Campaign fever: dragons, wolves, Border Princes, and a side quest into Necromunda
We’ve had one of those very good hobby weeks where one idea suddenly turns into ten, and before we knew it we were talking about campaign events, faction rules, custom tools, sign-up pages, painting breakthroughs, and Necromunda gang prep all at once.
The spark was wonderfully simple: what if a campaign had proper random events that actually felt like stories rather than just modifiers on a table?
Michał threw out an idea we immediately latched onto — your supply center gets attacked by a Dragon, and you have to field 500 points against a single monster on a small map packed with buildings and terrain. Or maybe instead of a Dragon, it’s a wolf pack, with 8D6 wolves split into equal units. Honestly, that’s exactly the kind of nonsense we want from a map campaign: something dramatic, a bit asymmetrical, and memorable enough that people will still be talking about it weeks later.
Ender was immediately on board, and so were we. That was basically the moment when the whole thing stopped being “a cool thought” and started becoming “right, we’re doing this.”
The Border Princes campaign is becoming real
The biggest chunk of work here came from Michał, who sat down and pushed through the first proper draft of the campaign rules. As he put it, this had been brewing since 20 April, but the last few days before sharing the document were apparently a near non-stop sprint.
The foundation is the old General’s Compendium (2003) energy, but updated where needed, with some old mechanics swapped out for newer ideas — especially to make the whole thing run without needing a dedicated game master. That alone sounds like a huge win for a club-style campaign, because the less admin overhead there is, the easier it is to actually get games played.
Here’s the draft that kicked off the feedback round:
The reactions were exactly what you want after posting a 9-page rules draft: excitement, jokes about not having read this much since school, and a lot of “I need to sit down with this properly tonight.” Which, honestly, is the best sign. People wanted to read it.
And then the really important part happened: comments. Stas went through the document, Michał replied to the notes, and the whole thing started getting sharper. We very much enjoyed Michał’s observation that this stage of the process — people pointing out the obvious things the author forgot to write down because they only existed in his head — is probably skipped somewhere in GW HQ.
The fun bits we’re already imagining on the table
A few details from the discussion really stood out to us.
First, faction flavor on the campaign map seems to be landing exactly as intended. Pegi mentioned that the faction rules felt thematic for his force, and that in itself is huge — when campaign rules make you more excited to paint your army, they’re doing something right.
Ender also called out the fortress siege battle as a scenario he’d happily play, which is a very good sign because siege games are one of those things that can either be amazing or a complete logistical disaster. If players are already excited for them in the abstract, that’s promising.
There was also a very dwarfy immediate conclusion: if Dwarfs get a discount on fortresses, then of course they’re going to build fortresses everywhere they can. Which is both powerful and extremely on-brand.
We also had a small lore-and-rules clarification that we liked a lot: defeated heroes do not die permanently, they simply respawn in the capital. That keeps the campaign moving and avoids one of the classic problems of long-form systems where one bad result can remove the fun from someone’s whole run. Supply centers can also be represented as mines or other lore-appropriate locations, which gives the map a lot of room to breathe narratively.
Campaign software? Apparently yes
Just when we thought the draft alone was enough productivity for one week, Michał casually dropped that he had also made a light online tool for running the campaign overnight.
That got our attention very quickly.
The idea is that every campaign turn can log each move, each battle, and each result, so later on we can replay the whole course of the campaign. For a map-based system, that’s brilliant. Half the fun of these things is being able to look back and say “this was the turn where everything went wrong” or “this was the exact moment the Dwarfs became a problem.”
Here’s the first look at the tool:
And because randomization is always the thing that sounds simple until you actually need it, Michał also added label options for draws — for example, if we need to randomly select a neutral map tile, each field can be tagged and then rolled for externally.
The actual random selection was planned through the Old World Discord, because getting the plugin working in Mattermost turned out to be one hurdle too many. Extremely relatable hobby project energy.
Side quest: campaign sign-ups and local logistics
In parallel to all of that, Ender shared a campaign registration page and we had a quick look at how it was shaping up. There was some immediate practical analysis of locations, organisers, and the eternal hobby problem of “well, I guess we’ll have to travel a bit.”
Here’s the sign-up page that came up in the conversation:
And the screenshots that went with that part of the discussion:
A little later we also got an update that 15 people had already joined, with gangs repeating only once or twice at most. That’s the kind of healthy spread you want in a campaign roster.
And then another informational screenshot followed soon after:
Painting check-in: Salamander green and first highlights
As if campaign design wasn’t enough, there was also a very real hobby progress moment on the painting desk.
Ender posted a green that finally clicked — a properly juicy Salamanders-style green that he’d been trying to reach. Apparently the accidental route involved a zenithal that went a bit sideways, with a previously black little guy ending up much whiter than intended, but sometimes that’s exactly how we stumble into the result we wanted.
And honestly? The color looks great.
Then came another milestone: first-ever highlights. The emotional state was described, very accurately, as simultaneously “this looks terrible” and “this looks awesome.” We feel that in our souls. That is basically the official emotional profile of learning to highlight miniatures.
Doing it early on the green armor, before the rest of the model was finished, also sounds like a smart call — much easier to fix and adjust when the whole miniature isn’t already locked in.
And because one campaign is never enough: Necromunda
To round things out, Ender also shared his Squat gang for a sparring game and an upcoming campaign. So while we’re collectively getting hyped for Border Princes in Warhammer: The Old World, there’s also a very healthy amount of underhive energy bubbling away in the background.
Here’s the gang list:
And one more screenshot from that general campaign-and-prep stretch of the chat:
Where we are now
Right now, the mood is very simple: we’re excited.
The campaign draft exists, feedback is happening, the map layer is on the horizon, weird random event battles are already living rent-free in our heads, and somehow there is even software for tracking the whole thing. On top of that, there’s paint going on models and Necromunda gangs getting ready for action.
This is exactly the kind of phase we love most in the hobby — that moment just before things properly begin, when every message adds one more cool possibility.
If this all comes together the way it’s shaping up, we’re going to have a lot of stories to tell from the Border Princes very soon.