The Usual Difficulties Organising a Campaign

[LordLink]

Hi,

With only a few weeks left of high school my friends and I have agreed to start on a 40k campaign. Map campaigns are to complicated, tree campaigns are awful so that left a narrative.

At the moment the armies between us fit nicely into a nice 4v4. We have:

2x Space Marines, 2x Imperial Guard
vs
Necrons, Tau, Eldar, Chaos (mostly khorne)

Now I've received a bit of advice saying it would be better to just play a free for all. What do you all think?

What would make some good prizes for the campaign. We're all friends so should we just chip in some money? maybe some of the scenery being made for it? although we'd all be using it anyway.

Can anyone think of some fluff why necrons, tau, eldar and chaos would rather attack the Imperium, leaving each other alone? (at least until the imperium dies). The best we've been able to come with is some kind of daemonic artifact. Imperium is holding it for study, Eldar want to kill it, necrons are sensitive to the warp and threatened by it, Chaos wants to use it and tau want to remove any threats from the warp after they learned it was bad at Medusa V.

Any other helpful tips out there?

I would also like to invite any other 40k players in Canberra to contact me if you're interested in joining in. We can meet somewhere public first (like GW or something) so we can get to know each other.

[DP Excerion]

Make an army in control of the planet. Here's my idea, sort of a come off of DC.

Space Marines 1-A Small FOrce already deployed to the defence of the planet against the Tau

Space Marines 2-Reinforcements called in, after the Discovery of the Artifact. Does your friend have any GK units or a Daemon Hunter or something? Like the elites called in to destroy it.

Imperial Guard Planetary Defence Force-The Force defending the Planet. Could turn traitor due to the Chaos influenece and the artifact.

Imperial Guard Landing Force-The Bulk of reinforcements called in.

Tau- Already Fighting Over the planet for control against the IG.

Necrons-Hidden up the Earth, the Finding of this Chaos Artifact has awoken them from their slumber.

Eldar-Searching to Destroy the Artifact and make sure it doesn't fall into Chaos Hands


Chaos-Looking to claim the Artifact.

Write a nice script that happens through the battle and plan triggers that happen that no one expects. Make a nice evil thing in the middle as the Artifact. Could be a take an hold?

Hope I gave you some ideas.

[LordLink]

That means we would be dropping 4v4 Non-Imperium vs Imperium. Meh.

One of the players has 5 Grey Terminators and I thinkw e might have an Inquisitor.

Theres also a small 200 points of Witchhunters too. about 500 points of Dark Eldar as well.

[DP Excerion]

Grey Knight and WH strike force drop in when the Imperium first claims the objective but on final turn, DE appear with a trap.

Just ideas.

[Atma]

If you're not doing a tree or a map campaign, what kind of campaign are you doing? I personally love narrative map campaigns as making the map is half the fun. If that's the problem, just use the map from the Vogen campaign in the back of the BGB or use the map from Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.

Anyway, the problem is that some forces do not "mesh" properly both game-wise and storywise. I can see the Tau and Eldar allying--mostly with the Eldar misleading/misdirecting the Greater Good crazed Tau as both are "reasonable" races. I find it very difficult for Chaos to ally with anything other than Imperial Guard (Traitor guardsmen) and orks (stupid Xenos). Necrons, I believe, would NEVER ally with anyone, even if they could communicate with them.

In game terms, it's very...frustrated to be paired with a shooty army if you are a close combat army (or an immobile army allied with a mobile army, etc.).

Perhaps a series of battles where all four (three?) forces assault a single objective. For example, say your Imperial forces are protecting a city from forces that suddenly appeared. A combination of two could try to beat off the Tau/Eldar forces (who would probably make a good team with the way each of them works--both mobile forces if used right) while another Imperial force could take the north to beat off the newly risen Necron army and a Space Marine force (of course) try to crush/rebuke a chaos force?

This way, you can still include other armies (like a Dark Eldar raiding force sensing opportunity and "helping" some of the other races [secretly, though perhaps openly for chaos] to break through the defenses so they can capture the citizens in the city or whatnot).

Perhaps you should consider this being for fun and not for "prizes" or at least, not prizes that everyone chips in four. I mean, if everyone chips in ten dollars, that's only twenty dollars per side, which isn't a lot. Plus some people get weirdly competitive around things like that. Perhaps if you all throw some bits in a bucket and the winning side gets to pick out what they want from there? (With the losing side, of course, getting to divide up any unwants between them)

Hope it helps.