“Space Marines
excel at warfare because they were designed to excel at everything. Each of you
will become a leader, a ruler, the master of your world and, because there is
no more fighting to be done, you will bend your transhuman talents to
governance and culture.”
Roboute Guilliman, Primarch M. 31
The recent release of Crusade of Fire has everyone at Snake Eyes Gaming thinking about campaigns. Campaigns offer an opportunity to add extra enjoyment to the Warhammer hobby. Most players want to experience a campaign and often have dramatic ideas full of epic battles and mighty heroes that they would love to see enacted on the table top. Campaigns take many different forms and can be surprisingly easy to get set up.
What is a campaign? A
Warhammer Campaign is a series of linked battles. The battles which make up a campaign can be
linked thematically, with a story dictating the engagements, and/or
mechanically, with a set of rules dependent upon the outcome of previous battles. For example, a scenario in which two friends
play a series of games where the winner of one game carries a benefit over into
the second battle is an example of a mechanically linked campaign. If those two players added a story and drew a
map to show the theatre of war that there battles were occurring in then their
campaign would have both thematic and mechanic elements.
What scale does a series of linked games have to be to be
considered a campaign? A campaign can be
any size or scale. Players often think
of the world wide Games Workshop campaigns (i.e. Armageddon, Eye of Terror, and
Medusa V) or store-based map campaigns (i.e. the Minos Campaign or Nekar Quintus); but
small campaigns can be equally as enjoyable for the participants. A campaign does not need to be any more complex
than a couple of players agreeing to play an odd number of games using the same
Warlord each time – the winner gets bragging rights.
Often when we think of campaigns we think of map-based
systems based upon Planetary Empires.
This type of campaign is immensely enjoyable and, on a small scale, can
be achieved rather easily. The Planetary
Empire tiles can appear rather daunting to paint but are quite easy to
finish. A group of friends can construct
and paint a map out of a Planetary Empires set in a couple of hours. In addition, all of the rules that you need
to play can be found in the Planetary Empires boxed set and/or in Crusade of
Fire.
Last time I mentioned a couple of interesting escalation
leagues occurring at Legions. First, there
is the Jack’s Escalation League which will culminate in a tournament in
March. Second, there a handful of
players that decided to run their own Tale of Four Gamers. While neither of these is truly a campaign in
that the battles aren’t thematically or mechanically linked they do merit a
deeper look. Both leagues foster grudge
matches between players which is the perfect start to a “Best of 3” style
series of games, using the same general terrain, for control over a specific
planet. For example, during an ongoing
crusade there is a colossal misunderstanding/miscommunication between two First
Founding Legions. As a result, the
Salamanders and White Scars come to blows amidst the cyclopean ruins of a
desert world. During the first skirmish
Kor’sarro Khan uses Moondrakken to ride down Vulkan He’stan and scatter the Salamanders
before his fury. The two forces meet
again shortly thereafter though. This time
the Salamanders are attempting to retrieve a relic hidden within an ancient
statue. Vulkan He’stan oversees the
delicate removal of the relic and then uses the Spear of Vulkan to hold off the
Khan while the artifact is transported to safety. How does this tragic tale end? I don’t know yet because we haven’t played
the third match yet. We were both only
trying to get in battles for the escalation league but once the bolter casing
started to pile up and people started to gather around the small (but somehow
still epic battlefield) it became apparent that the Khan and Forgefather need
to have another meeting to determine the fate of this conflict.
Campaigns can and are all of the topics discussed in detail
above, and a lot more besides. I could
write a series of articles on campaigns and barely scratch the surface. A campaign is the reason to model destroyed Necron
Warriors on the base of your Orc Warboss, a chance to add to the Saga of your
Wolf Lord, or the opportunity to use Rough Riders even though they are not as
points efficient as some other units.
Most of all though, a campaign gives you the chance to talk smack on
your friends as your Warlord cuts a swathe through their army or the chance to
feel despair as three Stompas dismantle your hasty alliance of Blood Angel
Assault Marines and Grey Hunters. Over
the years I’ve noticed that where it concerns campaigns and thematic games we’re
all dwarves at heart, which is to say each of us has a Book of Grudges in which
we enter the names of those warlords and opponents upon whom we need to avenge
ourselves.
