Angamar Campaign (PE Tiles/Pieces Painted)

A few of the Planetary Empires I painted (terrible pic)

It took me a bit longer than expected, but I finally finished painting the Planetary Empire tiles for the upcoming campaign.  I decided to go with a pretty simple ash waste planet to match my own home table and model bases.  The point of this post is to identify the lay out some of the high-level rules for how the territory and assets affect the games and how we will be setting up the map. 

Territories:

The territories represent the ground being fought over by the combatants and are made up of four basic types: clear, space ports, defense lines/rivers, and hive cities.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with any hive cities for this campaign, so we will not be using any.  Territories switch hands at the end of each month during the "end of turn" maintenance phase.  For every game a player won, he may select a territory of the losing player and attempt to capture it by rolling 2D6.  Territories adjacent to the winning player's territories are much easier to capture (4+) than non-adjacent (7+).  The type of the territory and other factors can modify the roll, and each additional territory a player attempts to take is harder than the first (-1 for each tile). 

As a player gains additional territories, his forces must spread out further to patrol/secure the increased area.  Therefore, when two players face off in a game of 40K, the player with less territory may take an additional 50 points of models/equipment for each additional territory his opponent controls.  For example, if Jim Bob (five territories) and Billy Ray (seven territories) decide to play a 2000 point game, then Jim Bob may use 2100 points to construct his army list.  Any extra points must fit within the standard force org(s) for either the main detachment or allied detachments.  Further, if a game is set at 1999 or below and a player has extra points to push him beyond 2000 points, he may NOT use two force orgs.

Clear territory... nothing to see here

Space ports are all considered adjacent to each other, and are significantly harder to take than clear tiles (-2)

Defense lines are slightly harder to take than clear territories (-1)

River/Lava tiles are slightly harder to take than clear tiles (-1)

Assets:

Each territory may have one asset on it representing a structure to help further the war effort such as power stations, shield generators, manufactorums, and bastions.  Each type of asset provides a specific effect depending on the relative number that the two players control.  The benefits are scaled by having more, having double, and having triple the resources.  For example, if Jim Bob owns three bastions and Billy Ray controls two bastions, then Jim Bob gains the "more" benefit of the bastion in their game.  However, if Jim Bob owned six bastions, then he would get the "triple" benefit.  There are options to make certain assets more effective for different factions, but in the interest of simplicity, this campaign will use only the raw number of assets controlled.

Power stations allow players to modify the roll to go first (+1/+2/+3)

Shield Generators apply a modifier to rolls to capture the territory they are on and surrounding territories (-4/-2).  Multiple shields do NOT stack

Manufactorums allow one player to bring additional points to games (50/100/150)

Command Bastions allow players to provide USRs to units on a D6 roll of 4+ (1D6/2D6/3D6).  Each unit can only receive one USR and each USR may only be used once per game. 

Setup:

A space port and a random tile form the basis of the map.  The players roll off to determine a tile placement order and take turns randomly drawing a tile and revealing one of the sides (without looking first!).  A drawn tile can be switched for a spaceport tile or placed with the revealed side up.  Tiles must be placed so that they touch at least two other tiles and space ports may not touch.  After each player places a tile, the last player places another tile and the order is reversed (Settlers of Catan style).  This continues until the map consists of six tiles per player (the first two players will only place five tiles).

Assets are placed in a similar manner.  The players once again start the rotation, placing one asset on any tile that does not already have an asset.  This continues until all the tiles have assets or a player does not wish to place an asset.  If a player does not place an asset, then each other player may place a final asset.

Once all the assets are placed, the players take turns claiming territories in the same order as before.  For their first territory, each player may choose any tile not already claimed by another player.  However, subsequent territories must be adjacent to tiles already claimed by that player if possible.  If not possible, the player may once again claim any unclaimed territory.  This continues until all players have six claimed territories. 

Once the board is complete, then the players can start pairing off for games of 40K.  For this first week, the player who was last in the rotation will get to select his opponent.  The "inverted" rotation will continue, with each unchallenged player getting to challenge another player.  Then let the games begin!