This planet is OURS!

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

here are the rules that me and a friend of mine have made for a campaign we are testing out. if you have any thoughts, ideas, or just something to post about on this, feel free.

 

first of all this is partially based off of using the mighty empires set, you dont need it to do this, but it makes a great aid and looks cool.

depending on the size of the planet, amount of players, and such, all values can be changes and adjusted. for the current campaign we are running its just me and an ork player fighting over a single continent with about 30 or so territories to assault, so we kinda started with a large starting force on both sides.

 

CREATING THE CAMPAIGN

all players will have 3 main commanding units. 1 major commander thats in charge of the war, and 2 lower ranking commander that leads warbands to conquer other territories. example:

 

space marine player:

MASTER/CAPTAIN: Megiddo

secondary leader: librarian Xyxios

secondary leader: chaplain Cyph

 

ork player:

WARBOSS: Graulfist

secondary leader: Grobnatz

secondary leader: Slazrot

 

Depending on mission point size changes what wargear your commanders and forces can take with them

500~1499 points - your commanders and other forces are able to take up to 50 points of upgrades (not including costs of adding more members to a squad). heavy support teams like devastators can only take the most basic special weapons (meaning 4 H. bolters or missile lanuchers) but they have 50 points to use to upgrade the weapons and take it fifty points (meaning any points past the 15 points spent for these heavy weapons is taken away from the upgrade allotment, so taking a plasma cannon for 25 points would take out 10 pts from that squads upgrade allotment).

1500+ - your army can take any and all upgrades and special characters allowed, but you must still follow the FOC (your just able to upgrade your units to how you see fit)

 

MAP AND PLACEMENT

next is placement of armies/ cities, fortresses, forges, etc

 

first draw out a map and (or if you have mighty empires just build it) create a continent that is large enough to support all the players fighting in the campaign, its safe to say roughly 5-7 territories for each player playing. you can place more or less depending on how long or big you want the campaign to be. next is placement of cities (following empires rules here) you cannot have a city within 2 spaces of each other, for reasons i will post later, but try to cut up enough cities to support the player base. so like roughly 1 to 2.5 cities per player. next throw up a few forts on the map, they can act or be what you want them. ranging from comm towers to forts, to shrines and other important objectives. you dont have to, but for army rules and such, nominate 3-x comm towers to be placed, comm towers have a radius of 3 territories, so say on a medium sized map there will be about 3 comm towers (their use will be explained later). next put forges/mines down, i would advise same rule of thumb of cities for forges as to the ratio of 1-2 per player in the campaign. they can be placed by mountains and rivers (or if lacking, someplace that would be sensible to have them). do all this placement before anyone has chosen or wanted to start, simply because people are going to want to set up in a way to their advantage.

 

CHOOSING ATTACKER/DEFENDER

next and very important, choose who is attacking the planet and/or who is defending the planet. say if orks, eldar, and necrons are attacking a planet, its assumed that if the planet is imperial owned, imperial forces would be the defender. nominate 1 city to be the capital city. that city for all intents and purposes is the only one with a starport, and only that city has a star port, but all cities have airfields (explained later). once the capital city has been chosen and the defending player(s) chosen, nominate 1 of the defending players to control the starport/capital city.

 

GETTING STARTED

once the capital city is chosen, the other defending player(s) may choose 1 city to control as theirs, and may separate their forces as they see fit. now with just me and the ork player, we both had 5k points each that we split up among our 3 commanders (so of 5k points, i had 2.5k at the capital city, and 1k with one commander, and 1.5k with another, i was defender) now that defender(s) have chosen their cities, all players then take turns choosing 1 spot on the map, and roll a scatter dice and a 1d2, on a hit, they land on that exact spot, and as for a miss/direction, set what numbers will mean 1 and 2 spaces, and then move that army that far away. if the scatter dice points in between 2 territories, nominate one of them as #1 and the other as #2 and say use 1d2 rolling to choose which one it is and set your force there. if it sets your army into a space already occupied or into nothingness, then reroll. once everyone has their army set up the next phase will begin.

 

GETTING CAMPAIGN POINTS

to get campaign points its as simple as this

you get 1 campaign point for losing a battle/failing a mission

you get 2 campaign points for a tie

you get 3 campaign points for winning/completing a mission

 

 

SPENDING CAMPAIGN POINTS

now to show progress and effect of combat, every army starts out with 1 campaign point. every turn, fight, and other events will give you campaign points to use for your needs and to build up and create forts and cities and forges. heres how you use them:

 

to take over a empty territory, you use up 1 campaign point.

to take over an unoccupied fort, 1 point

to take over an unoccupied city or forge takes 2 points

 

to create a fort on an empty space, costs 1 point

to create a city, you must have a fort already on the territory and will cost you 2 points

to create a mine, there must not be a mine within 2 spaces of where you plan to put the mine, and only requires an empty territory you control and 2 points

 

REINFORCEMENTS (now under construction)

now how you ask are you suppose to get more soldiers to fight for you? well let me tell you

 

for every city you control, you gain 250 requisition that you can use to add to any of your forces the end of a campaign turn.

for every forge/mine you control, you gain 400 requisition that you can use to add points to any of your units

 

requisition basically means points you can use to reinforce your armies with. requisition just means that they are pooling resources from the area and using for their armies means to create

 

CAMPAIGN TURNS

now after 1 full rotation of all players doing their attacks, it is the end of a campaign turn, and you all get to add all the requisition points to your forces as you see fit. so obviously the more you control, the more points you will get for your armies

 

LEAVING DEFENDING FORCES

if you control a city or fort, but want to send your commander to attack but dont want to leave the city/fort/forge undefended, you can split up your forces how you see fit and leave a defending force. for example you have 1.5k forces at a city, but want to get a move on without leaving the city unguarded, you can leave 500 at the city, and take 1k with you. the commander leading your main group must be chosen as to which group he is in, once thats done, the force without 1 or your 3 commanders happens to get attack, he is just a basic captain/warboss/etc with no equipment upgrades whatsoever. the basic leader cannot level up and cannot move from his position, but your forces can rejoin him later and take him with them or be reinforced as you see fit.

 

MOVEMENT

now it takes 1 point to take over a territory, and if you choose to, may move on it. now if your moving within territories you control, you may move 2 spaces. if choosing to attack a player, you may only make 1 movement at that will be to attack another space a player is defending. if the spot is under another players control and he has forces within 2 spots of the square, he may choose to send an equal force (if possible) to defend the territory, if they doesnt have the forces required to match the points of the attacking player, they may choose how much to send even if its less points, but they may never choose to send more pts than the attacking force. if unopposed, the player takes the square for free, if opposed, play out the battle and if the attacking player is defeated, they are forced back to their original square, if they won, they capture the territory without having to pay the campaign points needed to capture the territory.

 

COMBAT CASUALTIES AND RECOVERY

after every fight, any unit that WASNT KILLED BY AP 1 weapons, weapons that dont allow armor saves, and soldiers killed by weapons double their toughness, they die and you cant get their points back or roll for saves, they are dead. so say 20 marines were killed in a fight, all were savable, you roll 20 d6, and anything 3+ that marine comes back and his points are given back to that forces total points, but if they failed their armor save then they die and you dont get their points back. this is to simulate how resilient and more fluff wise campaign would be. so ork mobs with a basic 6+ armor save have a very slim chance of getting back up, but since they are cheap and numerous, it doesnt matter much). so a battle in which 500 points of orks and marines fight, and orks take 30 casualties, and recover 7 from armor saving them from dying and the ork painboy mending them. as to the marines take 12 casualties, and the apothecary was able to save all but 2.

 

LEADER REPLACEMENTS (working on this one)

if your leader was killed in the fight (say your librarian was killed and failed his casualty save or was killed by an ap1 weapon, or weapons double their toughness) then they actually die in the campaign, and you must find a replacement. the replacement can be any HQ choice you want it to be thats allowed in your codex.

 

VEHICLE RECOVERY (working on this too)

if a vehicle was destroyed (roll of 5 on damage table, or 2 immobilized results, etc, but not a roll of 6, the vehicle is considering to have blown apart and unusable). if the losing players vehicle wasnt destroyed, but say immobilized, the closest winning players squad will assault the vehicle and attempt to kill the crew and take it for themselves. the winning player can only choose the closest squad to the vehicle that is an infantry unit and ONLY infantry. as a last act of desperation that vehicles crews may fire all weapons possible at that assaulting squad in an attempt to take them down with them. if the defending vehicle is an ordnance only vehicle it is capture and the points for the vehicle get added to the winning players point total for his force, if it was a regular vehicle (like say a predator or a chimera) it will shoot all weapons at the squad assaulting, if the defending player kills the squad, then the opposing player doesnt get the vehicle. but if the defending vehicle squad doesnt destroy the oncoming horde the winning player may try to loot it, and on a d6 roll of 4+, the winning player loots the vehicle and kills the crew. they may either use that vehicle as looted for further battles or may just add its 1/2 points cost to their total points of their force.

 

COMM TOWERS (changing and fixing this)

comm towers give off a radius of 3 squares around it, any map drop podding, or other army special ability reduces the total distance for inaccuracy by 1, if controlling more than 1 comm tower, and its comm area reaches the comm area of another comm tower, its effect can be daisy-chained.

 

ARMY SPECIAL RULES/ABILITIES (trying to work on this and make it fair for all players, so any ideas to make this better/fluffy please post and if deemed worthy, will make the changes)

 

each and every army has their own special abilities that they can use on their campaign turn as per the following:

 

space marines/chaos marines pod assault: are able to drop pod deploy, meaning that they may choose their forces, and if they control a comm tower, any place they choose to drop forces on rolls a scatter dice to see if they land on that spot, if choosing to drop pod in an area without comm, they must roll a scatter dice, and a 1d2 for scatter. if the podding forces land on a space occupied by an enemy, you will play a mission in which case the opposing player sets up first and goes first, you have the compulsory forces to deploy, the rest of your forces arrive via drop pod and you use the reserves rule and have your forces arrive on your table edge if they come in (any forces you actually paid to use drop pods, may be used as normally).

 

ork rokks: always will have the ability when first setting up forces on the map will be able to pod their 3 forces all at once instead of 1 at a time like other players, must use the map scatter rules stated above.

 

eldar/dark eldar webway gate: initial webay gate created on commanders deployment territory, and may choose 2 other places on the map not occupied by a city or forge to have webway gates activated there and may choose to move from 1 gate to another if within base contact of that territory with a gate.

 

tau advance drone setup: can choose up to any 3 territory/hex to control when first setting up as long as it doesnt contain a city or a mine or another players forces.

 

demonic summoning: demon only players may choose a city and up to 2 adjacent unoccupied territories during set up.

 

necron awakening : when deploying forces, necron player my nominate an empty territory that has no cities/forges/etc and choose that is his main HQ for deployment. if the he chooses to, he may nominate that spot to have a fort on it, if he does, he deploys all his forces to that one spot.

alternate ability : advanced recovery systems: necron casualty recovery rolls are increase by -1 (meaning instead of a 3+ they get back up, its a 2+)

 

tyranid infestation: tyranids get 4 starting unoccupied territories, but the campaign manager chooses the spots on the map, but the tyranid player may choose which commanders and how much of his forces are deployed in the spots chosen.

alternate ability: population boom : the tyranid player may forfeit his campaign turn and do nothing for his turn, but at the end of the campaign turn, double the amount of requisition they get from any cities and forges they control.

 

gray knight assault: gray knights may choose any one spot on the map for their first deployment of forces, regardless of whether it has a city or forge on the territory.

alternate ability : Teleport assault : once per turn GK players may assault any enemy occupied territory, regardless if the army occupies a city, forge, fort, or any other building.

 

witch hunters: when deploying forces on the campaign map, witch hunters can deploy forces into 1 non enemy control fort and convert it to a shrine that will act as the WH HQ. converting it to a shrine gives no added benefits.

alternate ability : purgation : whether or not the witch hunters won or lost the battle, when the opposing player(s) roll their casualty saves to recover their units, regardless of what armor they are equipped with, they suffer a +1 to their save (making a save of 3+ to recover a 4+ to recover the unit, but cannot force a units recover to anything worse than a 6+)

 

imperial guard: when setting up, the IG may select up to 3 spots on the map, and make those spots forts and deploy their forces on those spots.

alternate ability: Valkyrie assault : imperial guard are able to assault territories up to 3 spaces away from a CITY they control, regardless of intervening enemy occupied spaces.

 

 

 

well there you go!

edit history

V.1.1 fixed the vehicle recovery rules some, and put a better explanation of requisition points

V 1.5 fixed the following ; wound recovery, comm towers, the level system and implemented a new system, added new abilities and changed some others. fixed vehicle recovery to simplify it some. changed leader recovery/replacement.

[Chaplain Sceptus]

Ok, looks good but some comments:

 

- I think vehicle stealing and force recovery is a bit to complex. would only bog a game down and make for some unfair advantages. (space marines would just save to much point opposed to Orks for example). It might be fluffy, but doesn't seem very fair.

 

- Race abilities need work, but you already admitted that. some seem a bit to overpowered compared to some. I'm fond of the ones that only apply at deployment because they arn't that overpowered and can be compensated for quite quickly, but it's harsh if you see your opponent do cool stuff while you can't anymore. maybe add a minor ability to those races, no matter how pointless it seems, that way you can at least keep doing cool stuff throughout the campaign.

 

- using campaign points to take over neutral territory seems a bit much, unless you want to encourage battles to earn the point of course, which is a good thing.

 

- Leader casualties seems a bit harsh. You want your leaders in the thick of it and that's a bit scary if they can really die. I find the idea of penatilizing a player for losing a commander good, but would put it in another way, like have him be brought back to the nearest city for a turn or 2 to get medical attention, leaving the army with a lesser commander for a few turn, for example. then if that city false in the meantime he may get killed, but at least it's not that easy to lose one.

 

Maybe we should start making a B&C campaign rules set. It''s always hard to make a good one and with such a big playtest base we might be on to something, esspecialy with Planetstrike on the horizon.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Skirax]

Like this idea, but a couple of points, in addition to the ones that Chaplain Sceptus made:

 

-How do the requistion points relate to reinforcing your army? Because if you hold 4 forges, you have 1,600 points to reinforce your army, where your opponent may have only 1 forge held, and only an extra 400 points to reinforce. Overkill, and that is strange when a marine army can outnumber an ork army :P

 

Maybe, you have Forges in different stages, the lowest grants say 1 dedicated Transport in a battle for every minor Forge that's held by you. And it builds up till the highest forge level allows any AV 13+ vehicles. The same with holding a city, if a minor city has access to comms that only allow troops to come in, that would work.

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

the requisition points count just like regular points for your army, meaning at the end of a campaign turn, you say get 700 requisition (think of DoW 1 game series here) you can spread out those 700 points to add to the totals of any parts of your force. yes say having multiple forges would be overpowering, but that gives you a reason to fight over them. throughout history wars have been won and lost because of the ability to reinforce from local areas and think of in a warhammer 40k universe, even eldar would want to capture 'forges' to create weapons and vehicles. so its just points of contention to try and gather up as much resources as possible, but forges arent the only way to get points. and so far the requisition point system is working out just fine for the campaign so far.

 

and as for the force recovery, its actually been working out pretty well, and i mean real well. because think of of like this, a basic tac squad of 10 marines without any equipment buffs is 170 points, and if say you have a really bad battle, you lose say 3 tac squads not including what you lost for other things, out of a 1k pts army fight, that pretty much take that whole strike force out of work until you could reinforce it. and the next player campaign turn could attack that measly 300pts of guys you had left? think thats really fair? trust me its not, the force recovery is meant to keep players who are getting ganged up on get wiped out fast, and you will still lose points for that force, but for expensive armies like marines and GKs a loss is horrific, as compared to orks, you can pretty much throw away models and not care. i may not be explaining it the way i mean to, but try it out, do a little battle with someone and use the recovery rules for your troops (forget vehicle recovery) and see how it plays out. you will understand the reason for force recovery and it works well with fluff as to how a battle would be.

 

i do admit that the ability system does need some work, but thats why i am asking for suggestions. i like the idea of vehicles being able to be looted, but atleast give the defending vehicle a chance to do a last stand. i do think the vehicle recovery does need work, but as the campign wears on and we fix things here and there i will post the changes.

[Rapture747]

I like most of it. The WIP sections need some work, especially that whole vehicle stealing thing. I don't like that. The only huge problem is the requisition thing. Maybe if you converted the values to 1/4 or even 1/5 their original numbers it could work. The face that you can build a few forges and add 2000pts to you force every turn seems a little crazy.

 

Please keep going with development. I plan on using these rules over the summer.

 

Also, for abilities try to come up with something people can use throughout the game so it actually makes a fun and interesting difference what race you are playing. Webway gate are a nice race specific example but generic ones could work too. Like some kind of aerial transport move that lets a force of 500 or less points of infantry attack with a 1+ or 2+ attack range. Keep it fun and simple and you can't go wrong.

[Chaplain Sceptus]

I'll have a game vs Tau in a few weeks. I'll write down the scores and have everyone make a save and hyjack vehicles, see how the scores stack up. I'll PM it to you or post it here.

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

thanks sceptus. i would definitely like to see how these rules would apply and such outside of our little test campaign and see how you all like them, so far its been good news.

 

i am still trying to think of new abilities for the armies that need it, but some armies are just innately powerful like nids, and especially against a really watered down army like marines early on will just decimate. hell i am getting my ass torn apart by mobs of orks because i really couldnt take the heavy weaps and such to try and mow them down.

 

but again, this is still sorta WIP and apparently i have done pretty good with the rules with only 2 sections of it that are in contention (wound recovery and abilities) other than that it seems like a solid rule set.

 

and thinking about it, ya, trying to get just mob build forges does kinda seem a little over powered, i will talk it over with the guy i am running the campaign with and see about the values we get from forges, but having the ability to use campaign points to upgrade the forges and such. but i still want cities to give a decent amount of requisition because you going to want to have cities because of the bonuses they give and the points they give. when we come up with a decision i will post it up here and make the changes and you all can see and tell me if you like the changes.

[Chaplain Sceptus]

I don't know if you bumped into this already, but over at Arcadia Prime they had a pretty good campaign setting. you might want to take a look and see if you can find any good bits to "loot" ;)

 

direct link: http://wfarcadia.blogspot.com/2007/10/arcadia-campaign.html

 

Space Campaign obviously doesn't apply, but the rest of the stuff is pretty good.

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

i took a look at it, and it is good, but thats more for an entrenching, overfluffly rule campaign setting IMO, but i did like the mission choices for the different terrain, and the inclusion of space combat to effect the ground, but my campaign is built just around a ground campaign, and if the players wish, they can use a space campaign addition. but i wanted this to be a much more fluid, faster paced, and easily picked up campaign rule set. its not perfect or complete yet, and its being worked on, but i feel that this work would be somewhat more open for other to pick up, because it kinda gives them the DoW feeling, where all the armies have their own special abilities, and that that their commander lead, grow, and they feel it with their troops. i am not saying that this should replace all other campaign rulesets, but i am trying to make this somewhat of an open and grim/dark campaign, where your casualties effect your force, where capturing important structures and such could cost you severely, but still be merciful enough to keep you in the game incase you have a bad battle or are getting teamed up against.

[Grand Master Raziel]

I think the idea of limiting the amount of upgrades a squad can buy per level is poorly thought out, because it heavily handicaps units that rely on squad upgrades (most SM, CSM, and IG units, for instance) vs units that rely on universal coolness within the squad (Eldar Aspect Warriors, Necron units, Tau Fire Warriors). So, as a Space Marine player, at Level 1, I could buy a single meltagun for my Tac Squad, but as an Eldar player, I could take a unit of Fire Dragons, where they all have meltaguns as their default weapon. You see where I'm going with this?

[Krave]

If you have any friends that play fantasy, see if they have the 'Generals Compendium'. It is mainly about running different types of campaigns, for fantasy admittably, but many ideas could certainly be transfered.

 

Your 'Combat Casualty and Recovery' system looks.....very complex to to me. Just dicing 4+ live/die would make for easier book work, although feel free not to for insta-death. It's generally easier just to save complicated stuff for characters (General's Compendium has a good section on this, should you wish for some more inspiration).

 

As for vehicles, something I saw off another website many years ago was this:

-winning player recoveres all destroyed vehicles on a 3+

-loser recovers all destroyed vehicles on a 5+

The idea being that the winning player holds the field and can more easily salvage his vehicles. In any scenario where the winning player has to leave the field of battle to their opponent (ie, breakout), then the system is reversed (ie, to win breakout you need to run away off the table; even though you win, the vehicles are lost because you were leaving them behind, etc. The other player lost because you got away, but he still holds the field of battle, and so can still easily recover his vehicles).

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

okay everyone, just went and updated and changed several things in the rules, give it a gander and tell me how they look now, it should be much more simpler and streamlined and fixed some things here and there.

 

also, thinking about adding something to recover special leaders/characters. if your char was killed and failed their wound recovery/killed by ap1 or 2x toughness, you can spend campaign points to roll a 'miraculous miracle', meaning they somehow managed to cheat death, but it can only be used once per character. for every campaign point spent, increases your chance to recover him, refer to following table:

 

used 1 point : on a roll of 6+, they come back

used 2 points : on a roll of 5+ they come back

used 3 points : on a roll of 4+ they come back

used 4 points : on a roll of 3+ they come back

used 5 points : on a roll of 2+ they come back

 

you cannot use more than 5 points to recover a character, and this can only be done right after the battle the character was killed. (meaning you cant wait 3 battles later then try to resurrect the warrior) but the points gained in the battle that the char fought in can be added to your point total, and from your point total you can spend the points to recover your character.

 

how do you like this idea?

[Wakarimasen]

Whats this Miraculous Recovery craziness kid? If the guy is dead, then he's DEAD! :P

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

Whats this Miraculous Recovery craziness kid? If the guy is dead, then he's DEAD! :P

its just an idea, if players want to implement it into their campaign, they can, but its not apart of the basic campaign. its to satisfy those that dont like how 'harsh' losing an importan commander can be, even though its a grimdargrimdarkgrimdark game.

[Night Stalker]

Whats this Miraculous Recovery craziness kid? If the guy is dead, then he's DEAD! :(

 

Perhaps you never heard about chaos gods and ressurections done by them :tu:

[Chaplain Sceptus]

I'll have a game vs Tau in a few weeks. I'll write down the scores and have everyone make a save and hyjack vehicles, see how the scores stack up. I'll PM it to you or post it here.

 

Saxxon, I had the game last night but I totally forgot this. sorry about that, I would have loved to give you the data for working on your setting :(

[Saxxon the Dragoon]

I'll have a game vs Tau in a few weeks. I'll write down the scores and have everyone make a save and hyjack vehicles, see how the scores stack up. I'll PM it to you or post it here.

 

Saxxon, I had the game last night but I totally forgot this. sorry about that, I would have loved to give you the data for working on your setting :P

 

well just find someone else to play, even if its just a 500 point game, do the battle, and try it out and see hoe you like it.