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Hello all,

A quick introduction first. I want to run a kill-team campaign at my local GW and I wanted to introduce an element of progression to tie in the games. One of my favorite games, Mordheim, always felt like it had an incredibly in-depth progression narrative. It genuinely felt like each game was part of the broader story. The dilemma, of course, is that this being a public GW event, I have to keep the paper trail as small as possible and avoid over-complication. Folks tend to lose interest pretty fast when they spend more time trying to understand how to play the campaign then actually playing it. So in the interest of this, I decided to nab two aspects of Mordheim and omit the rest. So here are my campaign rules, written as succinctly as I can. Killteams will be written out on a Mordheim warband sheet.

Killteam Campaign Rules

- Write a kill-team list as you normally would, the 3 specialists and the leader are "heroes." Leader picks a leader trait and keeps it throughout the campaign. Note: choosing "Been There, Seen it, Done it" will reduce number of maximum specialists you can have.
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- Fill out first 25 blocks for the leader and 8 for the specialists (their starting XP)
- Divide remaining models by wargear into "henchmen" groups
- The Leader earns 1 XP for every model they slay, 1 XP for surviving a game (fleeing off the table counts as surviving), and 1 XP if you win
- Specialists earn 1 XP for every model they slay and 1 XP for surviving a game (fleeing off the table counts as surviving)
- Henchmen earn 1 XP for surviving a game with at least 1 model from their group (fleeing off the table counts as surviving)
- Upon reaching a bolded block, the Leader and Specialists roll on the following table:

2-5: New Skill! The specialist gets to pick another special rule from the same specialization. The leader gets to pick another leader trait or a warlord trait from their faction's warlord table.
6: Combat training. Roll another d6. 1-3 = +1 Strength; 4-6 = +1 Attack.
7: Honed talents. Choose either +1 Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill.
8: Developed Intuition. Roll another d6. 1-3 = +1 Initiative; 4-6 = +1 Leadership.
9: Hardened Constitution. Roll another d6. 1-3 = +1 Wound. 4-6 = +1 Toughness.
10-12: New Skill! See 2-5.

- Upon reaching a bolded block, a Henchmen group rolls on the following table:

2-4: Discipline. +1 initiative.
5: Conditioning. +1 Strength.
6-7: Well drilled. Choose +1 Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill.
8: Inspired. +1 Attack.
9: Indoctrinated. +1 Leadership,
10-12: The Lad's Got Talent! One model in the group becomes a specialist. If you're at the maximum number of specialists, roll again. The new specialist starts with the same experience as the henchmen group had, with all his characteristics increases intact. Choose a specialization as if making a new armylist (cannot be one already chosen by a different specialist). Make one immediate roll on the Specialist advancement table. The remaining henchmen roll again on the table, re-rolling 10-12 results.

- Other kill-teams will be treated as the appropriate allegiance in Warhammer 40k: The Rules. During multi-player games, the leaders of all of the killteams on the winning side get +1 EXP for winning.

- Disregard references on the sheet to warband rating, injuries, gold crowns, or wyrdstone. Once your armylist is written, it cannot be changed. You can disband your kill-team and recruit a new one, but all experience and advances are lost.

- Every month will have a mega-battle at the end. During this mega-battle, your kill-team will be united into a single unit (even if during armylist writing your kill-team was made up of several units), maintaining all stat increases and special rules, fighting together to take on a great foe. Performance during the mega-battle rewards players on the path to being Champion.

There will be three victors declared at the end of the campaign. The first will be the General: the player whose leader has the most experience (battle to the death in the case of a tie!). The second will be the Standard Bearer: the player whose army looks the best (this will be a vote). The third will be the Champion: best performance during mega-battles.

- End -

My hope is to make games quick, fun, and to keep incentive going. I want to see the same kill-team show up every month improved, stronger, and more capable than last month. I don't want players to get bogged down in debating whether to make a new list because so-and-so died, or to restart their killteam over and over. Also the economy in Mordheim is incredibly well done, but I feel that it can lead to a snowball effect that I want to avoid. What do you all think? Is this simple enough to keep players from getting bogged down in unimportant minutia? Also is my plagiarism of Mordheim's hero advancement/ henchmen advancement tables enough incentive to keep the campaign going? There will be end-of-campaign prizes that I intend to supply, but they're pointless if I can't keep people interested. I was thinking that the ideal time-line would be 3 months, ending around Christmas (just in time for everyone to have a bunch of new armies and goodies to work on, so naturally when I expect interest to wane).

Next up: characteristic increase maximums.

What would you do regarding vehicles that are taken as part of a kill-team given that the advances don't apply very well to transports or walkers?

The easiest option is to only allow the advance table to be used on non-vehicle models. Otherwise you'd have to make a separate table for vehicle models specifically.

2-4. +1HP, up to a max of 4 HP. If it already has 4 HP, it gains a 6+ invulnerable save.

5. +1AV to Front Armour, to a max of 12. If the vehicle already has an AV12 front, it ignores crew shaken damage results on a 4+.

6. +1AV to Side Armour, to a max of 12. If the vehicle already has an AV12 side, it ignores crew stunned damage results on a 4+.

7. Targeting Matrix: +1BS or +1WS

8. +1AV to Rear Armour, to a max of 11. If the vehicle already has an AV11 rear, it ignores immobilized results on a 5+ (though it will still lose a HP from the source that caused it).

9. +1" to movement speed, this additional movement does not count towards what would be considered combat or cruising speed (so you can move 7" and still count as having moved at combat speed).

10-12. If the vehicle has ranged weapons it gains split fire. Repeated rolls on this result from a vehicle allows another weapon to be shot at a different target (so a chimera with a pintle mounted storm bolter would be able to target 3 seperate targets with its multi-laser, heavy bolter and storm bolter respectively if it rolled on this twice).
A vehicle with no ranged weapons and instead has melee weapons gains rampage. Repeated rolls on this result for a vehicle with only melee weapons gains +1 attack (to a max of 10).

I think that vehicles would require a little more consideration. We don't want a Razorback running around with a Land Raider's statline. My instinct is to leave vehicles out of it altogether (XP, advances, etc). They seem like the least likely to change over the course of a campaign (the excepting being the exceptional ork vehicles) short of very minor changes (adding kill markings, tossing on some extra supplies, a cute mural on the edge) which wouldn't really affect the vehicle's performance on the battlefield. I feel that the point of killteam is to focus on the killteam itself, not their ride. With all the advantages vehicles already have in killteam, I don't think they need anymore. Plus most of their customization is usually available in their actual upgrades (extra armor, dozer blades, etc).