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Update: I changed/fixed a few things. New lines are highlighted in bold.

I still don't have mission rules, but the basic idea here is that it'd be an eight-game campaign where players have to draw all their armies from a single pool, and have to deal with things like attrition, and choosing to abandon a game that is hopeless or take caution in a game where they can probably win easily, rather than going all-or-nothing in every circumstance regardless of how well it would normally work. The one thing I'm worried about is players 'Losing their way into a corner', so to speak, but hopefully that can be mitigated by mission rules that provide benefits to 'underdog' armies.

The eight games in order would probably start small and get large overtime, in standard Escalation League style. Probably starting with two 25 PL games, then two 50 PL games, then two 75 PL games, then two 100 PL games - For a total of 500 PL, which is 25% more than players get to start with.)

Every player should write a 400 Power Level Army Roster, which will encompass their entire army - As such, this should include a variety of characters, with all possible roles filled, and sticking to a army format if possible. (For example, if you are taking Space Marines, a Company (A Captain, Chaplain, 6 Tactical Squads, 2 Assault Squads, 2 Devastator Squads, one Apothecary, two Dreadnoughts, and a Standard Bearer, and a squad of Veterans,) would be a good foundation. During this phase of Army construction, undersized units should be avoided. At the bare minimum, each army should be capable of filling a Detachment. (Except for an Auxiliary detachment.)

The player does not need to own all of the models in their army, but should have at least one of everything that they plan on doing. (To use the example above, it isn’t necessary to have a full 100 Space Marines, but you should be able to field at least one of each type of unit listed.)

Multiple such ‘Armies’ may be taken, as long as they all fit into a single 400 PL limit. (For example, you might want to take a 1st company, 3rd company, and an Armored Task Force for your Space Marines.)
All ‘Armies’ must share at least a single faction keyword. (Imperium or Chaos, for example.) Keep in mind that they still need to have their own army structure - Please avoid building ‘Soup’ lists that are a collection of unconnected units that have little or nothing to do with one another.
Exceptions can be made for factions which don’t have enough unit types to fill a detachment on their own, or which would be extremely limited in doing so, (primarily Assassins, Inquisition, Custodes, Sisters of Silence, and other mini-factions,) but if you’re going to take Celestine or Guilliman, take them with an army of Sisters of Battle or Ultramarines, not attached to a handful of assassins, some Imperial Psykers, sixty Conscripts, and a Grandmaster Dreadknight.


An unlimited number of relics may be taken, but each relic may still only be taken a single time, and once given to a model, are locked into that model - It cannot be passed along to anyone else unless Retrieved. (See below.) Similarly, abilities such as the ‘Chapter Master’ upgrade must be taken when writing a list, and the restriction on a single Chapter Master per army applies to the whole Army Roster.


When building lists for the campaign, all normal Matched Play rules apply for list building, and in addition, all units must be drawn from the Army Roster. Units do not have to be taken at the size originally purchased at, but must only include gear from the unit being chosen, and must be . (For example, a 10-man Tactical Squad with a Lascannon and Melta Gun on your Army Roster may be taken as a 5-man Tactical Squad, but must take either the Melta Gun or the Lascannon.)
(Note that because most factions have a limit on the number of Relics that can be taken in a single army, you may be limited on which characters you can take with which - And if you put a relic on every single one of your characters, you may end up only able to take three characters per game.)

If a player does not have enough surviving units to build a list, they may immediately add 100 PL to their Army Roster, however, all units must be taken from a single army faction, no relics, unique characters, or limited upgrades may be taken, and their army immediately loses access to all Regiment/Chapter bonuses.


If a unit is completely destroyed or reduced to zero wounds, it must be struck from the Army Roster - It may not be taken again. If that unit was only taken at partial strength (A 5-man Tactical Squad, for example,) make a note of which models and how many were killed - Those models may not be taken again.
(Note: This may cause certain units to be ‘Illegal’, for example, a Tactical Squad that lacks a Sergeant. In this case, you may ignore the normal restrictions on understrength units (or units that are otherwise illegally assembled) when taking those squads.)
If a unit that was completely destroyed was carrying a Relic, place a marker on the spot that they were killed. Friendly models may pick up that marker and carry it. If a friendly unit manages to Retreat! (see below), or if the controlling player wins or ties the game, that Relic is recovered and may be given to another eligible model. If the controlling player loses and does not Retreat!, that relic is permanently lost.


All missions have the following rule:
Retreat!
During setup, one table edge will be nominated as the ‘Line of Escape’ for each player. (Usually, the long side of the table that they deploy against.) During any movement phase, a player can move their models over the Line of Escape - Models removed as such are treated as casualties, but do not contribute to the any Morale check. If the last model in any unit is removed in such a way, that opposing player automatically receives one Victory Point, but the unit does not count as being destroyed for the purposes of the controlling player’s Army Roster.
If a model or unit has an ability which allows it to redeploy after being placed on the board (For example, an Ork unit targeted by the psychic power ‘Da Jump’,) that unit may choose to Retreat! rather than deploying on the board. In the case of abilities which have a limited range (Such as Terminators using a Teleport Homer,) the Line of Escape must be within range of the ability.
Additionally, all players have access to the following stratagem:
Aerial Pickup - 2CP - At the end of your movement phase, select any unit on the board that does not have the TITANIC Keyword and does not have the Lord of War battlefield role. Immediately remove that unit from play, as per the rules to Retreat!.

A couple of disorganized thoughts:

* The escalation style and specific point values used means that you avoid one of the main problems with an attrition system, that being that you're prone to heavily one-sided matches if a player has been beaten up too badly up until this point. In other words, even if you get tabled every single game, you'll still have the full game size worth of points to draw from up until the 8th game. So that's cool.

*I'm not sure what you're going for with the "treated as casualties for the sake of special rules," part of the Retreat! rule. Does this mean necrons might un-escape with RP, for instance? Could this part of the Retreat! rule be dropped entirely?

*Retreat! might also be simpler if you have the entire unit removed as soon as one model crossed the table edge. Leads to less weirdness with partially escaped units.

*Retreat is a nice option to have, but I feel like it strongly favors shooting armies. A bunch of orkz or blood letters charging across the table are going to quickly be too far from their own board edge to escape unless they just give up and run on turn 1. If you put it on one of the side edges, your opponent can pull you away from that edge over the course of the game to make it a non-option. If you put it on your opponent's board edge, then you'll have to cross the entire table to escape. Meanwhile, gunlines can just wipe out big chunks of your force, then opt to skidaddle when you get close.

Also, kill points missions, if you use any, will allow shooting armies to wrack up their first turn kills and then run away, spending the rest of the game playing keep away with a couple of units and making it that much more difficult for a melee army to pick up an equal number of kill points.
"Cool. Your boyz didn't finish off that squad of stealth suits I left behind. So now I'll move them off the edge to deny you a kill point and open your boyz up to my other unit's shooting."

* Regarding this part...

"Multiple such ‘Armies’ may be taken, as long as they fit into the 400 PL limit. All armies must contain units sharing the same regiment, company, order, legion, etc, but different army detachments just need to have a single keyword in common. (Imperium or Chaos, for example.) Keep in mind that they still need to have their own army structure. "

...I'm not sure whether you're saying...

A.) Just build your usual army with as many detachments as you want, but keep in mind that you need to have a keyword in common.

or....

B.) Each detachment in your army must be composed of models with the same <Subfaction> keyword.

If B., that causes problems for certain armies. For instance, incubi, mandrakes, scourges, etc. are all <Aeldari> and <Dark Eldar>, but none of them have the <Kabal>, <Cult>, or <Coven> keywords that would be the equivalent of a <Regiment> or <Legion>. B would also prevent a person from running an arguably perfectly fluffy army containing some combination of coven, kabal, and cult units. I imagine that other factions might have similar issues. Do canoptek wraiths or scarabs have a <Dynasty> for instance?

EDIT: Also, are your attrition and escalation rules kind of at odds with one another? The escalation rules are set up in such a way as to prevent you from every possibly having fewer models than your opponent until the 8th game. The attrition rules are presumably there to give you diminishing options and a sense of continuity for specific units. The thing is that I'll probably never opt to take a weakened tactical marine squad that's missing its special weapon guys assuming I have something more useful still surviving in my roster. I'm probably missing something obvious, but what's the scenario that would make me want to take 3 surviving tactical marines instead of my fresh squad of tactical marines that I haven't used yet? Or is this mostly just for the final game of the campaign?

Note that this system also gives you a strong reason to avoid taking fluffy-but bad units. I could take eldar rangers, for instance, but their PL could instead be spent on a backup dark reaper squad or falcon or something else. I'm probably better off taking X PL of something that will almost definitely be useful to mix into my list in a later game rather than X PL of something that looks cool but will probably never be all that useful. Where this differs from a normal game is that in a normal game, that bad choice can be swapped out of my force after a single game, but in a campaign, those X points remain locked up in a subpar squad for the entire campaign.

Wyldhunt wrote:
A couple of disorganized thoughts:

* The escalation style and specific point values used means that you avoid one of the main problems with an attrition system, that being that you're prone to heavily one-sided matches if a player has been beaten up too badly up until this point. In other words, even if you get tabled every single game, you'll still have the full game size worth of points to draw from up until the 8th game. So that's cool.

EDIT: Also, are your attrition and escalation rules kind of at odds with one another? The escalation rules are set up in such a way as to prevent you from every possibly having fewer models than your opponent until the 8th game. The attrition rules are presumably there to give you diminishing options and a sense of continuity for specific units. The thing is that I'll probably never opt to take a weakened tactical marine squad that's missing its special weapon guys assuming I have something more useful still surviving in my roster. I'm probably missing something obvious, but what's the scenario that would make me want to take 3 surviving tactical marines instead of my fresh squad of tactical marines that I haven't used yet? Or is this mostly just for the final game of the campaign?

The point of this is less to rob players of their whole army, but instead to make them think more carefully about what choices they make when list-building.
If you take a Space Marine Company, for example, you may only have two Devestator Squads. Normally, Devestators are much preferred over Tactical marines, but players will think twice about bringing them en masse if they run the risk of losing them all.

More importantly, it limits Special Characters. You don't want to bring Guilluman every single game if he could die and be permanently inaccessable.

*Retreat! might also be simpler if you have the entire unit removed as soon as one model crossed the table edge. Leads to less weirdness with partially escaped units.

I'm trying to avoid situations where string-bean units have a single Conscript toe across the board and evacuate thirty blokes.

*I'm not sure what you're going for with the "treated as casualties for the sake of special rules," part of the Retreat! rule. Does this mean necrons might un-escape with RP, for instance? Could this part of the Retreat! rule be dropped entirely?

*Retreat is a nice option to have, but I feel like it strongly favors shooting armies. A bunch of orkz or blood letters charging across the table are going to quickly be too far from their own board edge to escape unless they just give up and run on turn 1. If you put it on one of the side edges, your opponent can pull you away from that edge over the course of the game to make it a non-option. If you put it on your opponent's board edge, then you'll have to cross the entire table to escape. Meanwhile, gunlines can just wipe out big chunks of your force, then opt to skidaddle when you get close.

Also, kill points missions, if you use any, will allow shooting armies to wrack up their first turn kills and then run away, spending the rest of the game playing keep away with a couple of units and making it that much more difficult for a melee army to pick up an equal number of kill points.
"Cool. Your boyz didn't finish off that squad of stealth suits I left behind. So now I'll move them off the edge to deny you a kill point and open your boyz up to my other unit's shooting."

I think the solution is to change that first bit, so that each 'Retreating' unit costs a VP, and add a strategem called 'Air Pickup' which costs 2 Command Points and allows any non-Lord of War to retreat at the start of your turn.

* Regarding this part...

"Multiple such ‘Armies’ may be taken, as long as they fit into the 400 PL limit. All armies must contain units sharing the same regiment, company, order, legion, etc, but different army detachments just need to have a single keyword in common. (Imperium or Chaos, for example.) Keep in mind that they still need to have their own army structure. "

...I'm not sure whether you're saying...

A.) Just build your usual army with as many detachments as you want, but keep in mind that you need to have a keyword in common.

or....

B.) Each detachment in your army must be composed of models with the same <Subfaction> keyword.

If B., that causes problems for certain armies. For instance, incubi, mandrakes, scourges, etc. are all <Aeldari> and <Dark Eldar>, but none of them have the <Kabal>, <Cult>, or <Coven> keywords that would be the equivalent of a <Regiment> or <Legion>. B would also prevent a person from running an arguably perfectly fluffy army containing some combination of coven, kabal, and cult units. I imagine that other factions might have similar issues. Do canoptek wraiths or scarabs have a <Dynasty> for instance?

Note that this system also gives you a strong reason to avoid taking fluffy-but bad units. I could take eldar rangers, for instance, but their PL could instead be spent on a backup dark reaper squad or falcon or something else. I'm probably better off taking X PL of something that will almost definitely be useful to mix into my list in a later game rather than X PL of something that looks cool but will probably never be all that useful. Where this differs from a normal game is that in a normal game, that bad choice can be swapped out of my force after a single game, but in a campaign, those X points remain locked up in a subpar squad for the entire campaign.

Those problems with faction limitations were mostly because I was thinking like an Imperial. The solution to this is the same as the solution to the problem with players heavily optimizing - Remind everyone that this is not a Grand Tournament, and that they should be building their army for fluff, not optimization.

Unit Selection/Attrition:
I feel like I'm still missing something here. Devastators are generally considered better than tactical marines, I agree, but that means that I'm more likely to field as many devastator squads as possible and as few tactical marine squads as possible. That way, even if I lose a couple devastator units over the course of the game, I still have that many more to pick from next time. Basically, if tacs are 'bad choice" and devs are a "good choice," then aren't I incentivized to field as many good choices as possible? If I only have 2 dev squads and I'm worried about losing them, then I either scare myself into never using them until the final game, or else I field them and just take the risk of losing them. Either way, aren't I better off just putting the points I"d spend on tacs towards more devs so that I can always field a squad or two while knowing I have "backup" squads to use in future games even I lose them this game?

I could see not fielding Roboute in some of the smaller games if you know that larger games will reward his (exponentially more useful) buffs though.

Retreat! Changes:
I think that would work well. It prevents alpha strike kill point shenanigans and gives you a clean way to remove a unit rather than balancing daisy chain escapes against the complications of moving off a board edge.

Faction Stuff:
That might be best. If you're mostly just trying to avoid multi-chapter or multi-regiment shenanigans, you could implement a rule saying that you can't have multiple <chapter> keywords in your force. So you're either all Ultramarines or all Salamanders. No mixing and matching. Granted, that isn't something that all groups would actually want, but it's an option.