Suggested Campaign Rules

The Mercatorius Crusade is an open-ended campaign, which should be considered more of a setting rather than a time-limited campaign. How you choose to incorporate the setting into your battles is ultimately up to you and your opponent. Players can choose to fight their battles and represent the setting however they please within the campaign. All that is asked is that players respect the setting and narrative when choosing their armies and playing their games.

This page has both the compulsory rules governing how territory changes hands on the map as well as suggested rules to represent the setting's planets and cities.

## Conquering Territory (Compulsory)

The campaign map for the Mercatorius Crusade is the one element of the campaign that is shared by everyone. As such, there are some basic compulsory rules which should be followed when fighting over hexes.

When a battle is held, the players should choose which hex they wish to fight over. The easiest way to do this is to roll a D6 and the winner is the attacker. This hex should be adjacent to one already held by the attacker. In the case that the attacker holds no hexes, they may choose a hex to attack which both players determine in fitting with the lore (either as part of an uprising or planetary incursion).

Each hex has two dots on the easy-to-update map. If the attacker wins, a dot owned by the defender takes the attacker's colour. The player which currently holds the territory is the defender in any mission chosen. If the attacker wins, then then the dot on the campaign map changes to whatever force the attacker is fighting for. If the defender wins, nothing changes.

Cities are represented by four dots, thus taking four battles for one to be fully controlled. That means that it is possible for four different forces to control parts of a city simultaneously.

If players so wish, they may choose to call a major assault. In this circumstance, several battles can be considered part of one attack. This means that players can choose several territories to fight over and then play battles for each of these hexes over the course of a few days to represent a larger scale battle. Such a scenario is winner-takes-all. For example, three games between the Imperium and Chaos occur as part of an assault. The Imperium wins 2 out of 3 games, but as it is an assault, they win all three territories which were up for grabs. As such, the potential pay-offs and costs are higher for each side.

There is no time limit on a major assault, although it is recommended that this takes place within the space of one week.

### Campaign Map

The campaign map below is the easily edited one. After taking a territory, change the colour of the circle you have taken to the colour of the appropriate team. The below map is the map at the time of the beginning of the campaign. Upload your amended map to the appropriate thread on the Facebook Group.

## Characters (Optional)

The Mercatorius crusade involves characters written by the players and who develop within the narrative of the crusade. In order to maintain balance, characters are represented by generic characters within the games. It is best if players avoid bringing characters into the crusade who would not likely be there in the lore without a good reason, for example, Abaddon and Guilliman.

After a game, if your character has died roll a D6. On a 1 they die completely for the campaign. On a 2-6 they escape the battlefield and recover for a future engagement.

## Scenarios (Optional)

The map is full of many different settings which your battles can take place in. It is recommended that the battle represents whatever location is represented on the map. Here are some suggestions for approaching this:

* Before playing a game, look through the existing 40k scenarios to see if anything captures the idea of the territory you are fighting over. Chapter approved, the 40k rulebook, and the Vigilus campaign books all have scenarios which can be updated.
* Choose or have someone neutral choose missions using the open war deck of cards. The ruses and objectives can help players design something reflecting the territory.
* If you want to play maelstron missions, assemble the terrain and choose a mission which in some way to represents the map. If it is in a power plant, for example, promethium pipes and their rules allow for the campaign to be weaved into the game in some form.

In future there will be suggested scenarios for some of the places on the map.