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I was just curious what you guys would think of this rule I've designed for an upcoming campaign with a friend of mine - it's set in a certain part of our shared story where his Marines have had to exterminatus their own homeworld and are essentially looking for another one. One of the fleets of the chapter has received a distress call from a planet and are investigating. As such, he has a specific number of units, and if a Marine dies, that's one less he can field in subsequent games - to make it a bit gentler, I've written this rather than have every single model be permanently dead:

Only In Death Does Duty End - Whenever the ASTRAL SPEARS player loses an INFANTRY model, at the end of the game roll a d6 for each model lost and consult the table below to see whether they were slain by the Necrons, or if they will live to fight again. Add +1 to the roll if the model was a CHARACTER.

Whenever the ASTRAL SPEARS player loses a VEHICLE model, at the end of the game roll a d6 for each model lost and consult the table below to see if the vehicle was irreparably destroyed by the Kopakh Dynasty, or if it can be repaired. If the model has the Explodes! rule, only roll on the table if it did not explode. Add +1 to the roll if any TECHMARINE or TECH-PRIEST models fought in the same battle. This roll can only be made if the battle took place within Imperium held territory – no matter how salvageable the vehicle may be, if it is in Necron territory it cannot be safely retrieved.

d6 result Fate
1-2 Dead – this Space Marine has been slain, and stands now at the side of the Primarch Dorn and the Emperor. This model cannot be used in subsequent missions of the campaign.

Destroyed – no matter what sacred unguents or rituals applied, the vehicle is beyond repair. This model cannot be used in subsequent missions of the campaign.


3-4 Sus-an Membrane Coma – the damage this Astartes took was catastrophic, but their genhanced physiology prevented death as they fell into a suspended animation coma to be revived by an Apothecary. This model cannot be used in the next mission of the campaign, but can return after this.

Critically damaged – The damage wrought to this vehicle was severe, but not impossible to repair. It will take time under the careful ministrations of Tech-Priests and Servitors, but it can eventually be returned to working condition. This model cannot be used in the next mission of the campaign, but can return after this.


5-6 Survived – the wounds suffered by this Astral Spear were grievous enough to prevent them taking further part in the battle, but not so severe that they died. This model can be used in subsequent games.

Repairable – While the damage sustained was significant, enough that the vehicle's weapons and propulsion systems were inoperable, they can be repaired relatively swiftly. This model can be used in subsequent games.

Perhaps also add a +1 to see if Infantry models if there happened to be an Apothecary (or Primaris Apothecary) participating in the battle?

That's a good idea, the apothecary could prioritise triage because they were literally there.

I'd make a 1 a death and a 2 "critically injured, the marine is no longer capable of serving as he stands, but may be interred in the sarcophagus of a dreadnought" you could even give your marine player a few empty dreads that need to be filled.

These ideas never work well. The problem is that 40k is a game where, unless you are tabling your opponent on turn 1 and neither player is having fun, you're playing a battle of attrition and both sides are taking 90% losses every game. There's no way to win an interesting battle without having the majority of your force wiped out. So, depending on how strict the casualty rolls are, you either quickly lose everything and can no longer field an entire army (thus ensuring that you continue to lose every battle, by greater and greater margins) or effectively ignore the entire mechanic because it's the only way to keep an army on the table.

If you want to represent casualties the best way to do it is in list construction, having the casualty-weakened player bring partial squads of everything. It isn't a dynamic thing, but it gives the feel you're looking for.

 Peregrine wrote:
These ideas never work well. The problem is that 40k is a game where, unless you are tabling your opponent on turn 1 and neither player is having fun, you're playing a battle of attrition and both sides are taking 90% losses every game. There's no way to win an interesting battle without having the majority of your force wiped out. So, depending on how strict the casualty rolls are, you either quickly lose everything and can no longer field an entire army (thus ensuring that you continue to lose every battle, by greater and greater margins) or effectively ignore the entire mechanic because it's the only way to keep an army on the table.

I agree. That's in part why in many campaign-based games there's a "rout" mechanism, where a player can give up or have to flee after suffering some casualties.
Also, there's usually a way to get new guys to replace the dead ones, and the ones that do survive get stronger over time (experience).

You could add a reinforcement mechanism to your campaign, where the player can replenish some lost units. You can make it fluffy by saying that when the campaign starts, not all the marines arrived yet. Some are still on their way and will arrive in future games. You can even write down everything from the start: say that after the 1st game, a tac squad and a drop pod will be added to the force, then after game 2 it's a bike squad or something. That way it doesn't completely overwrite the narrative aspect (if you can just recover the dead guys, it's not really a campaign), and will create an un-even force after a few games (since he won't permanently loose every unit type at the same rate).
The other option is to add some experience. After each game, you can give a small bonus to each surviving squad, so the loss of members is compensated by an increase in the surviving marines' power. There are plenty of ideas online to do just that. It's probably not very fluffy for marines, as super-trained soldiers shouldn't get noticeably better after a single battle, but you can always try to work it out in the fluff (some weird thing on the planet affects them).

In any case, I feel like campaigns are a lot more interesting if the armies evolve and get stronger or at least more characterful after each game. If you just permanently kill 1/3 of the dudes, and make others skip a game, I don't think it will add much depth.

Depending on your goals for the campaign (i.e. whether you care more about the story or the final score), perhaps you could account for marine casualties by having the necron forces mirror the marines in points fielded.

So for instance, if you know the campaign will be 5 games long, you could have the marine player build a 2500 point (or however many points) list. Then, determine the size of the subsequent 4 games based on the points he has remaining after the first.

So in the first game, 2500 points of marines maybe gets reduced to 2000ish after casualty roles. So in the second game, you'd opt to play, let's say, 1750 points, and the marine player has to make his list out of the survivors from the first game.

Repeat each game with the total points on each side being roughly 75% of the marine player's remaining points. The intended end result is that the marine player should never be at a points disadvantage but might be at a unit disadvantage if you've been succesfully taking out his heavy hitters over the course of the previous games.

Under such a system, I'd probably update the casualties chart to be a binary "Usable" and "Out of Action" as recalculating your points totals after injured units recover might be a pain. Plus getting half your units back after a fight might take away from the "slowly shrinking force" thing you'd have going on.

I think these are all good points. For clarification, this is 100% more of a narrative campaign than anything else, though we are using matched play rules to keep things steady. After reading some of these replies I've spoken to the Marines player and suggested that maybe he have reinforcements arrive to round himself back out further down the line at a specified point. As mentioned, there will never be a points imbalance (unless it's a case where, for example, we're playing a game that has the Sentries rule). I'm just going to link this thread to him so he can look it over himself before we make any more permanent decisions.

Due to how quickly games can go, I'd propose that in addition to everyone else's suggestions that the Warlord gain some extra wounds to compensate for the fact an opponent will do their best to make them non-existent.