Badab War - Campaign Begins

Warhammer 40K – Sunday was the first day of the Badab War campaign I'm running with several members of the Paperbag Warriors. We started earlier than usual and began the campaign with a draft. Two of the players in our group insisted on playing a specific chapter from the Imperial Armour Books, and luckily one was a loyalist and the other a secessionist. These two players became the captains of theirs respective teams and than took turns drafting players for their side.

The scoring system is pretty simple winning a 1500 point or higher battle earns a team 2 VP, wining a Kill-team or small scale 40K game nets the winner 1VP. The campaign will last 5 weeks playing every other week. This makes scheduling easier and also promotes finishing off models and completing an army.

The Badad War was significant event in the 40K timeline that happened relatively recently. A group of space marine chapters tasked with protecting a remote area of space have a dispute with some of the local system administrations and declare independence. This rebellion ultimately forces the High Lords of Terra to react and send additional chapters of marines to the system to put an end to the rebellion. This minor civil war is the basis for the campaign. Forgeworld has produced 2 books that provide extensive background information and army lists which make running a themed campaign easy.

This event was one of my favorite stories from the old 40K compendium, and I painted (and since have lost) several variations of the old-school chapter schemes detailed above using the old hunch-backed beaky marine kit. Forgeworld has taken some liberties with the old background to make it more "realistic" and I've so far really enjoyed the books. Bell of Lost Souls also did their own variation of the campaign a few years ago.