Friday, April 6, 2012

Blended 40k Rules for Planetary and Mighty Empires

In running a protracted, tile-based campaign, we wanted to create a new set of rules that would blend together the rules that come with Planetary Empires and Mighty Empires.  Although we liked aspects of both, there were some other aspects we wanted to get rid of - such as the randomness in capturing a tile in Planetary Empires.  Therefore we set about creating a best-of-both-worlds approach in blending together these two rules sets. Below is the result of that blending!

Empire Points.
The tile-based campaign centres around the acquisition and spending of "Empire Points".  Players earn Empire Points for playing 40k games and the degree of their victories:

Empire Points Battle Result
7 "Massacre" victory. This means that all enemy models have been removed from the tabletop; or all objectives are held / met (not simply contested) at the end of a battle. A total victory!
6 Victory. The game was won (as defined by the mission rules, or over half of all possible mission points were obtained), but it was not a massacre result (as defined above).
4 Draw. The game was a tie by the mission definition.
2 Loss. The game was lost.
1 Secondary objective secured. If the game has a defined secondary objective (recommended!), then the player earns up to a maximum of 1 additional point for claiming the secondary objective.

The default secondary objective (if no other is specified for a mission) is to kill the leader of the enemy forces (the HQ with the largest points value if there are multiple HQs). Note that this means not simply routing them off the board - the enemy HQ must perish on the battlefield by your hands (that means that if they die through "perils of the warp", the point can not be claimed!).

Empire points can be expended on any of the following after a battle (or preferably) a round of battles has taken place. The player with the highest number of unspent Empire Points has the initiative and may spend their points before the player with the next highest points. In the event of a tie, players shall randomly determine who spends next. The Empire Points may be spent as follows:

Empire Points Expenditure
3 Conquest. You take a tile off a player that is adjacent to one of your own tiles. You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.
4 Long-range conquest. You take a tile off a player anywhere on the board. You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.
2 Rout. You force a player the relinquish a tile that they control that is adjacent to one of your own tiles. The tile is then treated as "unoccupied". You must have won a battle against that player in the last round of battles.  You cannot rout a force from a Mountain Tile, nor can you rout a force from behind a shield generator: they must be conquered (which is more expensive!).
1 Expansion. You claim an unoccupied tile that is adjacent to one of your own tiles.
1 Reinforcements. If you lost your previous battle, you may spend 1 Empire Point to increase the points value of your army by +75 points for your next battle.
1 Veterans. If any of your units survived, then one of them can be "upgraded" through gaining a veteran ability. The veteran ability must be chosen from this list: +1WS, +1BS, +1I, furious charge, tank hunters, counter attack, hit and run, infiltrate, preferred enemy, fleet.

If the unit all dies (not simply routed!) in a subsequent battle, the upgrade is lost. A veteran squad must be the same load-out as in the battle where they gained their veteran status. This cannot be transferred.
1 Destruction. If the opponent you have just fought controls a tile upgrade (such as a manufactorum) somewhere in their empire, you may expend 1 point to destroy that upgrade.  You may not destroy any construction that has been built in the same round, or any tile that was not occupied by your enemy before the battle.
1 Construction. You may build any one of the following on any tile that you control that does not already have an upgrade: manufactorum, power station, shield generator, command bastion.

Battles.
All battles will be at a pre-arranged points value. Team games (2 vs. 2; etc.) are permissible by prior arrangement. Each member of a team earns full Empire Points (as above) according to the battle outcome. All battles use standard 40k rules and missions, or alternatively Battle Missions from the book of the same name. There are two exceptions to this. The first is when a player has no tiles left, in which case, that player may force a planetary assault (planetstrike) on a target player in the next round. That player takes the role of the attacker. The second is a game that involves all players. Such a game may use Apocalypse rules and each player should increase the points value of their army such that each side has at least 2500 points.  Players with the lowest number of points gets to choose their next opponent first.

Spread Thin Rule.
When preparing for a battle, compare the number of tiles that you and your opponent own. The player with fewer tiles is entitled to a points bonus in the coming battle as per the chart below. This is to represent the other player being more thinly spread over their territory.

Tile Difference Points Bonus
0 None.
1-2 +50 points.
3-5 +100 points.
6+ +150 points.

Tiles and Upgrades.
Certain tiles, and certain upgrades to tiles have varying effects on the battles being fought and the map-based campaign as a whole. These effects are detailed below.

Tile / Upgrade Effect
Spaceport Tile The player controlling a spaceport tile is considered to be adjacent to all other spaceport tiles (NB: see above for conquest costs!).
Hive City Tile A Hive City counts as a spaceport tile, a power station, a command bastion, a shield generator, and a manufactorum all in one. The latter four may be destroyed by expenditure of Empire Points as above, but the Hive City Tile and its Spaceport status may not.
Mountain Tile It costs 1 extra Empire Point to conquer a mountain tile.
Manufactorum upgrade A manufactorum grants a bonus +50 points to every battle that you fight. This can stack, up to a maximum of a +150 points bonus.
Command Bastion upgrade Each command bastion in your territory allows you to assign a veteran rule to one of your units. This can stack up to three times (i.e. three units being upgraded). These upgrades disappear after a battle (unlike the expenditure of Empire Points veterans as above).
Power Station upgrade A power station gives the controlling player a +1 roll for selecting deployment zones, seeing who goes first, and all reserve rolls. The can stack three times, up to a maximum of +3 for each power station in your territory.
Shield Generator upgrade It costs 1 extra Empire Point to conquer a tile that has a shield generator upgrade, or any adjacent tile to the shield generator that is owned by the same player.




For the Wasp Campaign, all battles will be at 1000 points, unless by prior arrangement.

All players must supply a 1500 points army list from which they may choose 1000 points for any given battle. Bonus points (due to tile upgrades, the spread thin rule, or Empire Points expenditure) can be spent on either the remainder of the 1500 points list that they've supplied, or an allied codex that is undeclared. The latter option is to give extra flexibility in building multiple armies (so that players can get a feel for units from another codex that they don't usually use) and represents the arrival of recruited mercenaries, or other allies and slaves. 


If campaigns are at a higher points value than our Wasp Campaign, then bonus points values may require modification throughout these rules.

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