Armageddon Campaign - Set-Up and Round One

Thursday night saw the start of our club campaign, based loosely around the First War of Armageddon. We are using a simple campaign mechanic of my own devising, similar to that of Planetary Empires. 

 

 

 

HOW THE CAMPAIGN WILL WORK: 

Basically, our campaign board is split into three main areas - an orbiting Space Hulk, the continent of Armageddon Prime itself, and Hive-City Anthrand, control of which is the ultimate goal of the campaign. Each area then features different environments, which dictate the terrain to be used; for example, games set on the Space Hulk will be played on a Zone Mortalis board, while games set in the Hive-City are played on boards packed with buildings and ruins. The main landmass features three environments , plus a number of feature-boards. The three environments are desert (minimal, low-level terrain), jungle (loads of trees & bushes) and scrub-land (normal terrain rules apply). 

The six feature-boards give the controlling player in-game bonuses, for example control of the space-port is allowed a single re-roll to one reserve roll, whilst the Manufactorum gives the owning player the chance to repair a single vehicle immobilised result once in the game. The bonuses are intended to get players fighting for the feature-boards on the land-mass as well as just aiming to control the Hive-City boards. 

THE CAST OF PLAYERS: 

We have six players competing for control of Armageddon: 

Andy - Tyranids

Daryl - Orks

Graeme White - Eldar / Dark Eldar

Graham S - Squat Guard (IG)

John Holland - IG / Space Marines

Keith Duncan - Necrons

Ad you can see, the armies are quite a varied mix, so the theme of the Battle of Armageddon is very much just for flavour - it was never our intention to faithfully recreate the original battle. 

CAMPAIGN SET-UP:

On our first campaign night (yesterday) we met to kick things off. After running through the campaign rules, we agreed to make a few changes - things like how territories are won and lost. Chatting between players is absolutely essential when developing new rules and game mechanics - it's easy to become blinkered when writing in isolation, and it's very hard (for me, at least!) to think through every single consequence of the process. So, we amicably talked through the rules, agreed a few sensible changes, and then started the process of selecting territories. 

Each player first choose one feature-board; these were as follows: 

Space-Port: controlling player may reroll a single successful or failed reserve roll.

Ammo Dump: controlling player may select one unit and count their weapons as twin-linked during that phase only.

Manufactorum: controlling player may attempt to repair an immobilised vehicle result on a 4+ (once per game)

Gas Refinery: controlling player may decide whether night-fighting is in effect on turn one.

Comms Relay: controlling player may attempt to bring on a single unit from reserves on turn one on a roll of 5+.

Power-Plant: controlling player may select a single vehicle (or squadron if vehicles). Any vehicle in that unit counts as being ‘fast’ for the duration of that turn only.

Once each player had selected a feature-board, we then took turns in selecting the other boards. I went for desert boards as I play Guard and clear line-of-sight and little cover for my enemies to skulk behind is a dream! Andy preferred jungle boards, as his Tyranids would benefit greatly from all the dense cover. The other players also took a mix of terrain types, suiting their particular army characteristics. 

ROUND ONE GAMES: 

Finally it was time for some action! Normally the player with the highest number of territories would have first choice of who to challenge for control of a board, but of course everyone starts with an equal number of territories at the start of the campaign, so we randomly decided who would challenge first. 

The first round of games was decided as follows: 

Graham S (Squat Guard) challenged Andy (Tyranids)

Daryl (Orks) challenged Graeme W (Eldar)

John (IG / Marines) challenged Duncs (Necrons)

I'm hoping the players will post individual match reports here over the next few days, so I shan't publish the results just yet... so watch this space for match reports very soon!