Medusa IV 40k map campaign- alliances and starting positions

In my last post on my 40k map-based campaign, I wrote about the campaign rules pack that I was sending to the players. After a few weeks of advertising the campaign, I was amazed to have 14 players sign up to participate. I had originally planned for 6-8 players signing up, so I had to make some changes to my rules (the map I was using was far too small for starters).

 

The major changes were that I essentially doubled the map, increasing it to 126 tiles. With 14 players (plus my own tiles), that works out to just over 8 tiles per player which I thought was a decent number.

The other idea that I implemented was to form the players into different alliances. This would allow players from an alliance to fight games for their allies if they were unable to attend the club on a certain night or if they end up with too many games to play. I have had campaigns stall before when players are simply unable to attend to fight battles (it can happen, I'm sure we are all interesting and exciting people whose lives sometimes get in the way of rolling dice), so it helps to provide as many options as possible for getting games played.

 

 

I tried to keep the alliances as thematic as possible rather than looking at equalling the power of each alliance. Lee was originally supposed to be playing Tau, but wasn't sure he would be able to get his army finished on time, so switched over to Blood Angels (that's why they are fighting with the Tau and Eldar).

Each player was given 3 starting tiles, enough to ensure that they could not be quickly eliminated from the campaign and to allow a decent area for expansion.

 

I will be playing a static guard army, unable to move or capture tiles. This was to ensure that I was able to play some games in the campaign (hopefully a lot of games), but wouldn't be directly competing with the other players.

 

I also gave each player some secret objectives that they will need to complete during the course of the campaign. If they are able to achieve this, their army will get a big bonus to use in their games. I will not be able to reveal these at the moment, but will be doing so as the campaign proceeds and they are achieved.

 

White Scars Battle Company

One of the great things about running a campaign is that you get to make up new rules for whatever you fancy. One of the campaign players, Allan, contacted me about wanting running a white scars battle company for his force. He was unhappy about being able to field so few bike units in the Gladius strike force (a position I wholeheartedly agree with) and wanted to know if he could modify it to better suit his scars.

After a little bit of thought, I came up with the following restrictions:

• A player may replace all the tactical squads in a gladius strike force with space marine bike squads. Each bike squad must be a minimum of 5 strong.
• If a player replaces the tactical squads with bike squads, the Chaplain or Captain must be mounted on a space marine bike.
• Any devastator squads in the strike force must be given a transport.

So I expect to see plenty of bikes around the board, I may regret this decision if I come to face him in battle.

The first games of the campaign are due to be played on Thursday, so I will hopefully be reporting on the upcoming battles and results over the coming months.