Did you ever hear the tragedy of Warhammer 10th Edition? It’s not a story r/WarhammerCompetitive would tell. An edition so focused on competitive play, to the detriment of narrative play, only to release some of its most fun rules right at the end.
With the release of The 500 Worlds campaign supplement, GW has given a gift to narrative gamers of all stripes. This system is incredibly flexible, not only because it allows you to combine game systems in a single campaign, but also because it lets you flesh out existing campaign systems with new mechanics.
I am currently building a campaign that my local group will run in April, combining both Battlefleet Gothic and Warhammer 40,000 into a single map campaign. The campaign will use both the Campaigning rules for BFG and the Crusade rules for 40k armies. While we started with The 500 Worlds map and adapted it to BFG, it would be fairly easy to do the reverse. In the following text, I will provide several approaches for doing just that.
Approach A: Starting with The 500 Worlds
When you start a 500 Worlds campaign, you are given a pre-built system map that your armies will contest. If you wanted the simplest method of adapting this campaign to BFG, you could simply say that any Boarding Actions games can instead be played using BFG. However, if you are reading this, you probably want an approach with a bit more meat on it. To do that, we first need to overcome several challenges.
- Challenge 1: In The 500 Worlds, factions have varying levels of control over a planet rather than a single, clear owner.
- Challenge 2: While fighting a Boarding Actions battle is one type of action players can take, there are several other activities as well, and these are determined by the outcome of a battle.
- Challenge 3: While the planets have attributes, they do not have clear analogues within the planet classification system used in BFG campaigns.
Let’s tackle these in order.
For Challenge 1, this is easy enough to accommodate. Using The 500 Worlds rules for planetary control is not a major impediment. Since there are four levels of control, winning a battle may not create as large a shift as a regular BFG campaign victory would. However, this is offset by the smaller campaign map, and it can also be modified if the majority of battles will be fought as BFG engagements.
Challenge 2 is less of a challenge and more of an opportunity, albeit one with a hidden complication. Beyond fighting battles, players in a 500 Worlds campaign may also fight specific kinds of battles that have direct effects on the campaign map. These include Exterminatus-type actions, Planetary Bombardments, and Invasions. In order to give BFG-only players a wider degree of campaign latitude, I have tied these actions to specific missions that players will use rather than rolling randomly:
- Seize Power Base – Battle Mission (randomly rolled)
- Purge and Burn – Raid Mission (randomly rolled)
- Orbital Invasion – Planetary Assault
- Planetary Bombardment – Exterminatus
- Supply Base Raid – Raid Mission (randomly rolled)
The outcome of these battles is determined in accordance with the 40k mission rules.
Now, there is an obvious balance issue here, because certain players and fleets may perform these missions more easily than others. As a Corsair Eldar player, I once won a Blockade Run on turn 3. Another possible approach, then, is that when a player randomly generates one of these mission types, it simply produces the appropriate result on the map.
Challenge 3 is probably the biggest hurdle. Since much of a good BFG campaign rises and falls on repair points, it can be difficult to know how to divide up the map. Based on the established lore of the system, I came up with the following assignments for the map provided in The 500 Worlds campaign:
| Forge/Hive/Pirate | Civilized | Mining | Uninhabited | Agri |
| Masnet | Jawardet | Karabas | Tarkad Vindix | Felgoris Secundas |
| Astarthem | Vikus Decima | Kryndaer | Novamagnor | Caltus Novem |
| Marvinius | Norallus | |||
| Ikaron Prime |
Note that these are based entirely on my own judgment and my own attempt at achieving balance. Since players can start with their strongholds adjacent to one another, it is impossible to fully predict where each team will begin. I tried to create several fronts across the map to encourage teams to spread out, but it may all end up being a wash.
One of the biggest challenges with this approach is assigning repair points at the team level. You may end up with so many that they become irrelevant, or so few that repair becomes nearly impossible. My initial thought is to create a shared pool that the team uses over the course of a round, but that would penalize players who start late or have scheduling issues. Another approach is to set a repair-point threshold for each team and then average the total between the players. I am not yet sure which method will prove most effective, and I suspect this is the area I will need to adjust on the fly the most.
Another minor issue with adapting The 500 Worlds map is that, with such a small number of planets, you do not get the luxury of including some of the additional options found in the Campaigning Through the Stars supplements.
These are the primary challenges I have foreseen in my group’s attempt to adapt The 500 Worlds for BFG. However, there is another approach.
Approach B: Starting with the Battlefleet Gothic Maps
Over the years, we have been blessed with an abundance of system maps for BFG. There is no reason a group could not start with one of those maps and adapt it to include the rules from The 500 Worlds. The only real challenge would be determining the attributes and infrastructure locations for each planet. In many ways, this is the simpler approach, although you would likely still need to use the control mechanics from The 500 Worlds, which would create a slightly different campaign dynamic.
Looking Ahead
In many ways, this attempt is only scratching the surface of what you can accomplish with this system. There are already built-in rules based on planet attributes that you can adapt, along with ways to incorporate system space stations and more. The 500 Worlds campaign is one of the biggest campaign releases for any GW system since the introduction of Crusade in 9th edition 40k. It has so many mechanics that integrate well with BFG that there has never been a better time to bring the community together and explore ways to combine these systems.
