40K: The Easiest Campaign Ever
Pimpcron shows you how to have a fast, fun, stress-free 40k campaign.
Who is that extremely handsome metallic blogger over there? Why, I think it’s Pimpcron! I love that guy!
Hey guys, some of you may have read about my Cautionary Tale with running a group campaign and you know that it didn’t go as planned for several reasons. You may have also read my article about running a Solo Campaign With Multiple Players as a way to avoid all of the hassles that come with “other people”. Who needs them, right? Well now I will tackle actually running a “real” campaign for you with so much flexibility and fun, you’ll think it’s a rubber clown. Of course you can change anything about this plan that suits you, but this is how my group is doing it.
Rubber Clowns. Nothing says fun quite like they do.
Flexibility Is Key
From what I know now about the horrible things life does to interfere with our gaming, my system requires not even one game to be played if you don’t have the time. “Say what?” I hear you saying. Hear me out.
Okay, here is the premise people. A powerful machine that is supposedly left on a planet from the Old Ones has been discovered. Governments bicker back and forth over whether to destroy it or use it. In the meantime, armies do what they think is right. This even pits brother against brother.
People will be playing on teams called Factions. The following motivations are in each faction in my campaign:
Recover The Artifact: Bottom starting area.
Destroy The Artifact: Top left starting area.
Neutral Faction: Top right starting area.
The map doesn’t actually include the middle lines, I just wanted to illustrate where the factions start.
So here is how it works:
- Everyone puts in a set amount of money to enter the campaign and the winning faction splits the prize pot in store credit when they win.
- Then you go about playing your weekly games as normal. Any size, mission, etc. We are playing with “friendly game” rules. Where we both reveal our list to our opponent before the game and give them a chance to tweak their list. Or make agreements like “no flyers” or must be/don’t have to be Battle-Forged. If this doesn’t suit you then don’t do it. We are a casual gaming group for the most part.
- Each time a game is won, that faction chooses and takes a piece of territory that is adjacent to them from whatever faction they just beat.
- It is completely possible for someone to simply want to pay the entry fee and hope that their faction wins, without ever playing a game. This way it doesn’t hold up the entire group when one person can’t make it for several weeks.
- It may seem unfair if one faction has more active players than others and get more games in, but remember that if they lose, they also lose a territory. So playing more games also means more risk of losing territory.
- Territories are taken using up, down, left, and right. No diagonal movement.
- If two different factions team up or if the same faction plays against itself, either don’t count that battle result or determine ahead of time what side is fighting for what faction.
- If you own and want to play more than just one army, you can! All races are divided in civil disagreement and all races have factions that have one of the three goals for the artifact.
- Any game of 40k that is played in the store counts towards the campaign as long as at least one of the players on each side is part of the campaign. Games played at home also count but you MUST tell TO ahead of time or it will not count. This keeps people from neglecting to mention games at home where they lose. Still, both sides must have at least one campaign player on its side.
Fast
No more hang ups just because one guy can’t make it to the club for a week or two. You should arrange the teams to include the same number of players of equal reliability to keep things running. You should also try to arrange teams according to roughly how effective they are as a player. This works fine if you know all of your players,maybe not if you have new players show up. But if you have a handful of really aggressive players, try to make sure they are on separate teams. Think of the children! Got three guys that show up religiously, make sure they are on separate teams.
Being that there is no good way to tell how fast this will go, here is what we are doing to make sure it doesn’t drag on forever. After 1 month of campaign, all Major Victories where you score at least twice as many VPs as your opponent you take an additional territory. If only two of the factions are left because one of them was wiped off, all victories of any kind take two territories each time. So if it is after a month and there are only two faction on the map, and you score a major victory you will steal 3 territories! Our campaign will have a hard-ending at the end of two full months and the faction that holds that most special tiles will win. If it goes that long.
Flexible
By making this faction-based and not race-based, you avoid race wars. #taulivesmatter
The struggle is real.
No I’m kidding. By making this faction-based and not race-based, you avoid pigeon-holing a player that owns many armies into being required to play just one army for however long this goes on for. As a multiple-army player, I would not enjoy being forced to play one army for months.
Also, you aren’t stuck with one army list during the whole thing. Take whatever army or list you want each time, but tell your opponent first if you are using our “friendly game” rules.
Map-Based Campaign
I like the visual style of map-based campaigns and the ability to physically see the progress. We are using a map based campaign on a printed-out map and using colored pins to show our progress; of course you rich people can use Planetary Empires or something. The reason why I won’t be using that is because I want to leave our map at the store to draw attention to our club on days we aren’t there, and I don’t want to leave Planetary Empires there for fear of theft.
This is what our map looks like. I stole the map from online. No, the grid numbers make no sense.
Draw up a map and divide it equally into 18 territories that are touching both other factions in at least 2 points each. Six starting spaces for each faction; if you want a longer campaign add territories, but remember that it is hard to determine just how long a campaign will go on for.
Each faction starts out with 2 special territories that house faction-wide special rules. These are designed to change the game just a bit, without completely breaking the regular flow of the games played. I have found that having some territories worth more than others gives the players some extra reason to invade and choose their territories they conquer.
So what do you think? Is this too simple or not simple enough? Sound fun at all?
Want to witness my slow descent into madness first-hand? Check out my blog at www.diceforthedicegod.com
