I’ve been playing miniatures games since 1994 (oh my God) and I’ve played them in pretty much every mode imaginable but my favorite approach has always been a good campaign. I enjoy a one-off game as much as anyone but I get a little bored of games that exist in narrative voids so an ongoing campaign with multiple players is where I can really sink my teeth in, creatively speaking. I love writing up a little background material for my army and developing rivalries or alliances with other players over a couple of games. But as anyone who has tried a campaign knows, it’s all easier said than done!
There are countless ways to run a campaign, of course. Map or territory based campaigns are classics, and the “official” Onslaught campaign system for Horus Heresy introduced in Siege of Cthonia is a solid little rules set for a two player campaign. I haven’t used the Onslaught rules yet myself but plan to adapt them for a Zone Mortalis campaign before long. Ongoing campaigns are great fun but they require a lot of work for whoever organizes it and for the players who typically need to report results and do a little book keeping. Sometimes you need something a little simpler, a short and self-contained set of games I call a “capsule campaign”.
My gaming club, Pike & Shots, has a good number of ‘Heresy players, and a yearly winter campaign is becoming a tradition. Since not all of us can meet regularly to play through an ongoing campaign I’ve put a simple system together that’s served us well for the past two years. Every December our members meet at our club space in downtown Seattle, Washington for a holiday party. This is a day of casual skirmish games, board games, and generally just socializing but with most of our members already in the city for the party it’s been convenient to designate the next day as a Heresy gaming day. About six weeks in advance of this day I set up a Facebook event and invite all our Heresy players to RSVP. Once I know who will be in attendance and what armies they plan to bring I can start planning in earnest.
For the 2023 campaign day we had 8 players RSVP, including myself and fortunately, an even break of players with Loyalist and Traitor forces. Here’s the breakdown:
Loyalists
Buford – Space Wolves
Lars – Raven Guard
Marky – Iron Hands
Matt – Ultramarines
Traitors
Chris – Iron Warriors and Thousand Sons
Max – Deathguard
Ron – Emperor’s Children
Simon – Sons of Horus
Once you’ve got your players and their armies settled, the next step in any kind of campaign is assessing what size armies your players can muster. Most of our group are veteran players who can easily bring 4,000+ point forces, but several of our members have just started playing in the past year and can only reasonably bring 1500-2000 points of painted figures. With this in mind, I surveyed our participants about part of our campaign day being a multi-player Zone Mortalis game. Chris volunteered to bring his Thousands Sons for that game, along with Lars and his Raven Guard, they’d be allied with our newer players, Max and Buford.
Having sorted out who would be bringing what, I finished arranging the games to be played. We’d have the 4-player Zone Mortalis Game and the other four of us would play a pair of standard 1 on 1 3,500 point games. With this basic stuff set up I could write a little background material to give everyone something to sink their teeth into.
What follows is the introductory post I made for our private event on Facebook:
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The Moons of Ephesus
In the final years of the galactic civil war the eyes of all turned to Terra. It became increasingly clear to all of the belligerents that the war would be decided at the cradle of mankind and traitors and loyalist forces alike began their final marches towards that destination.
The Ruinstorm began to lift and with it, passage from remote corners of the galaxy became possible once more. With the dissolution of Imperium Secundus, Primarch Roboute Guilliman began the slow process of mobilizing the XIII in order to clear the way for Sangunius and his legion as they made their way to reinforce Terra. Relatively stable warp passages were charted from the 500 Worlds of Ultramar to Terra and exploratory fleets were dispatched.
The Ephesus system, named for its sole habitable planet, had been captured by the forces of the Warmaster early in the war. The planet’s value lay in its strategic location and was largely used as an administrative and supply hub. Ephesus itself was over ninety percent urbanized, relying on supply from orbit via a vast umbilicum elevator and a surprisingly sophisticated teleportarium array on one of its orbital defense platforms. As the traitors began their final march on Terra, Ephesus became a critical junction for their efforts.
When Raven Guard scout ships arrived in the system, they found Ephesus heavily defended as significant elements of the IV, XIV, XVI legions mustered, along with smaller elements of other traitor legions, including a small detachment of Thousand Sons who were about some secretive business in the planet’s orbit. Returning to the fleet with this information the Ultramarines and their allies deliberated and quickly chose a course of action.
A two part strategy was planned. In the first phase a lightning assault would attempt to claim the orbital platform, umbilicum, and control of the planet’s largest moon, Plesius, followed by orbital bombardment of ground forces on Ephesus itself and a landing en masse to wipe out the surviving traitor forces. The Ultramarines and the numerous Iron Hands that accompanied them would engage the forces of the Sons of Horus and Emperor’s Children from their command center on Plesius while their other Raven Guard and Space Wolf allies would attempt to seize the orbital platform and its teleportarium and nearby umbilicum.
Their initial assault did indeed take the traitors by surprise but not all went as planned for the daring loyalists…
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Hey all, the above is our narrative background for this December’s campaign day and the winter megabattle! On December 10th we’ll play through the first phase of the siege of Ephesus in which the loyalists assault traitor positions on a moon and an orbital platform. With 8 players confirmed we’ll be playing 3 different games. 2 tables will represent the pitched battles on the moon while a 3rd will be a Zone Mortalis multi-player game. More details on environmental rules and such to come, but here are the pairings for now. I’ve tried to break it up a bit so we’re not playing our most regular opponents.
No primarchs, no superheavies for December. All standard Zone Mortalis rules as published in the Siege of Cthonia will be in effect. Multi-player rules adaptations for ZM reinforcements etc to come soon. The overall winning side will gain a minor benefit in this winter’s mega-battle, likely to be played on an urban warzone courtesy of Ron!
Moon of Ephesus battles
3,500 points, no primarchs permitted.
Iron Hands (Mark) vs Sons of Horus (Simon)
Ultramarines (Matt) vs Emperor’s Children (Ron)
Orbital Platform Zone Mortalis battle
1500 points per player
Raven Guard (Lars) and Space Wolves (Buford)
vs
Deathguard (Max) and Thousand Sons (Chris)
More soon!
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I followed this up with a second post, detailing the missions that people would be playing so they could plan their lists accordingly. In our previous campaign I’d had a force of Traitors attacking a Loyalist world so I thought it would be fun to flip the script and have the Loyalists be the forces taking the offensive. I chose a simple Zone Mortalis mission as it would already be complicated enough as a 3,000 point, 4 player game! For the 3,500 point standard games I chose the “Bloodied Path” mission from The Siege of Cthonia. This was a little juicier than a standard mission without being overly complex. I went on to add some bonuses that would be granted to the winning forces when we finished the campaign later this winter in our annual mega-battle weekend event.
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The Moons of Ephesus – Missions
Hi all, here are the missions we’ll be playing on 12/10.
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Battles on Plesius, the moon of Ephesus
These two battles represents the loyalist Iron Hands and Ultramarines staging a desperate lightning raid on the staging fields of the moon, Plesius from the entrenched Emperor’s Children and Sons of Horus,
Age of Darkness Mission: The Bloodied Path (Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness, Vol 1., pg 98)
Attackers: Loyalists
Defenders: Traitors
Special rules: Slay the Warlord, Break their Ranks, Reserves, Sudden Death. The Attacker may choose to begin the battle with Night Fighting in effect and need not declare this until immediately prior to the deployment phase.
3,500 points, no primarchs, no superheavies or titans, no fortifications for the Attacker. Allied detachments and Lords of War permitted as normal.
Iron Hands (Mark) vs Sons of Horus (Simon)
Ultramarines (Matt) vs Emperor’s Children (Ron)
The overall victorious side (most victory points between both players) will gain the benefit of being able to redeploy 1 non-super heavy or Lord of War unit per player on their side in the following mega-battle.
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Battle for the Iron Moon, Ephesus’ orbital defense platform
This Zone Mortalis battle sees a picked force of loyalist Raven Guard and Space Wolves attempting to capture a critical orbital platform from the traitor Deathguard and Thousand Sons.
Zone Mortalis Mission: Strategium Assault (The Siege of Cthonia, pg 194)
Note: All standard ZM rules are in effect for this mission. Please review them in advance, ZM list building and reinforcements differ from standard AoD play in a few critical places, particularly when it comes to deployment and reinforcements, and how that will inform your list building (it’s hard to have more than 1 HQ in your list unless you don’t mind them showing up on turns 3 or later).
Attackers: Loyalists
Defenders: Traitors
1500 points per player (3,000 per side)
Raven Guard (Lars) and Space Wolves (Buford)
vs
Deathguard (Max) and Thousand Sons (Chris)
The victorious side will gain the ability to add Deep Strike to a single infantry unit in the following mega-battle. If the Traitors win they may instead choose to gain a free unit of daemons (details TBD) instead of using the Deep Strike option.
Lemme know if you have any questions, but in the meantime, build your lists and talk strategy with your partners!
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With all that posted and read by the players, good natured smack talking and arms racing began! My opponent informed me that he’d be bringing an Armored Spearhead list if that was okay with me. I told him that was fine but I’d probably bring a knight and was motivated to paint a Heavy Support Squad carrying lascannons but would otherwise be fine playing a challenging game. Other players likewise shared a little info with each other so nobody would find themselves facing a game they had no chance of winning.
When the game day arrive Matt and Ron had to postpone their game but the rest of us had an amazing day of Heresy! The Zone Mortalis game saw a truly shocking amount of terminators deployed on both sides and resulted in a narrow victory for the Loyalists who managed to storm the teleportarium. As such, when the mega-battle comes they’ll have the ability to grant Deep Strike to a single infantry unit that normally does not have that rule.
Meanwhile, my game against Marky and his Iron Hands was incredibly brutal. He brought 16 tanks! I squeaked out a victory by playing hard to the scenario but even though I blew up 8 of his tanks I only achieved victory by a single point and had only a handful of troops left at the end of battle. It was a hardfought game but tons of fun. Matt and Ron will be playing their game in the coming weeks which will determine whether the Loyalists or Traitors win the advantage of redeploying a few units in the mega-battle.
Before I dump pictures from the campaign day here are a few tips on running this kind of two-part campaign event.
1. Plan in advance! Find out how many players you’ll have, what they’ll be playing, and what kind of terrain you have, or might want to create for the event.
2. Add a little narrative. Just a paragraph or two to set the scene goes a huge way towards getting your players invested in the event. Any bonuses won in the first part of the campaign should be quite minor. In a mega-battle something like a free alternative deployment method or perhaps a small points-free unit won’t swing the power level much.
3. Set expectations for your players about painting standards, sportsmanship, and the responsibility of everyone to ensure that not only is the event fun for them, but for their opponents.
I’ll be back with an update in March after our mega-battle to determine the fate of Ephesus!
