experience with BFG campaigns?

[Demoulius]

Hello guys,

 

im looking for some experienced voices on starting a campaign. ive got a small group (and have invited some other to try the game out as well :) ) that we intend to start a combined 40K/BFG campaign with.

 

since this our first time organizing this we would like some help with...er....figuring stuff out.

 

first of all we intend to see if the small band of people we got our eyes on want to join in as well. if they do great and we will have a group of about 6-7 people (currently 3 now, 2 belonging to the imperium :))

 

next we will be needing a place to play regulary and we also got that figured out because one of our current players allready has a house and he would like us play the games there :)

 

so thats what we got covered and how the story now stands. we have no idea on where to go from here -_- we want to combine the games of 40K and BFG somehow. for example for every BFG game we hold 2-3 40K battles or so, with the side that won the BFG game getting an advantage. obviously we would need to reach the planet first so maybe we will hold some more BFG games before we will revert to 40K to take over a planet (or defend it)

 

aside from that were pretty much stuck here, we have no experience with this and would prefer it doesent screw up our gaming experience to much :lol:

 

any thoughts/suggestions that might help?

[minigun762]

I have no actual experience with BFG yet, its still all theorycrafting to me but I could see you working a BFG game in anywhere in a series of 40k games. I added a few ideas below.

 

1) typical planetary invasion scenario. If invading forces are successful in BFG, they can assault the planet proper. Would be a perfect way to tie in a planetstrike game prior to the regular 40k games. If the defending forces are successful, the 40k game could represent the ship to ship fighting still going on, similar to space hulk.

2) start a series of 40k games but in between certain games, a BFG battle occurs and the winning side gets reinforcements or special strategems for the next 40k game. I think this would be easiest with an apocalypse game but do-able with anything really.

3) create an unbalanced scenario where some players are playing BFG at the same time that others are playing 40k. Make it an evacuation. As players successfully leave the planet, they can add their forces to the BFG game. The goal is for the defending side to allow enough of their army to escape.

 

Hopefully those help some, the more I think about it the more I think this could be alot of fun.

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

There's the helpful guide on BFG Campaigns on the GW website, but beyond that I offer the following few tips:

 

1. There's the set of scenarios revolving around planetary stuff, including an invasion one which lists the points in a 40k game for each ship that gets stuff to the planet. There's also an Exterminatus one.

 

2. Use a starmap, with each player having a set fleet and army, which can reinforced between battles. Also, introduce a casualty system so that you can determine whether models are truly dead, just injured, or perfectly fine.

 

3. Introduce fun and interesting events so that it doesn't become same ol', same ol'.

 

4. Use things like Space Hulk, the boarding rules from Imperial Armor, or a slightly modified 40k game for boarding actions, though this might slow down your game.

 

That's all for now, but I'm sure I'll think of more in the middle of the night.

[Demoulius]

cheers for the responses guys :D

 

yea read that part on the GW website as its actually the campaign section from the original rulebook :lol:

 

we kinda wanted to follow up on it but since factions like necrons (in all regards a neutral faction as they kill everything) and space marines werent added yet were not really sure on what to do with it. sure were "imperium" but how would that work exactly? would we share worlds? would we need to capture our own worlds but belong to the same faction? what faction would nids and crons belong to?

 

BFG seems (fluffwise) abit to complicated fluffwise to just group the imperium together and oppose them with "everyone else" Orks, Eldar and Chaos i could see working to fulfill their own goals especialy and thus all beeing their own faction. same goes for tau. mars belongs to the imperium as well obviously. more or less every alien faction is on their own. id only see them working together if the emperium would have agreater force and theyd need to work together to win...

 

so generally im abit unsure if we should group all the other factions other then imperium together (might be a wise choice for the sake of keeping the camaign somewhat simple) or keeping every player to himself and using that to decide who "wins the campaign" its about who gets the highest renown rating after all so its basicly a popularity contest :P

 

i also like the suggestions you guys gave me, weve had some of those ourselves (like using planetstrike and such) but we want to include the games of BFG to our games of 40K. imho we can that in the best way by allowing bombardments and such or additional reinforcements to be wielded by the one with a superior fleet in orbit B)

 

hadent thought about having a 40K featured boarding action yet... how would that work exactly? would it be like a sneak attack that, if succesfull; allowed the attacker to cripple a certain enemy vessel for the next BFG game or such?

 

I like your suggestion of playing 40K and BFG simultaniously Minigun but im not sure if we have the room for that :( and my guess is that it would be far to complicated as well....would 1 40K turn equal 1 BFG turn? wouldnt work imho unless you make the boarding action board very tiny :(

 

thanks for the suggestions so far ;) keep them coming if you can :)

[minigun762]

hadent thought about having a 40K featured boarding action yet... how would that work exactly? would it be like a sneak attack that, if succesfull; allowed the attacker to cripple a certain enemy vessel for the next BFG game or such?

 

I like your suggestion of playing 40K and BFG simultaniously Minigun but im not sure if we have the room for that ;) and my guess is that it would be far to complicated as well....would 1 40K turn equal 1 BFG turn? wouldnt work imho unless you make the boarding action board very tiny :D

 

I think the boarding action would be best played as a scaled up version of space hulk, so it might require a special table with limited mobility. Maybe have multiple areas for deployment and use the reserve rules to simulate boarding torpedoes popping in at various places. I can't help but think of the old D&D dungeon crawl as inspiration.

 

As for the BFG/40k game at the same time, I wouldn't combine them rule-wise or anything. I had imagined it being a few people played BFG while others played 40k and as certain events occurred (like landing troops or successfully evacuating off planet) people from one game would migrate over to the other. This way both games are in a state of flux and dependent on what is happening on the surface or in orbit.

 

When in doubt, remember the KISS rule of Keep It Simple Stupid, at least for the first attempts.

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

Any chance you have a list of the numbers of each faction? I don't want to suggest anything that aids or hinders anything too much.

 

On the boarding action, I meant that you could use that instead of the boarding action roll. If you give me a bit, I could probably come up with something to determine setup, size of forces, and so on.

[Grey Mage]

Make a 10,000pt list. That is your troops. Use apoc rules, but note that things must be fielded in a legal manner- so dont skimp on troops.

 

Make a 1750 list. That is your fleet. It should be 'legal'.

 

In order for a game of 40k to be played you must successfully land troops on a world- each assault point allows you to field up to 500pts. Troops must be attached to fleets- so if your titan is safe and sound on the battleship that didnt invade... to bad.

 

Play the BFG campaign as normal- each forgeworld produce X amount of points, each agri world a number, etc. Troops can always be found, elites and HS must be requisitioned.

 

Roll to see if destroyed is destroyed as per ships even if it is troops. You can do this for units entirely wiped, or by casualty as you prefer.

[Demoulius]

factions that are (at this moment) participating are:

 

Me: IN/Marines. maybe a hydrid, otherwise pure SM.

IN

Necrons

 

like i said earlier our group is rather tiny BFG wise so thats why im hoping to add more people to it :blush:

 

40K wise however weve got more variety:

I got Blood angels and Chaos

we got a marine/Guard player

Ork player (has some 4K worth of them), a traitor guard army(nurgle) that hes putting together and normal guard. also has crons but hasent played them in ages.

templar player (wont be playing for a good month though due to exams) also has a tiny bit of chaos on the side

necron player

necron/grey knight player (has the hots for his grey knights after the latest codex :lol: so its unlikely that he will play crons...

 

the most likely outcome in my mind is:

 

imperium

marines or IG

black templars

grey knights

 

others

orks or traitor guard

me as chaos

necrons

 

then again my group is a fickle lot so for all i know they all suddenly want to play marines ;) i kinda hate that i dont have a chaos fleet though as this setup would mean that i couldnt enter in the campaign (not unless my marine fleet is a traitor fleet :() also means that every faction of the imperium would be marines (one player who MIGHT play IG....)

 

i havent heard from any of them yet, but all of us have dayjobs and i sent the mail last night :D expect to know more tonight :)

 

i like your list of ideas grey mage :) we might joink a few ^_^

[Vaaish]

With that few people playing, treat the Imperial Navy as "rebels" or in league with traitor guard. Have them against marines. These two fleets would function just like any full fleet is described in the BFG campaign rules. Necrons would work like Ork or eldar as a raiding fleet in that they couldn't capture systems and can only fight raid scenarios. I would probably use the Eldar promotion table for the necrons.

 

For battles, you could use the planetstrike rules and split the points for the attacker up based on how many transports are available. So if you have 5 transports and 2000 points, each transport that offloads troops represents 400 points for the attacker.

[Demoulius]

hey Vaaish. not to sure on the transport idea. for starters the 40K follow up games would rely heavily on the survival of the transports. secondly what would be the force of the player thats on the planet? would he have 2000 points and the attacker a possible 400 if his attack is disastrous enough? :P sure it would be accurate and fluffy but it wouldnt be fun :(

 

it would be nice however to bring in reinforcements from other systems. saying that each vessel can take x amount of units (say 1000 points per ships?). whatever you cant take on those ships youd need to bring in with transports? seems like a fun nerrative and pretrty fluffy to boot.

 

i have heard back from 1 player. the templar player will be playing his templar ;) like i said earlier though his participation will have to wait for a month due to his exams. :(

 

will be going to our local campaign house next sunday to discuss how and what were gonna do :)

[Vaaish]

I mention transports because that's what is used in the BFG planetary assault scenario in addition to your normal fleet ships. I'd wager that if BFG says troops come in via transports then it's probably fluffy that they are deployed that way. Yes, it would make them rely on their transports but that is as it should be. What's the point of the BFG integration if it has little affect on the outcome?

 

The defender should start with a standard 2000 points or whatever is allowed in planetstrike scenarios. The attacker should have his force split in half to match with the first two results of the BFG scenario. So, if your attacking force in planetstrike equals 2k points, then you would get 1000 points if you score 0-1 in the BFG scenario. The attacker would get 2000 points if he scored 2-5 points with the BFG scenario. Every result past defender marginal win would add 500 points to the attacker. So in our example the attacker would get 2500 points for 6-9 points in BFG and for 10+ points you would get 3k points.

 

So if the total point value was 1500 for the attacker, you would get 750 points for each of the first two BFG results and 500 points for each of last two so you could end up attacking with 750, 1500, 2000, or 2500 points to the defenders 1500 points.

[Grey Mage]

hey Vaaish. not to sure on the transport idea. for starters the 40K follow up games would rely heavily on the survival of the transports. secondly what would be the force of the player thats on the planet? would he have 2000 points and the attacker a possible 400 if his attack is disastrous enough? :huh: sure it would be accurate and fluffy but it wouldnt be fun -_-

You assign garrisons.

[Demoulius]

yes i know troops get landed with transports (or strike cruisers and the like for marines) but what i meant whas if only transport gets through its rather pointless to include the 40K battle as any battle that is 400 vs 2000 points is just pointless to even begin -_-

 

do like the ideas of making the points more marginal :) i really doubt any battle would see all the transports get through to begin with and giving the attacker the posibilty to have a bigger force makes sense fluffwise imho. doing it this way wont make it a complete disaster for the defender if a few ships break through :) (i really doubt any battle will be won by the attacker when he sends less troops in then the defender has...forifications tend to take a hefty toll on an attacker :) )

 

besides we can make defending easier with scenarios so even if the attackers has more points it should still be doable for the defender ^_^

 

also like grey mage' s suggestion of adding a garrison to a planet! if your force is made up before the campaign begins and you have to devide your forces it gives it a more reallstic feel imho ^_^ just have to make sure it doesent get to complicated but well work something out :blush: (like i said meeting up this sunday. will know more then.)

[Demoulius]

something confuses me...

 

In the campaign section of the book it notes that if a ship is destroyed its name must be struck from the roster it loses its upgrade yadda yadda

 

and then it says it has to be given a new name ^_^

 

so in effect...your fleet only grows, you cant actually LOSE ships (rather just their names?)

[Chapter Master Ignis Domus]

We normally houserule in that they can be lost. It makes it more interesting.

[Brother Derringer]

For the boarding action, check out the game tiles from Doom. I have used them before and all the squares are perfect for regular 40k bases. Maybe tweak movement so everyone moves 6 squares, diagonal or adjacent, unless running.

[Grey Mage]

something confuses me...

 

In the campaign section of the book it notes that if a ship is destroyed its name must be struck from the roster it loses its upgrade yadda yadda

 

and then it says it has to be given a new name :D

 

so in effect...your fleet only grows, you cant actually LOSE ships (rather just their names?)

And they get the worst possible leadership- its a fairly heavy hit all things considered. But this is best for small campaigns only, wherein requisition can be a real pain.

[Demoulius]

hmm valid point on the small campaign and requisition of new ships....we will be 3 each side at the most :lol:

 

also if the pace that it takes to setup is anything to go by we wont have games on a regular basis...sadly ;)

[Demoulius]

the ork player came over for a game of battlefleet and kept it simple :)

 

explained the basics of moving shooting damage control etc. explained every SO and had some asteroid fields on the table as well as some gas clouds. as soon as we started playing things became much clearer to him and he (seemed at least) to enjoy the game ^_^

 

he was having some trouble moving his fleet around but who dident when they first started playing... he also had some horrible bad luck on his special order rolls so only got like 2-3 off for the entire battle. was a pretty close battle actually. i lost 1 gladius and 1 hunter but my SC lost a hitpoint (would have lost 3 more if i hadent rolled so well for my BFI :unsure: ) he on the other hand lost 2 swords, 1 firestorm. i couldnt bring enough hits on his Lunar to do anything other then bring its shields down sadly (and he rolled like 3 saves against my wave of torpedoes :D) a good first game i think :)

 

i left the NC, assault craft, teleport attack, ramming and boarding out of the game to keep his brain from exploding. the basics first! next time we play it will be abit bigger and il make sure all aspects of the game are present :) we had to proxy the fleets abit because i dident have the right amounts of escorts but he got his first taste of the game at least ;)

 

he will be looking into starting an ork fleet but it will probably take a month (or more) of time to build something up. cash is the biggest problem and he will most likely scratch build a great deal as well as scavenging parts and ships off websites like e-bay. (saw an entire IN fleet, with emperor, about 4-5 cruisers and a TON of escorts for 70 pounds up there... :blink: )

 

as for the campaign, we will most likely keep the 40K and BFG campaigns seperated for the time beeing to keep things simple.

[Grey Mage]

Thats one thing Ive always liked about bfg- its got a pretty cheap buy in for many of the fleets- and at about 150 bucks you should have everything youll ever really want.