Cult Of Games XLBS: Are Campaigns The BEST Way To Play Wargames?
September 20, 2026 by crew
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![Sneak About With Star Wars: Legion’s Guerilla Troopers & More [UPDATED]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2026/09/g-troops-star-wars-cover-600-338.jpg)
Happy Sunday CoGs, OTTers and (with almost involuntary shoulder wiggling,) how’s it goin’ Backstagers?
The Rogue Trooper film is doing the rounds at film festivals trying to drum up interest from distribution companies, so no release date yet 🙁
Fingers crossed that something comes of it
@avernos Gerry, Santiago+torros≠santos. Despite this I will be kind and tell you that A+A have some awesome camelry which you missed mentioning. I’ll gladly accept your gratitude in the form of four Palmyran armored camel cataphracts or Queen Zenobia (another Arabian Knights build perhaps?) 🫢
@brennon Are some skirmish games more conducive for the growth of points as a campaign like Pillage or soft campaign of SAGA which might be better for a one shot game day?
@johnlyons You fell into the Soviet tank trap. *tsk tsk* In Soviet Russia T54 makes you. In this case, it makes you weak in knees and cross your eyes like mali dječak (to avoid dropping Cyrillic). Good work on your tiny fighting GoBots as opposed to the huge scale you normally work in. Will you be going to 6 or 10s to compare with 28/32s?
I reckon you’re right – smaller skirmish games like that would be perfect for a day/weekend campaign
Good show this week, thank you. I’ll vouch for A&A too. They bear a striking similarity to Crusader Miniatures, especially the Carthaginians and that it because, as I understand it, they were both sculpted by Mark Sims. The Palmyrans are a highlight of the range and easily usable as the lesser spotted Nabateans (who built Petra in Jordan).
Campaign games are the sunlight uplands of wargaming. Beautiful in contemplation but sadly achieving them is a long, hard slog and they don’t look like they did when you contemplated them from afar 😀
Maybe campaign games are the dream of our retirement?
MIR ?
Is that what the 3 wise men from the east brought to little baby jesus ?
“gold, frankish sense and middle imperial romans” ?
I mean, they would have been very interested…although in a different way
boys get sad too dot com
Happy Sunday
00:00 Toy cars that go in the drawer? Like, where else would they go?
02:00 Let the hate flow!
06:30 Butt butt ding!
06:50 ‘member the hobby hangouts with Big Ben? Fourgrund Big Ben? Bringing absolute chaos to the stream XD Aaaah good times!
08:45 led is bad for m’kay?
11:00 Heavy Metal Romans?
11:30 Squuuuuueeeeeel
12:45 Can I talk to you about my footy game
14:35 My posty is not bringing me my GUNDAM!
16:08 Knobhead?
21:10 Camels and led… even more bad for your health! Especially if it’s the cigaret brand
23:00 solid single pieces
24:15 do banks even still provide Cheques?
26:00 I don’t go camping. Can’t stand sleeping in tents.
32:45 Why don’t I dedicate a hole Saturday to one mini campaign: I do not have the time. As much as I love the concept of campaigns, I can’t make things work outside of skirmish battles.
43:25 No gas? Get electric motors! 8) [Yes I need a rest]
48:15 Toooot toooot. Scharnhorst. Big ship.
53:00 Roll more dice! Roll all the dice!
54:45 Dagron!
56:30 It’s all Grin Dark and colourful XD
1:03:00 Redeeeeem yourself!
1:04:00 Also MODIPHIUS DOES A SALE NOW. 8)
And just like that, Sunday is over
Apologies, a shameless plug, but this is precisely how I approached the design of BUTCHER & BOLT. The Operation Packs, even those that are single-mission, effectively force the players to think of factors beyond the immediate battlefield situation. With asymmetric forces (no points!), players must constantly not only assess which mission objectives they can possibly achieve and how, but also the trade-offs those entail, not only because those objectives can often be conflicting and timing is of utmost consideration, but also because you rarely have full intel of what the opposition is up to. This results in players having that ‘campaign’ outlook in games EVEN WHEN playing a single mission. You can even lose the mission but ‘win’ the operation, if this makes sense. I personally think this is quite rare in our hobby and, when combined with constant in-game friction, might simply not be to everyone’s liking (which I fully understand).
Now when you add to this our multi-mission campaigns where how you fare in one mission can have significant impacts on subsequent missions, including how the story itself evolves, just elevates the whole campaign gaming to yet another level. I have also deliberately kept the number of missions in each Operation Pack to a handful at most in order to allow players to finish it within a reasonable period of time – this, I think, also allows players to plan for their campaign sessions better. Sometimes having an end in sight makes campaign gaming more palatable, I think.
Anyway, sorry again for this clearly shameless plug but this topic is very fitting for BUTCHER & BOLT, so I thought I would share my thoughts here. Cheers!
No worries about the shameless plug at all! It’s great to share the ideas of the game and where it could fit into what people want campaign-wise!
@brennon There was/is a Golden Goal range of football miniatures and a set of football rules for gaming here: Golden Goal | Golden Goal Rulebook | File | BoardGameGeek maybe something for seasonal events Match Day: The Tabletop Football Game | Board Game | BoardGameGeek so your postie can know there are options.
Brilliant – I will have to let my postie know haha
Thanks for the Golden Button, and congrats to the other projects. Lev and I don’t really play very competitively, and whatever we play, we will always make room for bystanders to join in. For us, it’s more about a good story than winning and losing.
Looking forward to the Rogue Trooper movie; I really wish someone would release Bad Company as a line of miniatures. I would love some Krool.
I really enjoy campaign games; I love that feeling of being a bit nervous about risking your best troops. Some games really shine as campaigns, and I can’t imagine enjoying them as much as one-off games. Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Burrow and Badger, Empire of the Dead, to name just a few. Blood Bowl in particular is exceptional when playing a league, as it has a definitive end.
At the moment, I have been enjoying 5 Parsecs from Home as a cooperative campaign. We don’t play it all the time, but when we do, the games are pretty short, so we can play a few different game systems in one session.
@avernos, watching the Medieval Wargamer, are you secretly building up some Medieval forces on the quiet?
Gerry may surprise us…
Excellent discussion guys, some really interesting ideas there and thank you for featuring my book in your thumbnail! (I won’t say more because I’m rather biased in favour of campaigning rather than one-off games! 😉)
Thanks for watching and yes, the campaigns book certainly inspired some thinking here!