle to give me advantages over the new players......as again this is more for the new folks, as the older players generally enjoy the crap out of any game they can play where its fun! i know some of us are going to intentionally take weird options....i personally plan to take Swooping hawks! (and i HATE HATE HATE them) just because i never use them, i have them, and well, it will definitly make it a bit nicer for those new guys not to see my Spiders every game ^_~


I do plan to alter the ideas based off Feedback, and of course what more of the local people think...specially the 2-3 helping plan and plot and write up special scenarios for those who want to use em and stuff.....but i seriously want this to help new players be able to see and do well in the 40k universe!