The Story So Far:
As was covered in the previous post the forces of the Minotaurs and Blood Angels are fighting to control the planet of Gobin’s Forge.
They are opposed by Night Lords and the Death Guard. Both sides have been drawn to the planet after a mysterious corridor appeared between Imperium Nihilus and Sanctus. However, upon approaching the planet, they have found it to be completely abandoned save for two, shielded locations in the capital city of St Ignace.
The Campaign set up:
For this campaign my group and I debated how we wanted to set up our rosters. At the time we decided to use points instead of power level. Given that it had been a while since the power levels had been updated, we agreed that points would create more even games. To that end I tasked each player with creating a roster of 1500 points (though the early games will be capped at 1000 points) and, to get a feel for the battle honor system, allowed players to pick one free battle honor or weapon enhancement for their designated crusade leader. (This did end up creating a unique situation where a player gave a battle honor to a named character, but it wasn’t egregious, so we allowed it.) We also decided to use the 10 points for painting rule as it would encourage people to have the minis ready for the camera.
Going into the campaign here is what my roster looks like:
I used my Requisition Points (RPs) to get a warlord trait for my Bike Sorcerer and my Chaos Lord. I also got a relic for both the Chaos Lord and the Chaplain/Dark Apostle. Finally I spent the last RP to increase my roster by 100 points (roughly equivalent to 5 PL). As a side note feel free to use any and all of the material here as you like! Hopefully these will be helpful to some of you in your own campaigns.
The structure of the campaign will be a short, six game set. The first two rounds will be 1000 point matches with each team member playing against the every enemy team member. Games three and six will be larger team games, with the players matching up again with 1500 lists for games four and five.
First Games:
I picked the Recon Patrol mission as the first one as I wanted to test out the base missions before diving into customization. Furthermore, I felt this mission best encapsulated the feeling of two opposing forces landing on the abandoned planet and trying to scrounge up data on what had happened.
Another aspect I tried out was a clues system. As part of the narrative, I wrote up a sheet of clues about what had been occurring on the planet before the arrival of the players. I decided to try rewarding the winning side of each game with receiving D3 clues and the losing side with 1. In hindsight I would likely change it to give the winning side 2 clues and the loser 1 or to simply give one clue to either side at the end of the game. Since all players saw the clues (the only way to make it fair as I knew what was going on and couldn’t tell the Death Guard player) it took away the secrecy and incentive. It’s something I will play around with in the future. If you want to see the full set of clues, they are available here:
Without further ado here is our featured stream for this round. Future streams should be available shortly at Steel City Legion’s Twitch page.
Round 1 wrap up:
All in all, the first round went okay, barring a few hiccups.
****Spoilers for the Streams****
The Death Guard player was 150 points over his limit was an issue we discovered too late to impact the game. However, the Minotaur player was very generous, and the Death Guard player surrendered the victors bonus for the match (we discussed giving the Minotaur player an extra 150 points the next time the two of them play). I really liked the mission and the agendas system. There was a lot of bookkeeping, but I felt if you are intentional about it and make time to review your results at the end of the battle it goes a long way towards mitigating hassle.
I hope you enjoyed round 1, there will be more to come soon!
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