Greetings to all.
So after a 6 month hiatus i found myself sitting around with most of my old group who I used to play Warhammer 40k with. We all had other things on this year (year 12 for me:s) and in the 6 months since we'd played I had developed somewhat of an 'addiction' to 40k fluff. Now I really want to play again but a few of the guys seem to have lost alot of their enthusiasm towards it all, preffering to watch Cheech and Chong instead. So today while chatting to one of them i mentioned apocolypse and we started talking about organising an apocalypse style game. Then out of nowhere he says "we should think up a bit of a story and have a campain, maybe play every couple of weeks and end it with a massive apocalypse battle". Thus begins the planning stages of our campain!!

So yeah as much as I'd love to do this, there are a few issues that I kinda need your help with. First of all most of us are too lazy to actually build our troops. Secondly, although we've been playing for a while now, and we all understand the basic game mechanics, for some reason everyone seems to have skipped the 'missions' section of the rulebook. For example, I mentioned 'table quarters' today and got blank stares from 3 out of the 4 other people there. The guy who didn't give me a wierd look help up a piece of scenery and said "could we use this as a table quarter?"

Anyway my actual question is:
From your experiences, would you recommend us try and organize a campain and do you think this would
a) Motivate the guys (including me) to actually paint something
b) Help us all learn the rules properly
c) make the game a little more interesting for everyone than just *deploy, move, shoot, stab stab stab, kill, repeat*
Also we were thinking of buying the Mighty Empires kit and adapting it to 40k, having gold as planetary requisition (DOW:p) or something and trying to use some sort of simple honour system from the rulebook. Yay or nay?

Any suggestions/story ideas/monetary donations:D would be greatly appreciated!!

Wispy^

I personally find that having some character and background to a force definitely helps motivate you to finish assembling and painting them. The trick is, you also have to start small; if you start off your campaign with, say, Combat Patrol sized games (400-500 points) then you can get those forces finished in no time to work on your next bits.

As for learning the rules properly, only actually playing can help with that; have everyone study the rulebook for a while, then start playing. A campaign, being a series of games, will definitely help you learn the rules right, especially if you use some missions and the likes. Having background, a story, and most especially characters from each army taking part in the campaign will definitely motivate you guys to start playing, especially if you give the armies a way to grow and expand; check somewhere near the back of the rulebook for Campaign Experience (I think there might be a page reference in the 40k Rulebook Index sticky in the 40k Rules Help forum), those ideas might be able to help you out as well.

As far as campaign-specific things go, though, I can't help you much as I haven't had much experience designing or organizing a campaign. Good luck, however! :)

Rep for Nemesis for the help and the sheer awesomeness of christmas Drazhar.
In case anyones interested I'll list everyones armies

Me: Dark Eldar (1500+pts)/Salamanders (about 300 points)
Imperial Guard(with tank company)3000pts+/Black templars (>750points)
Dark Angels (1500+)/Eldar(1500+)/Imperial Guard(approx 1000 pts)
Ultramarines (1500pts+)/Tau (1400 pts)
Necrons (2000 pts)/Daemonhunters (1000pts)
Necrons (1000pts)/Tyranids (500pts)Thats pretty much what we all have right now but alot of it is broken/unpainted/armless so 400-500 point battles would be a good start. There will probably be some borrowing of units somewhere along the track, I think my brothers sick of his Ultramarines anyway:/
Any opinions on using Mighty Empires?

Mighty Empires would work just fine. But remember, map-based campaigns take more time, and more effort. I'd run something more akin to a ladder campaign.
If you still want to run a map campaign, and end with a huge Apocalypse battle, i'd divide into "teams" before the campaign even started. Get together with the group, divide into 'Good' and 'Evil' and nominate a "general" for each one. The generals then dole out 'missions' to the other players. After the outcome of each 'mission'/game, the general can look at bonuses and such. This gives the impression of a map campaign (each player has a 'territory' of bonuses to defend) but gets rid of all the toturous walking and skirmishing.

My group ran a campaign like that, and in the end it was highly enjoyable. Granted, by the end of our summer-long campaign, we had VERY detailed rules on how troops were allotted to missions and what sorts of bonuses you got etc. But that's just one suggestion from the peanut gallery.

Ok thanks for the replys, I'll see what the other guys think and get back to you.

You should go for it, it's a great idea that could hopefully get people more excited and get them to paint as well. Perhaps you could use a chart that divided people up, let them know what mission they'd be playing in advance, and then let them know what advantages in the last big battle they would get for winning the small battles beforehand. Hope this helps!

Tekore

can i ask for a clarification would the campaign be set all on one plant or on multiple plants or like not on a planet at all

We played on a single planet. You could play on multiple planets, but you'd have to explain how the armies all convene on a single battlefield at the end. Here's sort of an example of one chart entry:

---------------------------------------
Iron Dragons:
-tank foundry*
-eastern mountain pass**

*tank foundry allows up to 500pts of tanks to be held in reserve, brought onto the table from one of the factory complexes

**mountain pass- up too 400pts of infantry and 100pts of vehicles may move in as reserves, entering along a table edge within the enemy deployment zone.

Iron Dragon's Oders:
use up to 2,000pts to attack the Basilisk fortifications held by the World Eaters. This attack will be supported by the Imperial Guard, so coordinate troop alotments accordingly. High casualties are acceptable, and expected.
-----------------------------------------------------------

basically, what this meant is that in the next game, the Iron Dragons would be facing the World Eaters for control of the Basilisk fortifications. If they win this battle, they will add it to their list of territories to defend.
They already hold the Tank Foundry, and the Mountain Pass. If an enemy attacks them, they can choose to defend these territories, or just give them to the enemy.

In our campaign, to keep the feel of a map-based conflict, we had a total points value for each player. 10,000 was the cap i beleive. This represented all the troops that they had in reserve. Whenever an attack was ordered, you were alotted a certain amount of these troops. Points lost in the battle were also lost from your 10k limit. If you ever lost your entire 10k, you were assumed to have been destroyed.

The campaign was alot of fun for the players and the two generals. The players had to be concerned about casualties (which occasionally meant the army would disengage mid-game) and making sure that they fought their missions quickly. The generals not only had their own armies to play, but had to manage casualty rates amongst their junior-officers and decide what army was best suited to what mission. It was like a map (we even drew a map out and put pins to mark controlled features) but without all of the tedious movement phases and supplies and so forth.

In our campaign, to keep the feel of a map-based conflict, we had a total points value for each player. 10,000 was the cap i beleive. This represented all the troops that they had in reserve. Whenever an attack was ordered, you were alotted a certain amount of these troops. Points lost in the battle were also lost from your 10k limit. If you ever lost your entire 10k, you were assumed to have been destroyed.


Wow, thats a really really good idea! I might try and do something along those lines if you dont mind my copying your idea. For an apocalypse battle at the end I was thinking maybe (maybe!) that any left over points from the original limit (as you did) would be deployed along with any bonuses etc. after a set number of game turns. This would mean that preserving your forces throughout the campain would be extra important, and you would have to decide whether or not fighting for a particular bonus will be worth it at the end. Just thinking out loud here, thanks for the replys!

Oh and @Munch we were thinking over one planet, as in Dark Crusade, just for the sake of simplicity.

Feel free to use my ideas. It's not like GW will let me copywrite them or anything, or that it's even an original idea. It's actually based on the WHFB Border-Princes campaign in the back of last editions rule-book.

Instead of using the total remaining points as an addition to the force, i'd say use maybe 1/2 of the remainder as Reserves or as the extra points for Meatgrinder style. (if you don't know Meatgrinder, it's in last editions book as a scenario special rule)
If you have a really good player, you run the risk of having someone with ALOT of points swinging the game, especially if you are running it as teams, where multiple 'left-overs' will really stack up.
We had our best player (actually finished second place behind our most reckless player) leave the campaign with aproximately 8,500points.

Okay so here goes...

A) Motivation- As was said before, character and fluff are pretty good motivators here. If that's not enough, you could always throw in incentives to paint such as a painted army wins a draw, or gets to pick their deployment zone regardless of dice roll, that sort of thing.

B) Rules- Really the best way to do this is to start small and work your way up. You can read and re-read the rules all you want, but putting them into practice is the surest (and IMO most fun) way to get the rules down.

C) Campaign Variation- Here (http://us.games-workshop.com/games/40k/gaming/voranoth/default.htm) is a link to a GW example of a campaign. There is a basic framework that you can tailor to your own forces and such. If you want different ideas, you can always borrow from movies and such. One of the coolest campaigns I participated in was basically a 40K version of D-Day and the ensuing breakout.

But yeah running a campaign is pretty time consuming and can get expensive, but it is a lot of fun once you start playing. It's fun to play a meat grinder and be done, but when there are consequences to each battle, things get way more intense. You get players that are fighting to stay in it and players that are dominating, and really it just adds a whole new aspect to the game. If you've got the time and are willing to put forth the effort, campaigns are definitely worth it.

Anyway. Keep us posted on the progress.