by Ken Kennedy

Mid 2005 is destined to be a time of incredible Warhammer activity. All of the Games Workshop businesses around the world are focusing their attention on the jungles of Lustria and have been collaborating to create the most amazing gaming experience possible. This year, the emphasis is on helping clubs and gaming groups organize and play their own Warhammer campaigns. With this focus in mind, Games Workshop has created a whole host of gaming resources for players.

With so much material being made available to players, it is easy to get overwhelmed or even confused by it. This article is here to help you wade through the swampy undergrowth of Lustria-related products and resources along with what you will need to maximize your Warhammer gaming this summer.

Warhammer Realms: Lustria

Warhammer Realms: Lustria is where it all starts. This amazing 80-page supplement is a must for bold adventurers serious about seeking fame, glory, and – most importantly – treasure in the perilous jungles of Lustria. The pages of this valuable resource contain rules for fighting in the damp, dense undergrowth of the rain forest. Anyone wishing to explore the mysterious continent of Lustria will need these Jungle Fighting rules and will need to know how to organize their units into Loose Formations. This supplement also contains encounters and events that can affect battles taking place in the jungle and has a whole host of unique scenarios that can be used to play your games. In addition to all of this gaming material, Warhammer Realms: Lustria has a huge colour section that details how to construct all kinds of Lustria terrain for the gaming group that wants to get serious about its campaigning this summer.

Node Campaign

A book with all the content listed above would be great, but what puts Warhammer Realms: Lustria over the top is the huge section on creating and running Warhammer campaigns. These rules and guidelines take campaign organizers and players through the steps of participating in a node-based campaign from making and populating a map to how to actually play the campaign. Rules for moving your armies, capturing territories, battling your opponents, and even engaging in espionage are detailed in this valuable section.

The Rise of Sotek

Wait, there is even more! Besides providing all the rules you would ever need to make your own generic node campaign, Warhammer Realms: Lustria also contains "The Rise of Sotek." The Rise of Sotek is a ready-to-play, node-based campaign set in the tumultuous past of the Warhammer world – specifically, in the jungles of Lustria during the Age of Strife. This campaign uses the node-based rules and the Jungle Fighting rules found earlier in the book but also contains a few additions and changes to give the campaign that ancient Lustria flavour.

The Rise of Sotek map has added Lustria-specific locations (and the rules to go with them) like the Star Tower, Temple-Cities, and the Pyramid of the Heavens to give the map the proper geography of that era. The campaign also adds new rules and modifications to the core Lustria node-based rules to make the campaign as historically accurate as possible. Finally, the Rise of Sotek revolves around the ancient conflict between the Lizardmen and the Skaven, when many of the other civilizations of the Warhammer world were still in their infancy or were just not involved in this conflict.

The Conquest of the New World

Since a global campaign that involved only the Lizardmen and Skaven would not go over too well with all of the devoted Warhammer players, Games Workshop developed the Conquest of the New World (COTNW) campaign supplement. This can be found in White Dwarf 306 or from the COTNW web site.

The Conquest of the New World is a ready-to-play node campaign that takes place on the continent of Lustria during another interesting period of Warhammer history. COTNW takes place in the Imperial year 1492 (over 1,000 years before the Storm of Chaos!) shortly after Marco Columbo’s “discovery” of the New World. The COTNW campaign is all about the exploration of this new land and the race between all the denizens of the Old World to plunder its riches and claim territory as their own.

Like the Rise of Sotek, the Conquest of the New World node campaign uses the core rules found in Warhammer Realms: Lustria. Without these rules, the COTNW rules will make some sense, but not enough to play a proper node campaign. Also like the Rise of Sotek, this campaign has a set of new locations, new rules, and new scenarios. It also contains the rules for three new mercenary units and ideas that can help you get all Warhammer armies involved in your COTNW campaign.

The Conquest of the New World Web Site

To help Warhammer players get the most out of their Conquest campaigns, we have created a web site with all the resources you would ever need to organize and play a campaign this summer. The site includes background information, hobby articles, events, forums, and many other online resources to help you run your campaigns. While most of the resources are specific to the COTNW node campaign, there are many articles about campaigning in general and a few about other kinds of campaigns. Just because Warhammer Realms: Lustria focuses on node campaigns doesn’t mean your gaming group can’t have fun running and playing a different kind of campaign. This year, the global campaign is about gaming groups all around the world playing Warhammer campaigns and having a great time along the way.

In Summary

• Warhammer Realms: Lustria contains the rules to create and play a node campaign. It also contains rules for playing Warhammer in jungles.
• The Rise of Sotek is a ready-to-play node campaign found in the Lustria book. This campaign has Lustria-specific rules and territories.
• Conquest of the New World is an additional supplement that contains another ready-to-play node campaign set in Lustria. This booklet contains new rules, units, territories, and scenarios.
• The global campaign web site focuses on the Conquest of the New World campaign, but encourages Warhammer gaming of all kinds.

We hope that this explanation of the different products and resources related to the summer campaign season has been useful. At the end of the day, the Conquest campaign is all about Warhammer and having a good time playing against your friends in a campaign of your own design.

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