Campaign ideas

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My job is many things, but exciting is not one of them.  This is unfortunate as I'm often bored stupid, but nice in that I have time to ponder and rough in ideas for things like 40k campaigns.  Taking the broad strokes EV and I discussed, namely a webway portal, I laid out the six levels of points we'll be playing and tried to lay a story on top of them that roughly follows the expansions I have planned.  To refresh your memories, the basic idea for my Orks starts with a Big Mek and some boys, then progresses through more boys, walkers, a biker Warboss, bikers, trukk boys, and buggies, in roughly that order.  What I came up with is Ork-centric, but at least it's a place to start.



A little background before I get into points and games.  The campaign concerns a single planet, formerly an Imperial world, now infested with Orks.  Whether the Imperium abandoned the world or was driven from it, the planet has been in Ork hands for a while.  It's a desertish world, so I'm thinking maybe it was an agri-world that got over-farmed and had the soil turn to sand, but that's more detail than needed at this point.  What matters is that there are Orks established on the planet, as well as a webway portal.  Now, some mildly crunchy details.

500 points - The Chance Encounter
The Dark Eldar come through the portal looking to abduct some unsuspecting farmers.  Instead they find a roaming band of Orks.  Hilarity ensues.  I don't have any specific scenario ideas for this.  Simply rolling for a random one from the book could work, or one could be selected to show that this is two forces encountering something they didn't expect.  Regardless of the outcome, the two sides part ways to lick their wounds.

750 - The Probe
With a riper bounty than anticipated at hand, the Dark Eldar start to feel out the changes to the planet and the size of its Ork population.  They find their way to the Mek's camp and conduct a raid/information gathering operation.  I'm thinking of an attacker/defender scenario here with the Orks in the middle, or on one flank, and the DE wherever else.

1000 - New Friends, Old Enemies
Tired of being attacked by poncy pointy ears, the Mek calls in some reinforcements in the form of a biker Warboss.  The two Orks decide to take the fight to said fancy lads and set out to track them down.  This can be a variable scenario, with whoever is in the lead at the time getting the drop on the other.

1250 - Here Comes the Cavalry
Continuing their search for the Dark Elder, the Orks come across a wrecked Raider.  As they root through the vehicle they are set upon by a DE force.  Things go poorly for the outnumbered(!) Orks until some bikers/buggies/whatever appear on the horizon and swoop in to join the fight.  I have a Raider that I'll never use, so I thought I could turn it into terrain and an objective.  I'm thinking of having forced reserves for the Orks so that the infantry is stuck on its own for a couple turns holding the Raider until all the zoomie stuff shows up.  This scenario could also be flipped so that the DE are trying to recover the Raider/their fellows, though I doubt DE would do something like come back for a fallen comrade.

Google also returns this on "campaign ideas."  Quite the spread.

1500 - Looting the Webway Portal
The Orks finally figure out where the DE keep coming from and set off to rip pieces off the portal.  The DE obviously won't like this, so they show up to defend the portal.  This one has flipping potential too, as the DE can either be caught off-guard or be lying in wait for the Orks.  If the DE are far enough ahead in the campaign, perhaps they can even get reinforcements from the portal as the game progresses.

1750 - The Showdown
Your typical epic throwdown.  Depending on who is ahead, this could either be the DE attacking the Ork camp or the Orks trying to turn on/force their way through the portal.  I think reinforcements/recycling troops would work especially well in this scenario as one side would be in the other's base, and thus liable to have to fight off waves of defenders.  Attacker and defender wouldd, again, depend on who was ahead going into the game.

So that's my basic plan.  Notable absences are a planet name as I have yet to find something Orky that I like, as well as a DE side to the story.  Since EV and I will hopefully be playing more than once a month, I'm also thinking about how to deploy these scenarios.  My first thought was to play them three times, at least through the final game, and declare the one with the best record as the victor of that phase.  Then I thought that we could play each scenario once and have the winner be the winner, then fill the rest of the month with random games.  There are plenty of options to explore.

On the painting front, I got a bit of time in today.  Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, so no pictures.  All I did was the reds and a heavy Devlan Mud wash on most of the model.  I tried the Mud on on ork's skin and liked the result, so I applied it to the rest of the boys.  It knocks the green down a bit, which is what I wanted, but now I'm thinking about going back with Snot Green for a bit of sharp highlighting.  The reds will need some sort of highlight as well.  I hope to get in a decent bit of painting tomorrow, especially since EV is making good progress on his troops already.  I'll even try to remember my camera.