With the long-awaited arrival of Battlefleet Gothic, a whole new dimension is available for players in Epic and 40K campaigns – space! For years we’ve enjoyed battling over cities and continents and now we can wage war for the possession of star systems or whole sub-sectors. Fighting spaceship battles is good fun. Fighting ground battles is equally entertaining. Fighting a combined army and fleet action? It’s gotta be a winner!
There are several ways for squashing together your Epic and 40K games with Gothic battles, from one-off games to massive sector-spanning campaigns. By far the most obvious and highly appealing options is to stage a full planetary assault, using Battlefleet Gothic to land troops on the planet and then fight 40K and/or Epic battles to decide the land war. There are two ways of approaching the combined planetary assault: sequentially and simultaneously.
When playing sequentially, you fight the Gothic planetary assault scenario to its conclusion and then depending on how well the attacker fares you then play a game (or games) of 40K or Epic. As noted in the planetary assault scenario, every assault point scored by the attacker is worth 2,000 points in 40K and 400 points in Epic, but how exactly can you use that to work out your planetary landing?
For Epic battles things are relatively straightforward, simply play the Epic 40,000 planetary assault scenario with the attacker having the appropriate points value. As an alternative, the attacker can trade one assault point’s worth of units for D3 orbital barrages (roll a D3 on the turn you want to use the barrage, this is the number you can make that turn). These orbital barrages are worked out just like the Fate card of the same name. For example, a Chaos player manages to score a respectable 7 assault points in the space battle. This gives him a total of 2,800 points of units. However, he opts to field a 2,000 point army and have an extra two salvoes of D3 orbital barrages.
But how many points does the defender have? Looking at the results table in the Gothic planetary assault scenario we see that 5-6 assault points is considered to be roughly average. This translates into 2,000-2,400 points in Epic so we can say that the defender gets 2,000 points (equal to a minimum marginal win for the defender). Alternatively, the defender’s points value can be modified by the type of world being assaulted (see page 140 of Battlefleet Gothic for a table to generate a random world type). The defender starts with a base value of 2,000 points, modified as follows:
World type |
Defender’s points total |
| Forge World | +D6+3x100 |
| Hive World | +D6+2x100 |
| Civilised World | +D6+1x100 |
| Uninhabited | -D6+3x100 |
| Agri-world | +D3x100 |
| Mining world | +D6x100 |
| Penal Colony | -D6x100 |
Things are a little more complicated for 40K games, because each assault point is worth a whole army… Play the game of Gothic as normal, each assault point scored by the attacker represents an army dropped to the surface. Each army fights one 40K battle when its lands and the attacker must win a certain number of battles to ensure a successful overall landing. The more armies the attacker has the more bites at the cherry he gets – winning 5 out of 10 battles is easier than winning 5 out of 5! The planetfall scenario in Codex: Space Marines is a good basis for a dropzone battle (units which cannot deploy from drop pods enter from a random table edge when they arrive from reserve – see the battle report in WD231 for a good example). Alternatively you could fight Recon, Blitz, Night Fight, Take and Hold, Patrol, and Bunker Assault missions. Keep track of the total number of battles won by the attacker and then refer to the following chart to see how the landing went:
No. Attacker wins |
Result |
| 0-1 | Annihilated! Your forces barely make any impact on the planet’s defenders and are swiftly wiped out. |
| 2 | Decimated! Your armies do little to trouble the defenders, who soon mass to destroy your meagre force. Play the Breakout scenario as the attacker to see what happens, if you win then your score goes up to 3, if you lose your score goes down to 2. |
| 3 | Defeated. You fought valiantly but the small amount of ground you managed to capture will do little to damage the enemy’s grip on this world. You must gain more territory. Play a Take and Hold as the attacker, if you can win then your score goes up to 4 wins in total, if you lose then your score goes down to 2. |
| 4-6 | Extended ground campaign. You manage to get a fair amount of troops and war engines to the surface intact, but the world’s fate will only be resolved through a protracted campaign. A simple campaign system is to play games as normal, but keep track of each player’s win/loss ratio. Once a player achieves a 75% win rate or better then they wrest control of the world – you should play a minimum of 4 or 5 games though, otherwise the person who wins the first battle gets a 100% record and wins immediately! |
| 7 | Landed in strength. The enemy suffered some heavy losses during your attack and you must press home the advantage you have. Play a Blitz mission as the attacker. If you win your victories go up to 8, if you lose they go down to 6. |
| 8 | Overpowering Numbers! You land massive forces all around the enemy positions, taking vital strategic points and disrupting the enemy’s lines of communication and supply. Now is the time to finish them off! Play the Meatgrinder mission as the attacker. If you win your victories total goes to 9, if you lose it drops to 7. |
| 9+ | Total victory! The enemy were completely smashed during your initial assault, many were killed and thousands surrendered, surrounded by your assault forces. The planetary government quickly bows to your demands and your control is assured. |
As you will see, it is possible to slide back and forth, with the attackers trying to launch an offensive while the defenders must muster a counter-attack. It is possible to move several places up and down the chart, so that a worthy campaign may well be salvaged from a poor landing, and vice versa. This is shown more clearly on the campaign tree ?below?.
Just as with Epic, you can trade assault points for orbital bombardments instead of armies. You must decide exactly how many assault points represent armies and how many are bombardments before fighting any battles (for example, if you score 6 assault points, you could say that they represent 4 armies and two orbital barrages). There are two types of orbital bombardment in Warhammer 40,000 – pinpoint and saturation, and both are resolved in one of your own shooting phases, no more than one bombardment per battle. A pinpoint barrage is represented by an Earthshaker cannon shot. Place the ordnance template anywhere on the table and scatter it D6" to determine the bombardment’s final position. A saturation bombardment uses the rules for preliminary bombardments given in the scenario special rules. However, a saturation bombardment is worked out in one of your shooting phases rather than before the game, and effects all eligible units on the tabletop, including your own (i.e. roll a dice for every unit on the table, on a 6 they are affected).
When played simultaneously the ground fighting and space battle take place at the same time – you play a turn of Gothic and then play a turn of Epic, with forces being landed, orbital bombardments and so forth depending upon the situation amongst the stars. Where as in a sequential assault you fight several games in succession, in the simultaneous assault you play more than one game at once. The simultaneous assault works better for games of Epic 40,000, but you may be able to devise a system for fighting simultaneous games of 40K.
Put simply, for every turn of Battlefleet Gothic you play, you play one turn of Epic 40,000 too. Before the game starts, each player must pick their Epic 40,000 army and their Gothic fleet. The size of the battle depends on how big the attacking fleet is – for every transport in the fleet the attacker’s army is worth 800 points. For example, if you were playing a 1,500 point Gothic battle, that would be 6 transports which is 4,800 points of Epic units. The defender gets either 2,000 points or a random amount determined by the planet type, using the method described earlier. The attacker’s detachments must be assigned to specific transports (‘12th Necromundan Hellhammers in the green transport’, for example). If you are using heavy transports (details given elsewhere in this article) then each one may carry 1600 points of detachments instead. Only heavy transports may carry war engine detachments.
The defender sets up his ground forces and defending fleet, then the battle begins. Play the Battlefleet Gothic game until the attacker scores his first ‘assault’ points. From then on, play a turn of Epic 40,000 after finishing every turn of Battlefleet Gothic. Rather than scoring abstract ‘assault’ points, the attacker may land detachments and perform planetary bombardments. If a transport gets into a position where it can score assault points, the detachments it is carrying will arrive on the Epic battlefield that turn, moving on from the attacker’s primary landing zone. When a transport has deployed its detachments, it makes planetary bombardments but may only make one bombardment per turn (ignore the fact that it usually scores two ‘assault’ points per turn). If a capital ship (or empty transport) scores an assault point then the attacking player can make an orbital barrage that turn, using the rules given on the Fate card of the same name.
So the first Epic turn will either consist of orbital bombardments against hidden defending troops, or the first detachments landed coming on to the table (again, possibly with orbital bombardments to support them).
Other than this, both battles are fought using the normal rules, and the overall victor is the side which wins the Epic 40,000 game.
Example: An Ork force is launching a planetary assault. The players start their game of Battlefleet Gothic and in the sixth turn there are two Kill Kroozers and a transport within low orbit in a position to attack the ground. The players then play their first turn of Epic 40,000, with two extra orbital barrages for the Orks that turn and the detachments carried on the transports move on from the Orks’ table edge in the movement phase. In the next turn one of the Kroozers moves out of attack range but is replaced by another transport. In the second Epic turn the Orks’ still have two extra orbital barrages and the newly arrive transport will then deploy its detachments to the surface. Both games continue like this until the Epic 40,000 game is won.
You can use this system for sequential games as well, with armies/detachments being deployed by transports and orbital barrages being scored by capital ships – rather than being given a free choice on what each assault point represents.
Space Marine Battlebarges and Strike Cruisers excel at planetary assaults, and to cover this you could apply the following rules. A Space Marine fleet does not include any transports, instead each Battlebarge carries three detachments and each Strike Cruiser carries a single detachment. Space Marine detachments deployed to the surface can either use drop pods or Thunderhawks. Detachments which could normally be carried in drop pods will be deployed using drop pods (see the Epic Battles Book and Army of the Imperium detachment list). Any other detachments are taken to the surface by Thunderhawk detachments on Transport missions. These Thunderhawks do not have to be paid for separately and the spaceship carries enough Thunderhawks to deploy all of its forces in one turn. For deploying Rhinos, Land Raiders and so forth from Thunderhawks, have a look at the additional flyer rules in Epic Firepower (first published in White Dwarf 214). Of course, you will need appropriate models, which could be quite a few Thunderhawks. If you have insufficient Thunderhawk models to transport a detachment then the detachment will move on from your primary landing zone as normal. Any Thunderhawk markers that move onto the planet’s surface from low orbit count as a 3-strong Thunderhawk detachments which can then perform an intercept or ground attack mission that turn.
If you really want to go to town, there’s no need to limit yourself to just fighting the planetary assault. For example, you could fight an extended campaign from when the troops actually enter the system. Perhaps the system is blockaded, so you must fight a blockade run to request reinforcements. If successful the reinforcements arrive and must fight an escalating engagment to raise the blockade. Once the blockade is raised, you could do a small-scale surprise attack to try to clear out the planetary defences and any nearby ships. The transports must be escorted to the planet, using the convoy scenario. Any transports that survive the convoy can then be used in the planetary assault itself, while the number of defending ships will be affected by the earlier attacks. If the planetary assault fails it may be decided that exterminatus is the only option left. In this way you can play several Gothic battles followed by a series of Epic and/or 40K battles to decide the fate of the system.
Not all merchant ships fall into the standard ‘small transport’ category. Some of the larger trading galleons and ore carracks approach the size of warships, though most commonly these accompany Rogue Trader fleets exploring beyond the realms of known space or ply the major trading routes of Segmentum Solar. Most famed of all heavy transport vessels is the Santissima Terra which accompanied the fleet of Rogue Trader Lukurius Vanlessa into the eastern fringes late in the 39th Millenium. Long delays incurred by warp storms and alien action (as well as the inevitable time distortions caused by warp travel) meant that the Santissima Terra and its attendant escorts did not return to Imperial space for over four centuries. The ship which returned was virtually unrecognisable as that which had left. Whilst seperated from the rest of the fleet her captain, Inigo Portfell, had discovered a volcanic deathworld of incomparable riches, so blessed with precious metals and gems that even after refinement by shipboard factories they filled his cavernous holds to overflowing. In an effort to carry away as much wealth as possible before the warp storms closed in once more Captain Portfell resorted to cladding the outer hull of his ship with solid gold. Every flying arch and buttress of the Santissima Terra glittered with the lustre of pure gold and it is said that none who gazed upon her could avoid feeling the stir of avarice in their heart. The wiley Captain Portfell had the good sense to proceed directly to Terra with his great prize and after a dangerous and eventful journey being pursued by every pirate and corsair within a thousand light years, he arrived and presented the ship to his guild house of the Navis Nobilite. Through great endeavours the ship itself was landed and to this day forms part of the Paternoval palaces on Terra.
Note to players: In early playtesting for BFG the transports used in Convoys and planetary assaults were much bigger ships represented by old Spacefleet models. The stats for these ships are shown above. If you want to use heavy transport vessels you can do so. Just swap two ordinary transports for each heavy transport. |
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Well, thet’s it from me for the moment, ta ta for now…
GAV
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