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We have an apocalypse game coming up and I'd like to give it some background fluff.
The imperial side has almost two companies of blood angels, including a reaver Titan, as well as a company of minotaurs, half a company of salamanders, and a small showing of grey knights.

Arrayed against them are chaos marines drawing from all 4 deities, farsight enclave tau, orks, necrons, and dark eldar.

The game type is a "gain ground" mission where each 2x2 square is an objective.

So I'm looking for planet names, and some ideas of a general reason that would have gotten these armies working together and why they want to fight for territory-supremacy here.

Here's the idea I have. No planet names, just reasons why those armies are there.

The world they are fighting on is an Imperial Civilised world on the fringes of the Tau Empire. At precisely the same time, The Farsight Enclaves land to establish a base from which they could launch attacks on the Tau Empire or whatever, while Dark Eldar attempt a raid. Chaos Space Marines land to open a massive warp rift for Daemons to flood through. The commotion awakens the slumbering Necrons.

Hearing of Dark Eldar on the planet, the Salamanders, whose planet of Nocturne suffered regular raids 10,000 years ago before Vulkan put a stop to it, sent some forces they have in the area, a half company worth of Astartes. Upon arrival they immediately called for reinforcements, and within hours the Grey Knights arrived with the Blood Angels and Minotaurs. The Grey Knights were already en route when the distress call came. They called the Inquisition who sent a company of Minotaurs for their Astartes fighting abilities and CC skill. The Blood Angels also dispatched 2 full companies. The Reacer Titan had been accompanying the Salamanders from the campaign they were returning from.

The Necrons, seeing the Imperium as the largest single threat, attempted peace treaties with the other Xenos and Chaos, purely from pragmatism. The Dark Eldar were promised any surviving humans as slaves and captives, while the Tau were promised a neighbouring world (lies). The other Xenos agreed to those terms. The Chaos Space Marines were also in the backstabbing mood, seeking to turn the planet into a Daemon World by unleashing 4 Greater Daemons, and launch attacks from. They lied to the Necrons, stating that they simply wanted the destruction of a common enemy, and had no interest in real estate. This particular planet was simply the best location to summon their Daemonic allies.
The Dark Eldar were increasingly worried about working with the Ruinous Powers, but they themselves planned to backstab, taking many Chaos Marines prisoner for sport, while themselves escaping into the Webway with their captives before the summoning could be completed.
The Tau were the only trustworthy force. Commander (insert Farsight or subcommander here) was not keen on such thin cooperation, but knew that alone he would be crushed by the Imperium, and the Empire would continue to be mindwashed by the Ethereals. He reluctantly agreed to the terms of alliance.

Looking forward to seeing pics from this battle!

Well we got the big battle done, and I wrote the backstory fluff for it. I'm a total nub when it comes to video editing, so I'm waiting on another guy to have some free time to help me do that.

In the meantime, I'm trying to plan the design behind the next scenario in a narrative.

The gist of it is that the xeno alliance got absolutely hammered in the initial battle, losing all of their vehicles and many troops, while causing relatively little damage to the imperials. (I, personally, had over 12,000 points of my blood angels, and my losses totaled up to maybe 1k.)

So my general idea for the second mission in the narrative, is that the war master of the xeno alliance (a chaos lord,) is ordering a retreat and regroup action, while the imperials are splitting their forces, part of them fortifying the captured ground, and the other part responsible for a sweeping advance to cull the numbers of xenos before they become hidden in the wilderness.

In response, the chaos Lord has ordered a small force to act as a rear guard and decoy. (Sacrifice.)

So the concept behind the mission is that a moderate xeno force, say 2k, will need to hold out against a much larger imperial force for as long as possible. It's a foregone conclusion that the strikeforce will be annihilated, but how long they last will determine whether it is considered an imperial or xeno victory.

Anyone out here who wants to throw scenario specifics at me and see what sounds good?

Right now I'm thinking of doing waves, with tacticals in razors, then more razors with a whirlwind, then some termies and sanguinary guard dropping in, then some full asm squads with libbies and chaps, then a knight pally, then land raiders with termies and death company, then more asm squads til forever.

So at what point would you consider it "a victory" for them to have survived so long, assuming their army is 2k points? Do bear in mind that my Army is mostly assault-based, so many of them will not contribute to damage output until the turn after they arrive.

You could do a "Linebreaker" defence. Each enemy unit that ends the game within the Xenos deployment zone scores 1VP, and each Imperial unit that is completely destroyed or immobilised vehicle (other than Drop Pods and the like) scores 1 point.

Would you suggest still having waves or just tossing down a 4k vs 2k type thing from the start with that idea?

I'd say try a mixture? Maybe have a "vanguard" of all the Fast Attack, Fast Vehicles, Flyers, FMC, Jump units and Bikes. 1st wave comes on the board turn 1, with houserules allowing assault.
2nd turn, all Infantry, beasts, Cavalry, Jet Pack units, Montrous Creatures etc, come on with no need to roll.
Turn 3, all Heavy Support units, models with Slow and Purposeful, Heavy Vehicles amd Artillery come on.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/606119.page#7073324

Here's the thread for the game(s).

Got the rear guard game pretty much set up. Now I gotta decide on some more scenarios. What I have so far:

-Farsight was KO'd in the enemy deployment zone during the events of gain ground. Rescue operation for the Tau.

-Some xenos dislike the CSM being the warmaster. Xeno in-fighting mission.

-The xenos no longer have the tools to deal with the reaver Titan guarding the new imperial base. Sabotage mission.

-Ork Mekboys try to pull some junk together and rebuild some vehicles. Imperials would like them to not accomplish this. Base raid mission.

-eventually, the macguffin item that caused the whole event that-I-haven't-decided-what-it-is-yet will be discovered.

I'm open to hear any other scenario objectives. If you're unaware of the current status of the narrative, you can find part 1 in a link above. After that, most VIP's return to orbit to handle the ship warfare, and neither side can get decent reinforcements or supplies. The imperials are at a huge advantage thanks to winning the initial battle, knocking out almost all xeno vehicles, and fortifying a well located base. The xenos are retreating and regrouping in very guerrilla-like conditions in the wilderness.

So we have now gotten to the 4th battle in our narrative campaign.

The premise is that it's going to be a small battle where Tau crisis suits/commanders attempt a flash-rescue mission to snag a captured tau commander.

I wish the Tau guy had the eight named guys, as that would make things easy, but his tau section is very small at the moment. Just 8 suits.

So ideas... If I give him 500 points to equip 8 suits, and they get to deep strike in first turn and all they have to do is a rescue...how many points should the defending marines have? Also I could give him 1k to do 8 commanders instead. Maybe have equal marine points on the board unprepared, and then the same amount in normal turn 2+ reserves? A big issue is heavy weapons like krak missiles that can instagib commanders left and right if they're alone. That could turn into a very short game.

I'm going to have some additional objectives so the Tau can do a minor/major/total victory kinda thing. Like having another building nearby storing parts for the reaver titan etc.

For the base raid, you can say all the heavy weapons (anything that can insta-kill a suit) is faced away from the base. The suits deepstrike instead the base, catching them unawares, and it takes 2-3 turns to reposition the heavy weapons in order to fire on the suits?

Ok, I pretty much have the mechanics down for the tau raid, but I need 3-4 things to be in buildings. One of them is where the prisoner will be held, and another could hold ammo for the reaver Titan, but I'm not sure about the other two. Jump pack fuel? Maybe losing that means in following games jump marines become walking marines for the rest of a battle if they roll a 1 after moving?

I'd like it to be an impairment, but not too wide-scaled (such as bolters or chain swords) and not something that just stops you from taking a choice in a list.