Aye, more power to you- I've always wished to fight a proper map-based campaign but I've learnt the hard way two rules of war(gaming).

-No plan ever survives contact with the playerbase.
-The more complex a plan, the less likely it is to succeed.

I should clarify: the players wont actually decide where the forces are going on the map, they will purely be a storytelling mechanism for me to link the battles into a compelling story. I fully understand the risks of allowing the players total control over what happens.

I'm a little confused; you say you'll allow all netEA and EpicUK lists, but then talk about only imperial vs chaos?

I plan for it to be a narrative campaign, detailing a Chaos assault on an Imperial planet. So narratively I am aiming for it to be Chaos and Imperial. I want to allow as many lists as possible, to give a variety of armies within the story of Chaos vs Imperial, ie all the flavours of marines, guard, admech, sisters etc and Chaos marine varients, LatD, Traitor guard etc. Where NetEA has an advantage over EpicUK in the wide variety of army lists available, like krieg, mossinian, admech etc.

Now that is of course the ideal case, I am well aware that not everyone has an army that fits into those limitations. I am willing and able to broaden this to an Order vs Disorder campaign if signups are low, however I am starting with Chaos/Imperial as I think it is a stronger narrative.

Would you specifically prefer Order/Disorder rather than Chaos/Imperial?

I think just chaos vs imperial is too restrictive, and excludes a lot of people from coming to the event. Is the theme important enough for that?

There is precedence for being specific- Tempus Fugitives 40k Campaigns where equally specific, it does allow you to build a story arc around the campaign, where the more open-ended Order/Disorder is notoriously irritating (trying to explain why Tau travelled across the galaxy and why Nids and Necrons both show up, etc stretches disbelief).

You should have no problems on the Imperial side- there's a wide selection of lists and they are the most popular armies (alongside Eldar).

Chaos may be more trouble, but if you include Imperial Guard (as Traitor Guard) it should be doable.

It depends on what is more important to the players, would they prefer a strong storyline or a possibly slightly contrived story that allows all armies to participate. Im open to running both, I initially picked storyline as all the other events allow all armies and have no storyline, so as to differentiate this more stongly from tournaments, however you (zombo) seem to be on the side of Order/Disorder.

Can others let me know which would be of more interest to them please.

Nat, run your event how you want it to run. The best way for it to work is for you to be comfortable in how it should work, and if this limits list then so be it.

With the generally low numbers of Epic players in the UK, you *may* find it difficult to fill the Chaos side.

As it's 2v2 however, some Chaos players could play 6k armies to make up the numbers (Which'll make things slower, admittedly).

I'd be happy to bring a Chaos army, either Marines or traitor Guard.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Well if you say your chapter has just gone over to chaos pretty much any player with a space marine force could play chaos, just not a very spiky

Plenty of ways to use the 'count's as' rule to make it work.

Yar, that'd work, but it's not as awesome.

_________________
Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Thanks for your feedback. I think initially I will go for Chaos/Imperial, and have a fixed number of tickets for each side, 6/6 to begin with. Then depending on interest in those tickets I can open up additional tickets if there is demand, or offer a limited number of xenos tickets to balance teams if that is required.

Just one point: Would people prefer the scenarios to be published prior to the event? or are people ok with getting them on the day. They are all 'sensible' and there is nothing super crazy, the ones I have playtested so far have all come out to be relatively balanced and clean playing.

I will post a new thread when the date and details are finalised, though feel free to continue discussing and offering ideas in this thread for the time being.

Finally thanks to Mephiston for his offer of support, its greatly appreciated.

First and foremost, how the hell is there an Epic gamer only a few miles down the road from me, and I not know it?!?! Nat, I'm based in Melksham and can easily get to Triple Helix - let me know if you like to meet up for a game sometime?

Anywho, back on topic...

Before I go any further, I'll second what Meph said; it's your event, run it however you like so that you enjoy it. As E&C said, you'll limit attendees by specifying which races can take part, but don't forget not every event has to conform to the norm that most people are used to.

The idea of a campaign weekend sounds great, think it'll have some more appeal than the defacto individual games.
In terms of game length, I'm in agreement with what others have said here, I think you'll struggle to get 3 games in if they're bigger than 3 points per side. What's more important to you, size of the games, or number of the games? If it's the latter, then you could try escalating the size of the games during the day. Eg game 1 is 2000pts per team, game 2 is 4000pts per team, and the final game of day one is the full 6000pts per team. Depending on the scenarios you've got planned I think this could compliment it nicely.

I think it's a great idea, although won't be able to attend personally as I don't have either of the armies for this one. Would be tempted to come along and observe though.

Good luck organising it Nat. Like I said, if you fancy a game sometime (maybe a playtest of one of the scenarios?) give me a shout.

Cheers
Reedar