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OK, my friends and I are starting a campaign from scratch. We have some new players who don’t have a lot of models so we want to keep it small and simple. Maybe add to it if it goes well.
Here are the basic rules, I won’t go in depth cause it’s a lot of data.

Each player has three 1500 point armies that have to be submitted before the campaign. One of the armies must contain a unique character who will be the general. The armies must all be from the same codex (WD for Sisters players). No forge World or non-codex armies. No allies.

To win you must accumulate 10 Critical Points (CP). You can get them by doing the following:
An army that spends the turn on the Major Critical Location gets 2 CPs.
An army that spends the turn on one of the three Minor Critical Locations gets 1 CP.
Killing an enemy general gets 1CP.

Each army may move 1 hex a turn. Each hex will state what kind of terrain will be on it. Ruins will have a lot of ruins (1+1D3 per 2’x2’ of table space), plains will be almost empty (0-2 pieces of terrain per 2’x2’), forests will have (1D2 and 1 additional piece of area terrain per 2’x2’), and hills will have (1D3, as normal).

If one player moves into the hex of another then he is the attacker. He gets to choose to use night fighting or not and the deployment type. If he wins he stays in the hex.

The defender gets to roll 2D6 and pick one for the game type. If he ties VPs or wins he remains in the hex.

The winner’s army stays intact except for any unique character that was removed as a casualty. On the roll of a 4+ the character is alive and well. A failed roll means the character is removed from the campaign.

The loser of the battle loses all units that were destroyed, but units not completely destroyed, were falling back, or were still in reserve are not count as lost. If the loser losses a unique character they may survive on the roll of a 6, or are removed from the campaign. His army is then considered broken until he spends Resource Points (RP) to bring them back to full strength (1400 point minimum). A broken army may not attack or defend until it is back to full strength. It may move but if someone moves into a space it occupies it must move into another space.

RPs are earned by winning battles, killing generals, and finding resource bonus points randomly distributed throughout the board. 1 RP equals 100 points. A Player can use them to bring an army back to fighting strength or swap out units of one of his armies and replace it with another unit (he pays the cost of the new unit).

The 3 Minor Critical Locations will have a ‘free’ bastion on it and the major Critical Location will have a ‘free’ Fortress of Redemption on it. Neither will be upgradable. They will not count against the force organization chart nor will they cost any points. They will remain in those locations and will be automatically repaired after each battle. Any army may take an Aegis Defense Line (ADL) but may not buy a bastion, landing pad, or fortress unless they are on a critical location.

Basically to win you need to hold one or more of the Critical Locations for several rounds.

Any thoughts? I typed the rules up and they came to 8 pages so I gave you guys the basics.

Seems pretty good. The only thing that stands out is that, if I read it right, a player can only buy a bastion or fortress when they already get a free bastion or fortress. My concern is that someone could pretty easily take 2 fortresses and have their entire army in fortifications. Games likethat can be very un-fun and frustrating for the other player, especially if they are new.

What you might consider is keeping fortifications other that the aegis as "defender only" and adjusting cost based on the hex they occupy. Say a normal hex makes them cost 150% normal cost while a minor critical location is 100% and a major location is 75% cost. Getting a free fortification and the ability to purchase a second should be exceedingly rare. Like only a couple of hexes on the entire campaign map should have them to represent hive cities or something.

Also you may consider a system that allows units to earn special skills by doing certain things without being destroyed or taken below half strength. Say a unit that after a unit kills 5 vehicles they can roll a 4+ to get tank hunters. If unsuccessful then they get to roll again for each vehicle destroyed after 5. A unit that passes 5 leadership tests can roll for stubborn. A unit that wins 5 assaults can roll for furious charge.

If you want to get really crazy you can give models that kill a character a bump up in stats. Say a marine sergeant kills the enemy hq then he can roll or automatically take on the profile of a captain. He's still a sergeant and his base cost doesn't change but you can buy him wargear and he has a much tougher stat line. Warlocks could become farseers, exarchs to autarchs. Think like "leveling up" in an rpg.

That kind of stuff brings a continuity to the campaign that will make it much more memorable.

I agree about the fortifications. We might have to look at that again. I wanted to give a sligh advantage to people holding these spots cause they are gonna get attacked several times a round. We also didn't want someone to by a FoR and move it from hex to hex. Might change it to something like Fortifications cast 50% of their points on a critical location or something like that.

The leveling up idea sounds like something we might put in the second campaign, provided that this one works out...

Thanks for the ideas CrowSplat.

No problem. Hope your campaign goes well.

 Davespil wrote:
No forge World or non-codex armies. No allies.

I got to here and stopped reading, because this is a needlessly arbitrary limitation. Why on earth limit FW?

 Kaldor wrote:
I got to here and stopped reading, because this is a needlessly arbitrary limitation. Why on earth limit FW?

Because its a simple campaign and the only person who could even field a FW army was talking about using an armor column.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Davespil wrote:
No forge World or non-codex armies. No allies.

I got to here and stopped reading, because this is a needlessly arbitrary limitation. Why on earth limit FW?

Actually given that he said there were some new players in the campaign, I would support this rule, even though it means I may not be able to play my normal lists. It's far more important for the new players to be able to gain a basic grasp of the standard codices as well as learn the campaign rules. I would use this first campaign to get these new players up to speed on the core notebooks and focus on getting games running smoothly and at a good pace.

So save the forgeworld for the next campaign. Maybe even make a campaign based on one of the IA books and use that campaign to let everyone learn about different forgeworld goodies.

I would like to suggest two changes. The first is that you bump the number of 'Critical Points' (Strongly dislike the name) to 15, for the reason I will post later. The second is to add an additional way of scoring a 'critical point'. "Whenever a player wins a game (or ties a game if the player was the defender), that player earns a critical point".

CrowSplat wrote:
It's far more important for the new players to be able to gain a basic grasp of the standard codices as well as learn the campaign rules.

I understand what you're getting at, but there's no difference between learning the in's and out's of a codex you've never faced before, and an IA list/unit you've never faced before. I mean, if a player is new they're going to be learning in every game they play, whether it's against Dark Eldar or FW units or Orks. There's really no difference.

RegalPhantom wrote:I would like to suggest two changes. The first is that you bump the number of 'Critical Points' (Strongly dislike the name) to 15, for the reason I will post later. The second is to add an additional way of scoring a 'critical point'. "Whenever a player wins a game (or ties a game if the player was the defender), that player earns a critical point".

I don't like the name either so if you have some ideas please share. Want it to be a quick game so we'll see how 10 works for now. As far as CP for winning a battle, we don't want it just to be about attacking the closest army all the time. We want players to have to capture and control points to win.

Kaldor wrote:

CrowSplat wrote:
It's far more important for the new players to be able to gain a basic grasp of the standard codices as well as learn the campaign rules.

I understand what you're getting at, but there's no difference between learning the in's and out's of a codex you've never faced before, and an IA list/unit you've never faced before. I mean, if a player is new they're going to be learning in every game they play, whether it's against Dark Eldar or FW units or Orks. There's really no difference.

No FW this campaign and we are adamant about that. If anyone shows interest in it for the next one we might take it into consideration.

 Kaldor wrote:

CrowSplat wrote:
It's far more important for the new players to be able to gain a basic grasp of the standard codices as well as learn the campaign rules.

I understand what you're getting at, but there's no difference between learning the in's and out's of a codex you've never faced before, and an IA list/unit you've never faced before. I mean, if a player is new they're going to be learning in every game they play, whether it's against Dark Eldar or FW units or Orks. There's really no difference.

I agree with that point. I was more getting at the fact that its much less overwhelming for a new player to just be expected to learn 10 or so pages from a dozen books then to have them be familiar with 2 dozen books, half of which are somewhat poorly organized with unit entries strewn throughout the entire book instead of the condensed format of a codex.

Sure it's doable but I'd be more interested in getting everyone used to organized play and the commonly used units.