+ inload: free Armageddon Campaign and Mission packs +

+ Refighting the Battle for Death Mire + 

Are you an aspiring ork Warboss? Do you want to see if your orks can break through Taskforce Blacksand and succeed where Gazgrim's War-Horde failed?

Well, you're in luck. I've had a few requests to share the campaign pack and mission pack we wrote for our Armageddon war event, Third War in 3rd: Battle for Death Mire. If this is all news to you, you can read about the event through this inloadlink: [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+]

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I'm very pleased with the Campaign pack, and glad to share it. 

Overview of events leading up to the campaign.

Since GW seem to be going back to Armageddon themselves, this should give you a ready-to-go campaign if you fancy replaying it. While it's designed for Warhammer 40k 3rd edition, the nature of the later editions mean that it'll require minimal tweakage to play in any edition through to 7th – and with a little more tinkering, will do the groundwork for 8th–10th, if you wish.

Whatever you choose to use it for – gaming or just reading for fun – I hope that you enjoy it. Please do pipe up with any questions and I'll do my best to answer. 

Whether you're intending to play through it or not, the pack got a few campaign-specific units  like the Steel Legion Liasion Team and Shokk Attack Gun, which you might like to try in your own games on Armageddon, and it's even got rules for an entire new Ork list, the Big Gunz Warbands. 

The Big Gunz Warbands rules

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these in particular – either in the comments below, or on the +Death of a Rubricist+ group  here: [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+].

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+ 3rd War in Third campaign pack + 

Here's the table of contents:

• Rules of engagement 4
• Where's the event? 4
• What do I need to bring? 5
• Armageddon 6
• Your place in history 6
• The story so far 8
• Choosing your army 10
• Fighting your war 12
• Timings 12
• The strategy phases 12
• Mission briefings 13
• Taskforce Blacksand 14
• Chain of command 14
• Key personnel 16
• Additional Imperial units 18
• Gazgrim's War-horde 20
• The Pit Fight 20
• 'Oo's da boss? 22
• Additional Ork units 24
• Big Gunz Warbands 28
• Reference 30
• Weapon reference 32

All of the characters and armies reflect the players' own armies.

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+ Mission pack +

These missions are designed to be printed on A3 paper and folded in half. The outside shows the region you're fighting in, and gives some colour text on the region. Once you open it up, the mission details are explained, and there's a space to keep track of objectives and turns – this is explained more clearly in the Campaign pack, on page 13.

The mission pack is organised in sets of three briefings for each table, and is designed by be played in order, as the story in each depends on the results of the first game. 

• The first mission for each table has a plain pack, marked 'A.M. Blacksand Initiative'. 
• If the orks win the first game, use the briefing with an ork glyph and marked 'P.M. War-Horder Initiative'. 
• If the Imperials win the first game, use the briefing with a Steel Legion icon, marked 'P.M. Blacksand Initiative'. 

Unfortunately +{engage embarrassment subroutine}+ it looks like I neglected to save the final version of the mission pack, so only the first six tables are represented in this version of the mission briefings. I'll see if I can recreate the six missing missions and update this.

+ inload: Post-event debrief +

+ Well, that was fun! On Saturday, Sinan and I hosted a one-day 40k 3rd edition event themed around a particular conflict during the Third War for Armageddon, and I'm pleased to say that it went pretty swimmingly. Beautiful armies, charming and cheerful players and lots of human versus ork fighting in glorious retrohammer action. +

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+ What happened? +

After a very hard-fought campaign between the forces of Taskforce Blacksand (a collection of six Guard and two Space Marine forces) and Gazgrim's War-horde (eight of the grittiest, smashiest, sneekiest ork warbands in the region), the victors were the Imperium, and Death Mire has been preserved... for now.

We had the campaign map above (supplemented, incidentally, by the extremely talented Kev's Mighty Empires re-creation of Armageddon – a visual that knocked-my efforts into a cocked hat!) that allowed players to trace their armies' position and progress in the context of the greater war – a visual touch that I hope went some of the way to making the gang feel like part of something bigger.

It was a very narrow victory, with the first half of the campaign being poised on a knife edge – four wins each – and the second half coming down to some extremely narrow margins to give the Imperials six wins against the orks' two.

Here's a snap of the command staff of the players (sitting on top of the campaign pack), along with the trophies (kindly provided by Pootle) and Steel Legion ration packs that ensured no-one went home empty-handed. (Who doesn't want that delicious corpsestarch?)

At the heart of the event were sixteen games of 3rd edition 40k, which ran – judging by the speed, laughter and occasional cries of dismay – very smoothly and were packed with fun. The pre-campaign and strategy phases involved a few simple mini-games, which I hope everyone enjoyed.

The games themselves looked absolutely spectacular, with a really high level of quality in terms of painting, modelling and theme. We'd tried to ensure all the boards were thematic (regular inloaders will know my thoughts on the 'Third Army'), and I hope everyone went away feeling that little bit more 40k*.

*More enthused about their hobby, that is, not downtrodden and living in a state of constant grinding terror!

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+ Visions of Armageddon +

What follows are Sinan's lovely pictures from the event. I've included some snippets of info along with Instagram handles (@Sinan_atamer, in Sinan's case) where I know them, so you can go check out more of these awesome armies. 

Here are Commissar Martin's Bad Moon warband, Wuzzdreg's Gitsmashas, getting stuck into Rook's (@Rook_28) Angels of Vigilance; both phenomenal armies painted specifically for the event. 

KnightofKent's fantastic Morkgomery's Boyz Goff warband – his warboss was a particularly kunnin' grot servant of Ghazghkull himself!

More of Rook's Angels of Vigilance.

Redmaws Great Company, commanded by the indomitable Liam (@6pluspainting), plunge into the Orient-Equatorial J'hn'sn Jungle in search of Colonel Dillon of the 6th Armageddon Ork Hunters.

Edward B's Battle Group Hyde advance towards the captured township under the stern eye (and lethal chainsword!) of Colonel Hyde.

Kev's awesome classic 139th Steel Legion, brought out of retirement for one more mission. Great to see these boys.

The 450th Jopall Indentured Squadron were another army created specifically for the event, and @voodoo.28 took away a well-deserved trophy for this amazing army, against some very stiff competition. 

Dakkamob Grimshak, led by Uzmek Kopgrim, advance towards the Acid-Mines. Sparrow did a great job on these.

The pack included rules for Steel Legion Liaison teams – units of the 7th Steel Legion and assorted Imperial allies, who allowed players to bring a couple of thematic models without committing to a full Steel Legion army (yet) – I was blown away with the creativity we saw on show. 

Major Kallus leads the 67th Cadian Armoured into combat, led by @thecallumboyle 

Armageddon fanatic Emily's (@mylifebehindabrush) 454th Cadian Recon punched above their weight in the Volcanus foothills – and brought gift dice for all the attendees: winner!

Harry's Wuzdreg Gitsmasha!

The ever-charming Biggles inspiratonal Jekil's Boyz. Biggles warboss won the pre-game Pit Fight minigame by simply opting for 'BRUTAL' every time! His battle against 6pluspainting's Space Wolves has to have been the closest margin for victory – initially being an ork win, until we found a squad of experienced Long Fangs lurking in an alcove while packing up, which tipped the balance.

Kev's 139/7th Steel Legion

Morkgomery's Boyz in all their glory. (@pierce.h_priv)

Ben's beautiful 179th Krieg crash into the orks.

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I'll hopefully post up some more notes and thoughts as they come to me, but suffice to say I had a wonderful, manic, humbling and fantastic time. It was a treat to run and especially lovely to meet some online friends in person – and finding out they're even nicer in person. 

Thank you to all the attendees for being so lovely (apologies for any inadvertent mis-reporting of names or armies here – I should have taken better notes. Do let me know and I'll update things), and special thanks to Sinan in particular for doing the organisational heavy lifting.

Here's to the next one!