Hey Everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to talk to you about campaign. No, not political ones.
Everyone seems to want to play competitive games. At least on the surface it looks like that, but once in a while I think sometimes you need a good palette cleanser to relieve some of the grind that goes on with trying to play at a competitive level. There are many ways to do that such as not playing 40K at all or working on another army, maybe the next army that you want to play. However there are times where you still want to just play 40K just to keep in practice. Although random pickup games are a good way to do this there’s no guarantee as to the quality of your opponent or even if they want to play a competitive game or just wanna hang out and roll dice. One solution to this is to play a campaign set in the 40K universe. This allows you to try something different, maybe even try out a new army, and at the same time doesn’t really focus on the competitive aspect of the game as you are more or less playing a narrative over the course of a month or two and playing games in order to move that narrative forward. So this week we will talk about a couple ways of doing a campaign in the 40K universe.
Ladder Campaign
A ladder campaign is probably one of the easier ones to do and probably one of the ones that will actually finish, which is the biggest issue with campaigns in general. In a ladder campaign you have a set amount of missions or battles and you are going to play those battles no matter what the outcome of the previous game is. One of the aspects that you can give to the ladder campaign is that you can have certain things carry over from battle to battle that way each battle is important especially what happens in the following battle. A good example of this is that some casualties in the previous battle can carry over to the next battle and this makes decision making during a battle that much more important since you can lose your soldiers as the game progresses and the campaign moves on. The good thing about this campaign type is that you know how it’s going to end and when it’s going to end. The downside is that it is limited on what you can do and you kind of know what’s coming.
Tree Campaign
The tree campaign is one that starts as one battle and then literally branches out into multiple battles depending on the outcome. So you may start with a main battle, such as a meeting engagement or something similar and then, depending on who wins, it branches out to a new battle and it grows from there. In this type of campaign the results of the campaign is very much influenced by who wins the games and at what point. This makes the battles themselves more important as it affects what scenarios are played next and also determines how much of a win or loss armies end up getting. If you are planning to do a tree campaign be sure to have a set number of battles to play out. Usually four maybe five battles is ideal because if you go more than that the branches start to get very big and unwieldy. The good thing about a tree campaign is that it allows for a lot of variations and a lot of results ranging from major victory, minor victory, and draw to minor loss, and major loss, depending on which army is effected. The downside to this is that it can get very complicated very quickly which is why you should limit how many battles there should be in the campaign.
Map Campaign
A map campaign is probably the most fun but at the same time the most daunting as there are way more variables than in the other two campaigns. You can make it as simple or as complicated as you want but as I have already said if you want the campaign to finish, simple is usually better. If you do want to go complex there’s a lot of things you can put into a map campaign. Depending on territories, what’s in those territories, and things of that nature, can greatly affect player’s armies. You can also include spending money to raise armies, army maintenance, and things of that nature. These types of elements tend to bog down after a while which is why I suggest keeping the campaign simple. If you are doing a map based campaign, and if you can find it, or more importantly afford it, I do suggest using the planetary empires campaign that GW made back in 5th edition. It is very simple and easy to play and usually doesn’t take too long to complete.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and what typesof campaigns to you enjoy, in the comments section below. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook, Twitch, and Patreon pages to stay up to date on what we’re up to and when episodes drop!
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