Campaigns: Global Warfare Part 1; Introduction and Battles

"Now it is my turn to write a tale of conquest and to begin forging the story of my exploits. Soon my name will be whispered across the stars as the savages learn to fear the might of the Greater Good. No longer will this world be held by the feeble and struggling hands of those fools who dare oppose Aun'va's will. Today, Fire Warriors, we will launch our assault and soon, we will call this world Fu'rios. May we all prosper as Tau shall"- Shas'o Shera before the conquest of Fu'rios.

I remember reading various different White Dwarf magazine featuring different campaign ideas, ways to tailor your army for a specific campaign (one instance was that a studio Imperial Guardsmen would paint a skull on his Leman Russ every time it blew up an opponent's tank in combat) and each player had a story to tell and heroes of their own from their rosters. They didn't have generic soldiers who achieved only a days victory, but they completed a whole campaign. Some would say those soldiers wen to Hell and back to conquer those planets.

Dawn of War introduced m into this game as well as the concept of "global warfare". The idea of waging horrific wars across the whole surface of a planet in hopes of conquering it for whoever's banner you sport. Really, the game sold me on playing 40k and it made me wish to conquer whole planets, create narratives, forge unique characters from the anvil of war and made me wish to have my own legacy of conquest within my own gaming group.

With these two sources of inspiration, I set out to create one of the most ideal campaigns I could come up, but they were always linear tree ones that really weren't successful. They still happened to fall flat and feel stagnant by the end (if we even got to the end) and I soon gave up on the idea.

However, GW soon heard my prays and released the "Planetary Empires" and I was definitely eager to grab myself a box of that domination glory. I ripped the box open and began ripping (metaphorically) through the pages to see what kind of massive-scaled wars I could wage against my locals, but only to be disappointed with the ten pages of rather generic rules provided. Honestly they aren't too bad for a place to begin, but I thirst for more.

I guess luckily for me, I've had quite a bit of time since the release to come up with a few awesome ideas to help bring global warfare to the tabletop and make it just as epic, if not more, as Dawn of War.

Battles

Of course what kind of battles to fight might be the biggest problem yet for people who just picked up the set (besides trying to paint all of the freaking tiles. I still only have ten of them painted) and GW suggests making it all completely random. No way, I'm going to do that when I have very well detailed battlescapes in front of me! I should at least try to mirror each tile's terrain on the tabletop and mission wise.

Ruins tiles should have lots of ruins and if you aren't too cheap (like me) then you should use the Cities of Death rules.

If the tile features a Space Port then I would recommend using some terrain to represent the fringes of sprawling cities within and use the Apopcalypse rules. No one ever assaults a large enemy point with a few guys!

And so on and so on trying to match the expansions (or your own homemade equivalents) and terrain to the tiles.

The Start of Global Warfare

Every planet is usually owned by one faction and every other faction decides to take advantage of a weakness and assault the planet trying to gain a foothold. To represent this, I recommend that you figure out who's going to be the defender of the planet (or team) and who/factions/organizations will be assaulting the planet. Say you assign an Imperial Guard player to defend the planet while Orks, Tyranids and Tau assault it, or a coalition of Space Marines, Grey Knights and Imperial Guardsmen hold a planet from the grasp of Chaos and their Demon spawns.

Next, the assaulting players should choose a terroritory by some means (I suggest by merely letting them pick and then later see if they can actually claim it by rolling on the provided table along with any assigned modifiers that are provided or made up. Or make it random and don't make them roll for conquest).

After the area of conflict has been assigned, begin a mission of Planetstrike or your own version of it.

If they fail, then continue around the table until each faction has their chance and then repeat the process for each failed assailant. If they continue to lose over and over again, then just give them a territory some where. Just say that through continued assault, scout forces were able to infiltrate and establish a foothold or something like that.

Once the assaulting factions establish their footholds or strongholds (look for some ideas on this topic later), the above ideas can be implemented across the planet.

 

Continued Assaults

Once the determined conquerors break the defender's defenses, they will need to continue on with invading adjacent territories or they can keep doing Planetstrikes (I would suggest that you nerf the amount of times they can do this. Otherwise it might get kind of out of hand). Use the above guidelines for terrain and the usage of expansions (I realize I sound like a GW marketing pawn here, but bear with me), but don't be hesitant to add in others!

Spearhead would be perfect for any of the open ground tiles while you could use the Battle missions book to spice up the battles as well as help provide some narratives.

If you don't want to use so many different types of expansions then you can just use your own scenarios or even the battle missions from the rulebook. Tailor them however you want, but make sure that no side has a clear advantage and if they do, then nerf them somewhere else. Example: Chaos decides to play a mission in their favor, Imperial Guard player doesn't really want to, but accepts it anyway. Nerf the roll required for Chaos to take over the planet.





That's it for part one folks. Don't be afraid to leave any questions in the comments section just in case I wasn't clear enough (sometimes I get a little too excited and skip a few details), or send me shout outs via Google+ or e-mail. I'd be more than happy to explain more in-depth, provide advice or clarify that long list of text.

Soon to follow up in this series will be some ideas on Campaign Heroes, unique characters/squads, strongholds, victory, Allies, unique tiles/campaign map structures, and more! I've got years of ideas built up folks, so get ready because Global Warfare is coming to your tables soon.