As you have seen our campaign has begun and the first week was a blast. My Blood Angels took on a mean pack of Space Wolves and fought them to a draw. The lead up to and playing in this campaign has really re-invigorated my hobby. I am going to go over why I am building, painting, playing and having a blast in our campaign.
1. The motivation to start a new army: Those of you who know me or have listened to me on 40K Radio know that I have a retarded amount of models.....especially Space Marines. When we first started to put this campaign together I asked everyone what they were playing. Seeing that nobody was doing Blood Angels I figured it was the perfect time to start my army. Within a week I had my entire 2000 point army built. Now that is motivation.
2. Getting me painting again: I has not really done a whole lot of painting in the last year. A bit of drama at the local shop and other factors had just wiped my painting motivation out. With this campaign I vowed to have my entire army paint. I just finished my first squad roughly a week into the campaign. It feels nice to get back on that horse and start churning out models. I learned some new techniques and so far I am really happy with the way the army is looking.
3. Seeing my friends every week: To me this is what it is all about. We all get together, shoot the crap, have some laughs and play some 40K. I will take this any day over playing in some lame cookie cutter tournament with the local power gamers. Now I am not saying all tournaments are like this but most of the ones around here are. I don't want to put up with a full day of seeing the same lists, 90% of the armies unpainted and dealing with guys that are there to smash face and win prizes. Don't get me wrong when I play I want to win, but not at the cost o having fun. The game I played last week was awesome. We both took turns beating the shit out of each others armies and in the end we fought to a draw. Even though the game was competitive it was very fun and we were having some good laughs. All the way through.
4. Spicing the games up: It can get really boring playing the same old missions all the time. One of the guys in the campaign really wants to incorporate the Battle Missions book into his games. I am really looking forward to playing him so I can have a change if pace from the normal missions. For the next campaign we run I really want to use Planet Strike, Cities of Death, and Battle Missions. I feel that these supplements are often overlooked and add a ton of fun to games.
5. Building towards something: One of the coolest aspects of a campaign I that it is not just a series of one off battles. Each game played impacts your following turns. It eliminates what can become tedious gaming. It is also a risk vs reward system. As the campaign goes on I will be tweaking my army list. The cool part about this is trying out new units......the dangerous part is whether or not the tinkering works. I am looking for a way to use Vanguard Vets into one of my lists. This unit could pay off in a big way or could be terrible and I could lose a battle costing me a tile on the map. The point I'm trying to make is that in the end every single battle counts and that is what makes this so fun to me.
Well there are my big reasons on why this campaign has been great for me. I know many people out there differ from my views and love tournaments. I just wanted to give you a glimpse into how much fun a campaign can be and the good it can do for your hobby.-Rik
Great post Rik. I generally play in a small circle of three friends for 40K and four for warmachine. You are inspiring me to create a campaign as well. Recently we had begun using the Battle Mission book to add some variety to the missions. A campaign feels like the next step.
ReplyDeleteSounds fantastic I would love to play in something like this (in fact I think
ReplyDeleteI'll look into doing something like this myself). The hobby has so much more to offer than just WAAC.
Building the whole army in a week is an awesome achievement good work.