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Hey Dakka, I'm currently developing a narrative map based campaign for our FLGS and I've run into a problem...should I go for realism or simplicity? Everyone at the store are veteran players, we all have a very good understanding of rules, and are all very good friends. There are never any heated arguments or exchanges between each other. And if there is every a rule we cant agree on, we eventually just roll off to solve it. So with all this considered, I believe our group could handle a more challenging and dynamic campaign to last the summer and fall. By realism I mean that different regions on the map may hold forces of various sizes (in points) that will still engage each other regardless of the others size.

Now most of the players are fine with this, there are a few however that have had experience with campaigns like this in the past. Said campaigns have crumbled apart due to 4000 point armies fighting a 500 point army (this is a very exaggerated example). And I can understand how that can be frustrating and annoying. I have taken this into account in the rules, regions being attacked have the ability to fall back to the next region. And regions bordering a region being attacked may send reinforcements to aid them. (playing on planetary empires hex tiles). This in theory should even out the frustration of an overwhelming force attacking a smaller one and being tabled. it will also keep a greater element of realism into the campaign and make players make difficult choices with where there forces concentrate.


So... my question to you is if you believe this will allow players to have more fun with a realistic campaign? or should I scratch it all together and have every game be an agreed points level.(this to me feels like less of a campaign and more of just playing a bunch of normal games)

I can't say anything about the fun you'll have, but I can tell you for certain that your proposal won't work.

By default, the best way to play a campaign like this is using the Risk strategy where you always ball up everything into a huge wad and go stomping around the map. You leave just enough behind so that you can spoil your opponents while always winning every matchup you play.

The proposed rule doesn't solve that at all. All it does is allow a player to quick teleport his various little bits into a single wad all the sudden to face off against another player's giant wad. You might as well just have a 5,000 pt. league, or an apocalypse league and be done with it.

In order to solve this problem you need to make it so that there is real, serious disadvantages to bunching things up.

For example, instead of their being one game per pulse, you keep playing all the games until all the moves are done, and only then start the round over. In this system, if you bunch up 4000 points onto a single tile, and I put 1000 point armies across 4 tiles, then yeah, you'd beat the hell out of me in that one battle, and I'd win the other 3 tiles by default because you didn't put an army there. In this way, you actually LOSE 3:1, rather than winning 1:0 like a one-game-per-pulse campaign would have. In this regimen, you're advantaged if you spread your army evenly, and then make calculated risks about condensing your army somewhere even if it leaves it weaker somewhere else.

Like I said, I can't comment about fun. I can say, though, that your proposal isn't any more realistic than the default kind of rules for a campaign, it will only lead to higher-point games.

I don't have much 40k campaign experience, but I'm inclined to think that simplicity is better than realism. Just compare Axis and Allies to Risk and ask anyone which is more fun. Risk is much quicker, fortunes change quickly, and is generally more fun. Axis and Allies gets completely bogged down in its myriad units, movement strategies, rules, etc.

Instead of tracking points levels at every zone I'd prefer an old GW method for campaigns, where unattacked areas gain a fortification point each campaign turn (up to 3) with each point granting an additional 100 points of units or fortifications on the battle field. Alternately a region isolated from reinforcement might suffer attrition as they run low on supplies, gaining a decay token each turn, each one reducing the max heavy support and fast attack slots by one (it's hard to upkeep that carnifex, leman Russ, fire prism without supplies).

I'd start simple and maybe add realism in later campaigns, but often in trying to add realism you can lose the fun.

Maybe slight modification, yes of group can only support so much points, ie have a remote area, little logistics so cannot support as much, limited heavier elements, where as a route near somewhere more, so it limits advantage as biggest player cannot bunch up forces in one zone.

Bonus,s if you hold "local supply points" and a force operating too far from one suffers a penalty.

So even biggest player must weigh up how many they bunch up, more men needs more supply points and certain tiles cannot support large forces.

I played in a campaign that had some interesting rules to combat the giant blob effect. First off you had a master list that you had to keep track of as the army grew and to replenish forces from. Also a "force" had a move of 5, you lost 1 point of move for every increment of 500pts (after the first), you also lost 1 point for every three heavy choices. You always had a minimum of 1 move.

There are various ways to get around the "big stack" principle.

One is to simply limit the amount of forces that can occupy a hex, due to space or supply limitations.

Another is to assign objectives that have to be capture or guarded, that gain VPs every turn they are not occupied. This will make people disperse their forces.

The movement reduction mentioned above is another one, based on the availability of roads. Real armies suffered from this.

Also you can have a rule if the forces are 2x the size the smaller one if it is their turn gets a scenario that is called raid. this would be a small points affair that if the smaller force wins it would hold up the larger force for a turn. (think americans vs the british in AWI where a small force could make a large force move more slowly).

The problem with giving someone an advantage for spreading out is that it's not going to be enough of an advantage. What things are you going to give to the defender to make up a three thousand point gap (or worse) in relative army size? If you did enough to advantage that person, then you'd create an equal and opposite problem. Solving what was made worse by meddling with more meddling only makes it worse.

Having a cap on army size does decrease the scale of the problem, but not the scope. You're still going to have small numbers of large armies, it's just that you're going to set the armies at an arbitrary size, that's all. Of course, you could keep riding the wave of regulation until you get to the point where you ensure equal armies of a certain reasonable size fighting in a certain reasonable way, but then you've taken away all the player choice. Why not just have a 1,500 no-unbound league? Why bother with the campaign at all? It won't really have any impact on the games itself. This is the problem that all GW stock campaigns have.

In order to make blobbing up not the obvious strategy you can't incentivize people do something other than blobbing, you need to disincentivize blobbing. Making blobbing stronger, but also much riskier, for example.

Since a game of 40k can represent the important part of a battle, the size of an army in a region could be compared to give one or more victory points for the player while still playing an even points game.

Say an extra victory point for each multiple of the opponent, so if one region has 10,000 points and the other has 3,000 points, the game could be played at 1500 points with the 10k player getting 3 extra victory points for outnumbering the other player. That would still allow the outnumbered player to win if they play effectively enough, without an almost guaranteed tabling that would occur if one player did outnumber the other 3 to 1.

Alternately, the outnumbering player could get an extra 10% of forces for each multiple, so in the above example the player would get 130% of whatever the defender had in points for the battle with no bonus VPs.

This kind of approach would reduce the effectiveness if massive armies by keeping them from being overly focused. Making a max bonus (like 3 VP or extra 30% forces) would encourage players to have some strong locations, but reward to a point spreading a bit for defense to avoid one person getting a lead they can't lose halfway through a campaign.

No clue.

 Ailaros wrote:
The problem with giving someone an advantage for spreading out is that it's not going to be enough of an advantage. What things are you going to give to the defender to make up a three thousand point gap (or worse) in relative army size? If you did enough to advantage that person, then you'd create an equal and opposite problem. Solving what was made worse by meddling with more meddling only makes it worse.

Yea, the point of a 40k campaign is to get to the epic/climatic/tense battles. A 3,000 on 1,000 point battle might be more realistic, since so much of war strategy is putting your opponent at a disadvantage or striking at the opportune time (seriously, read Art of War, 95% of it has nothing to do with battle tactics), but lopsided battles are going to be a lot less fun and you're going to end up with a complicated game of Risk rather than an epic 40k campaign.

Golden rule, I'd say is to have the player choices effect the campaign just enough to make it immersive, but not enough to break the game.

There's a good way to explain symmetric points values, and that is that a given battle of 40k rarely represents the total size of a clash. The typical reasoning is that the tabletop engagement represents the "critical point" of a battle, where success or failure will reverberate to the rest of a larger battle.

That's not to say that you can't have minor size differences affected by the larger map. I'm currently playing in a campaign where controlling more resource hexes than your opponent gives you a 5% bonus, controlling more total hexes gives a 1% penalty per hex (representing stretched supply lines),and the defender in each scenario has an extra 60 points that must be spent on fortifications. This amount of fluctuation gives weight to the overall map state without determining the outcome of the fight before it begins.

I ran a Fantasy campaign for 20 weeks for 20 players some years ago. Here are the things I learned:

1. People will complain about playing against the same player every week. Even if they actually do that every week outside of a campaign. Somehow in a formal setting it bothers them.

2. People will decide alliances based on fluff. I had intended for anyone to ally with anyone, but all of the bad guys teamed up against the good guys. I was the only player in the campaign to attack another good aligned army. Which actually hurt several players as they found their armies land locked.

3. BTW you shouldn't play in the campaign. It will be important for you as the Game Master to remain neutral.

4. Random starting territories are a bad idea. I had a mediocre player start right next to a very skilled player with only one way out of his territory (alliances again). When you know the players, pick an appropriate starting point for each of them.

5. Multiple tokens on the map isn't good either. Some of the players had more armies on the board than games they could reasonable play before the end of a campaign turn.

6. Map Design; when I did it I went from a realistic and attractive map. Mistake, playability is more important. Make sure every territory has multiple exit points. No impassable mountains or rivers.

7. Battles with extra or uneven points will ruin things. It doesn't make anybody happy. And strangely in my campaign, anybody with extra point lost the game.

8. Even the most fluffy/casual/laid back guy will get argumentative when there is some to gain on the line. Any event that could be viewed as unfair, will be.


I would recommend a set point limit for all games, except for a few territories that can change it. Say; a territory where the terrain limits or expands forces available, so only 750pts at the dam, or 4000 pts at the airfield, or kill team rules in the sewer system, etc. And one army token per player, period.