[BTB] Objectives

We are playing the BTB campaign and we need some help ...

Orcs&Goblins (The Scourge of the Realm)
Maneaters (The Scourge of the Realm)
Skaven 1 (The Silent Threat)
Skaven 2 (The Silent Threat)
Dwarves (The Celestial Protectorate)
Marauders of Chaos (The Scion of Chaos)
Campaign Points: Do you have to spend campaign points to get achievements? For example, 'Scion of Chaos': Do I have to spend 5 CP to get 'I am the Scion' or do I get 'I am the Scion' when I reach 5 Campaign Points?

'The Silent Threat' - in my opinion the easiest way to win the campaign BTB, isn't it? You just have to win 'The heist' against each other of the objectives. Should be no problem for a Skaven warband ...

35 CP - Assassination: [...] Only warbands with the Burglary achievement will earn this achievement.
I am confused now. You get the Buglary achievement with 15 CP so every warband with 'The Silent Threat' will have it when it reaches 35 CP ???

'The Scion of Chaos':
They need four artifacts to win the campaign:

Ghartoks Skull - to be found in special scenario 15 'Ghartok Tomb' IF you roll a 5+ when one of your heroes enters the Tomb, IF NOT play again.

Chaos Dragon Scale Armor - to be found in the special scenario 11 'Chaos Dragon hunt'

Liber Chaotica - to be found in the special scenario 13 'Siege!'

Broadsword of Damnation - I am not clear about this one: A Mr. Belandysh is using it. He appears on a 42-43 when rolling for random encounter.
When Belandysh appears - then happens what? Will he fight to death and the winner takes the sword? Will Marauders of Chaos just have to look for Dramatis personae and hire him to get the sword? Do they have to kill him? Can they kill him while he is asleep?

Quote :

Campaign Points: Do you have to spend campaign points to get achievements? For example, 'Scion of Chaos': Do I have to spend 5 CP to get 'I am the Scion' or do I get 'I am the Scion' when I reach 5 Campaign Points?

This question is pretty easily answered by the section "campaign achievements" on page 39 of the BTB - the CP are not "spent".

The rest - good questions, looking forward to the answers. ;-)

PS: What, MORE Skaven... and Dwarves? Uh oh! I think the Orcs have been lazy recently... must... stomp... out... the... competition!

No, you don't spend the CPs. You automatically earn your achievements as you earn CPs.

"Assassination" achievement: The clause is relevant because warbands are allowed to switch Objectives during a campaign (at the cost of -D6 CPs) and this clause prevents other warbands from switching to this Objective, benefit from the achievement, and then go back.

If Belandysh appears as a Non-Player Model through the random happenings you roll for his alignment. If he is hostile, then you can of course attack him just as all warbands, irrespective of what warband you are. If you play Chaos and hire him as a Dramatis Persona (or if he is your ally) then you of course cannot attack him, but you can send him against the enemy, hope that he dies and then take the Sword.
As for how to get the Chaos Artefacts, there is an article on this on the BTB site (go to Articles).

The assassination achievement makes me really uncomfortable. Is it really you pick a hero bam they're dead? I don't think I would play with such a rule.

hero wrote:

The assassination achievement makes me really uncomfortable. Is it really you pick a hero bam they're dead? I don't think I would play with such a rule.

It made people in my gaming group uncomfortable also. The way I see it though is that this occurs at 35 CPs which is very, very close to the end of the campaign. I believe that the stakes *should* be higher at the end of the campaign and therefore I don't mind it.

The same with the end of the Damned Shall Burn! objective. Heritical warbands are *eliminated* from the campaign if routed by this warband once it has earned 35 CPs or more. Extreme yes but it is the end of the campaign and it raises the stakes VERY high.

If I'm playing a campaign I want the last few games to get my heart pumping and I think that these achievements allow for that.

Thank you very much.
I got the article from the BTB site, thank you for the hint.
Nevertheless, the 'Scion of Chaos' objective is pretty tough to fulfill compared to the others (especially 'The Silent Threat'), but its the most fun!

RationalLemming hit the nail with his analysis. I too was kinda... suprised when Stu first suggested the Assassination effect, but you have to think about it and see it in the context. Back then I alreadyI knew that this would scare a lot of readers off. They would look at it, cry "unfair" and write the whole thing off. But did I care? No, because we did these rules for our own gaming fun and we enjoyed playing with them. The purpose of the objectives is to get your heart pumping and to put things at stake as you get closer to the campaign end. Otherwise you might as well keep playing the standard endless campaigns until you get bored to death.

Nevertheless, if you don't like certain effects, feel free to house rule them. But as always I wouldn't advise doing so until you have played a number of games with the original rules so that you are comfortable with the rules and know what you are doing. I won't claim that all the objectives achievements have been playtested in all possible combinations and of course there is room for improvement. Once you got your games in, please let us know how everything went so, if neccessary, we can adjust things for the sake of other groups' future campaigns.

I know of at least one Scion of Chaos player (not affiliated with any of the involved playtest groups) who won his campaign and led his leader to daemonhood. You can download his Daemon Prince Dramatis Persona from the BTB website as a PDF file (campaign section). I know that the Scion's objective is amongst the tougher ones (and so is the Protectorate's), but they also have some of the best achievements. I have read comments of people complaining how unfair it is to get the increase of maximum warriors. As a response to your worries regarding how hard it is to fulfill the Scion's objective I could also add that there are people saying that Marauders and Beastmen (= warbands who will mostly use this objective) are on the stronger side of warbands. For everyone screaming "overpowered" there seems to be another one crying "underpowered" - which in the end is pretty good I think. I guess the rules are too unconventional at certain points, yet not unfair, to get an overall consensus. Opinions will probably always be extreme concerning some of the rules.
If you have both Scions and Protectorates in your campaign then there are many warbands combining their efforts to find and capture the Chaos Artefacts. This may make things difficult, but it may also make them easier as the chances for finding the artefacts are increased. It really comes down to how all the objectives work together, how the players interact with each other. Imagine a strong Chieftain with three artefacts - who will fall to the Silent Threat's assassination. Things can swing a lot of ways in a campaign and I think that's what's fun about this game.

By the way, these objectives together form just one narrative of many. They are what creates the Border Town Burning story-line in this specific setting. In this story, there is an approaching horde of Marauders that becomes a major threat to the civilized border towns of Cathay as their leader finds the four Chaos Artefacts. This is all represented in the objectives. You could come up with an unlimited number of different stories and fit them into the Objectives system. Adventurers and Fortune Hunters in the City of the Damned with the Cult of the Possessed casting dark rituals to allow the Shadowlord to leave the pit - will the Knights of the Empire arrive in time to burn the city to the ground - or will the Witch Hunters do the job? Estalians conquering the New World with the Lizardmen defending their homelands and Dark Elves having some fun with bloodshed? The Liche Kings of the Southlands raising their powers? Whatever setting, whatever story-line you want to recreate in your games, it's all possible with the campaign system and - of course - the upcoming follow-up supplement will provide a new story-line for its own new setting.

Anyways, again, once you finished your campaign, please share your experience with us - best accompanied with loads of pretty photos!

cianty wrote:

Whatever setting, whatever story-line you want to recreate in your games, it's all possible with the campaign system and - of course - the upcoming follow-up supplement will provide a new story-line for its own new setting.

You and Stu are totally evil dropping hints in various threads of curent projects and future releases. I'm impatient!

Thanks for your answers also, Cianty, as the questions raised by Shacru were the same questions that I would have needed to ask before my gaming group commences our campaign.

Out of curiosity, what happens to those three artifacts if the chieftain is assassinated?

I just wanted to pipe up that the campaign I run has nine total players, with eight warbands and 3 NPC warbands. Most of us recognize that the campaign gets very deadly towards the end, and we have found that to be one of the draws of BTB! At our next gaming session (which occurs on Mondays), I am fairly certain several of our players will have more then 30 campaign points upon the session's completion. Our campaign is getting down to the wire, and the player fielding the Possessed Warband is 8-2 and is getting pretty close to winning, especially now that two of the four artifacts have been found (he only has one of them right now though). I copied the warbands below. We have enjoyed the campaign so much that, when players started talking about the next setting they wanted to play in, we couldn't pick a setting precisely because of BTB's objective system. I would call BTB with it's objectives the best supplement for a GW game since 40k's Dark Millenium (which was back in 1995).







1. Dismal Dan – Black Dwarfs – the Lure of Fortune
2. Riley – Lizardmen – the Damned Shall Burn
3. Alexander – Dark Elves – Scourge of the Realm
4. Cheating Dan – Possessed – Scion of Chaos
5. Jason – Skaven Clan Pestilins – the Silent Threat
6. Franz – Dwarf Treasure Hunters – the Lure of Fortune
7. Matt – Wood Elves – Celestial Protectorate
8. Emory – Undead – Scourge of the Realm
9. NPC – Middenheimers – Celestial Protectorate
10. NPC – Norse Explorers – Scion of Chaos
11. NPC – Merchant Caravan – the Lure of Fortune

hero wrote:

Out of curiosity, what happens to those three artifacts if the chieftain is assassinated?

This is the same situation as if the Chieftain rolled "Death" on the Serious Injuries table. If a model dies permanently outside of the game, the warband keeps the artefacts (this is detailed on the Chaos Artefacts page in the Spoils of War chapter).

@Joker2and53: I'm glad to hear you guys enjoy the campaign. Seeing that none of you really plays any of the new BTB warbands I find it particularly fascinating that you enjoy the setting. Picking up warbands is the easiest/quickest thing to do but I know not all players can or want to do that, so any proper supplement should offer something for "old" players who just look for a new challenge without having to spend money on new figures. It's cool to see you actually enjoy what is behind the "surface" of pretty layout and fancy warband rules.
To me the Objective rules are kind of like the Random Happenings: Once you have played with them you never want to play a game without because it feels like you are missing something. For MiM we will revise the system, see how it could be improved, start from scratch if necessary.

I would also love to see people adopt it for any of the other existing settings. However, that is a lot of work and requires quite some dedication. Finding a skeleton of a narrative that possibly involves all the various warbands and divides them into factions, coming up with relevant achievements that nicely interact with each other, creating scenarios that represent the story-line and important events and combining all this stuff with the Random Happenings and Exploration charts - that's one hell of a lot of work. But it sure pays off!

I'm in the Game with Joker2and53 I am the Lizardmen team, doing the Damed Shall Burn. It's kind of fun to be the Good Guy Spoiler. I can tell that the evil teams fear me and they are afraid of what will happen if/when I hit 35 CPs.

I agree that the Silent Threat does seem rather powerful, but they are the Evil Team Spoiler. Their job is to keep anyone from running away from the pack, or protect their own lead.

Right now it looks like the Possessed Team/Scion of Chaos is in the lead followed by the Skaven/Silent Threat. Then there is me with Lizardmen/The Damned Shall Burn. I think that if the 2 remaining Chaos Artifacts come-out then it will be hard for anyone to beat the Scion of Chaos. However if they don't come-out for 5 or 6 rounds then The Silent Threat and The Damned Shall Burn will have a good chance of winning.

The other 4 guys are in a scrum behind us, I think with a couple of good games anyone of them could get into striking distance.

Thanks for that update, Rudeboy! You guys should do more battle reports/recaps of your campaign.

cianty wrote:

Thanks for that update, Rudeboy! You guys should do more battle reports/recaps of your campaign.

Yeah, I'm sorry, it is something that i wanted to do, just like Warboss Kurgan does his game recaps with all the pictures, but I have found that I simply don't have the time. Right now, all I keep are who played against who, who won, how many campaign points the winner and the loser gained, and how those campaign points were gained (i.e. winning, playing, get in the pit, 666 on exploration, recovering an artifact, etc).

The unfortunate problem that all of us have is that we organized our club specifically to accommodate working family men who just wanted to do a little gaming as a hobby. We all have full time jobs and significant others (every one of us!!!). So extra, non model/terrain related stuff is hard to complete sometimes.

Edit - Though my merchant caravan is getting dangerously close to completion such that I could add it to the gallery!!!

I can understand that very well, Joker.

Joker2and53 wrote:

Edit - Though my merchant caravan is getting dangerously close to completion such that I could add it to the gallery!!!

Oh boy!

Joker2and53's merchant caravan warband is pretty sweet. You did a good job painting them.

you also have to post the cart you made from scratch.