[40K] Scotaria Campaign

Yeah, your eyes are not lying. I have actually began to post Warhammer 40K stuff in my revered duardin stronghold. Why, you might ask? Well, let me explain myself...

My blog started off as dedicated to dwarves, hence the name and theme. Soon I realized that also wanted to make posts involving my other six armies, making me drop the "My Dwarf Collection!" -part out of the blog name and thus making this place dedicated to Age of Sigmar in general.
As all of you know, ExtraBushyBeards has been very much about narratives lately. Narrative battle reports, narrative campaigns, fan-fiction... and the list goes on. Some weeks ago I had this sudden inspiration to start writing narrative battle reports about Warhammer 40K, a game I've only tried one or two times during my many years in the hobby. Not willing to part completely with AoS for my love of that excellent game system, I took it upon myself to transform 40K into this more streamlined ruleset. After weeks of hard work I eventually found myself staring at my laptop screen with this all over the place:

Yup, I made a campaign that is set in the 40K universe and played with slightly modified Age of Sigmar rules and custom Warscrolls!
The best thing is that my brother agreed to play it with me, and we both picked up the forces needed: I acquired a squad of Tallarn Desert Raiders and a Captain, he got himself a Steel Legion squad and a Commander.

With these small forces we will start playing through this casual campaign, adding more units to each side as we see fit. The campaign has no strict structure in place, only a bunch of Battleplans tied together by a grand narrative:

"On the Mining World of Scotaria in the southern Scotaria System an insurgency has overthrown the local authorities and tries to claim the planet for its own purposes. The 177th Steel Legion regiment has been assigned to deal with the threat before it grows too large to contain. The anti-insurgency campaign begun with vast carpet bombings on the rebel regions, disabling many of the insurgents’ largest training camps while the rest of the 177th Regiment established a fortified foothold on the landing site near the planet’s capital, Tedoncar.

The primary objectives of the Imperial Forces are the following: to secure and ”clean” the capital, to secure the various industrial centres scattered around the planet and to quell any rebellious tendencies among the planet’s population.

The insurgency is fighting for its short life under the pressure of the Imperial warmachine, clinging to its hopes of freeing their people from the corrupt imperial authority and to lead the planet to a new age of peace and prosperity. The civil war has divided Scotaria’s population between loyalists and separatists, but even if they will have to wage war against their own brothers and cousins the rebels are willing to risk everything for a better future, free of oppression."

Let us take a closer look on the campaign itself.

The campaign features 13 Operations which can (and will) be played in a totally random order. Each Operation has a piece of narrative to go with it, explaining what is happening and why. The objectives of the Operation are explained, as are 2-3 special rules that aim to make the game more interesting and unique.

Most of the Operations are Battleplans from Age of Sigmar, modified and tailored to fit this particular narrative campaign, whilst others are completely homebrew.

A game need its rules, as do the models that play it out. We use the 4-page Age of Sigmar ruleset with one exception in the rules for battleshock: when a unit fails its battleshock test, we do not remove fleeing models which is how AoS does it, but instead the unit is then Pinned Down. A Pinned Down unit may not move, shoot or charge during its next turn unless the effect is canceled by a friendly Hero using the "Move! Move! Move!" -Command Ability on them. This particular Command Ability is common to all Heroes in the campaign and is somewhat equal to Age of Sigmar's Inspiring Presence.

The custom Warscrolls were made using the Warscroll Designer found on the web. Using some old (probably 5th or 6th ed) 40K Rulebook I wrote down the values using the weapon and model characteristics I found in there.

And lastly, what would a narrative campaign and battle reports be without some casualty markers?

I managed to find a picture of some old Tallarn Desert Raider casualty models so I put them on a textured background to make some casualty markers for the campaign!
I couldn't find any Steel Legion casualties so I took one of the Tallarn pics, erased all the camouflage on the coat and replaced the turban head with a gas-mask cut/pasted from a screenshot of the Steel Legion Squad models. As a finishing touch I gave the corpse a lasgun to go with it, showing that the guardsman fell fighting the enemies of the Imperim of Man!

Once everything was set, all we needed was an urban game mat and some ruined city terrain, which our stockpiles of cardboard and foam lavishly provided.

The campaign rules for curious eyes and minds are available here as a PDF file:

Scotaria Campaign PDF

What? You only want the markers? Here you go then: Scotaria Casualties PDF

We've already played our first Operation in this war for the planet of Scotaria and I will post it up here as a narrative as soon as I finish writing it. It seems ExtraBushyBeards is now dedicated to the narrative side of the wargaming hobby in general!