In case you were wondering, some of the parts to make my groovy Rough Riders were sculpted by Rob at Curious Constructs.

Wednesday 26 November 2014

The Fall Of Praetoria: by Warhammer 40K Campaigns


Attention citizen soldiers of glorious Praetoria.
Praetoria stands at Her hour of need.
The call has gone out across the galaxy, to our regiments, our neighbours, our allies and the mighty warriors of the Holy Emperor. Our appeals will not go unheard.
Now we must ready ourselves for the ultimate fight . Lest Praetoria be lost… Praetoria fall… Praetoria be no more.

Now that I have set the mood... whilst randomly surfing the net I came across some brilliant new Praetorian art work. At first I thought it was fan work posted on deviant art. As I found more I thought it must be from Fantasy Flight games, meaning Praetorians would appear in their RPG – an awesome prospect. Then I found the source site and I read the words ‘The Fall Of Praetoria’.


Warhammer 40K Campaigns is (as the name suggests) a campaign site that is still in development awaiting launch. It is being created by 40k fans for 40k fans. The ‘studio team’ is based in France but will have all content also available in English. Here is their own description of the site taken from their facebook page:


“Warhammer 40K Campaigns will include new campaigns for Warhammer 40.000 universe. Website will propose to players a complete history, a forum, items to be unlock, unique illustrations and more...

Website will be in English and French.
 
This fantastic collaboration will allow to the website to coming in 2014. All Facebook followers will have an exclusive access to beta test.

First Campaign will be The Fall Of Praetoria :
Campaign takes place on Praetoria Hive World, Imperium fights against a massive Ork invasion.
3 Adeptus Astartes, 6 Imperial Guard Regiments, and 4 Ork clans fight for ascendancy of the planet.

Takes place in this great adventure !

Future is in your hands on http://warhammer-40k-campaigns.com/ ...

Studio team.”


Obviously some help with English translation is needed but I was very excited by what I saw.
I was still full of questions about this project so I wrote to the studio to find out more. I was mostly interested in ‘how’ and ‘who’ rather than the exact details of the site and campaigns – fan made materials are some of the best but sometimes it gets squashed before it gets going.

Here is my short Q&A with Guerin Anselme the project manager (he apologised for his French-English translation).

Q) What is the studio behind Warhammer 40K Campaigns? This has been listed as a ‘fan based project’ so who are you guys?

A) The studio is a band of friends, 1 webdesigner, 1 encoder, 1 project manager and freelance graphic designers, others are volunteers, family member ... Only a fan project with friends in the trade and budget.

Q) From what we have seen of the project there is clearly a lot of work going into it. Are people donating their time or is it being financed some way?

A)  It comes to personal time to the whole project except the illustrations and proofreading English translations so that these are not a mixture of French / English. Project cost 7000 to 10000€ funded by the project manager.

Q) Game workshop are notorious for crushing fans and their projects, are you worried about IP infringements?

A)  I have an authorization  email from GW, all texts are created by us and illustration are also our property, it is not forbidden to use the universe of Warhammer 40k. We rely on fans to help support us with donations after opening site for it grows, the project manager is an ambulance driver he can invest more in the project.

Q) Many veteran gamers love Praetorians what made you choose them as the focus of the first Campaign?

A)  Because I’m a veteran gamer (20 years in hobby) and I really love Praetorian, so "Fall of Praetoria" is born.

Q) Is there anything that fans can do to contribute to this project?

A) Yes sure, when website will opening, we hope to have financial support (even $ 1 per person) for the server and of course create other campaigns. But we will need forum moderator (French and English), people who creating blog posts, painting tutorials, any help is welcome as simply ideas to improve the site.



We went on to discuss people’s Praetorian projects and background articles.  Guerin added “Of course we are looking for all the [praetorian] background including those of the fans and our main goal is to be closer to the fans even if we cannot satisfy everyone.”

Here are a few previews (sorry for the small size).


Due to primarily being a volunteer project it has had some delays and so will not be ready to launch in 2014 as planned. However, Guerin did say that we can expect to see an update on the home page soon and it will be launched in 2015 so watch this space! 


To follow the updates on this project check out their facebook page here. I, for one, am very excited about all that has been planned. I fondly remember past 40k worldwide campaigns and I'll be keeping a very keen eye on how this develops. 

On that note I'm off to finish what I have on my model desk so I can paint up some more Praetorians!

8 comments:

  1. Looks amazing, a great find, good work!

    I've just sent them an email, I am very interested indeed!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooooh. Some thought needs to be given to the numbers in the fluff. If a hive has a population in the 10s of Billions, an Iggy regiment could be as many as 10 thousand and Preatoria is one of the Imperium's 'regiment factories' then the numbers just don't stack up.

    Anyone invading a hive world is likely to face the ten or so regiments being raised at the time, the off world IG Garrison regiment and possibly an organised civil defence militia, as well as the frateris militia and assorted hive world gangs.

    On a world that produces Regiments for the IG (Preatoria, Palladia, Kreig, Vostroya et al) it could easily be twenty regiments at all stages between raw recruit and ready to deploy off world.

    Nice idea, just needs fleshing out a bit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Many Praetorian regiment were requisitioned throughout the galaxy.
    Orks are a dangerous enemy that reproduce quickly. So I think a Waaagh is quite capable of invading a hive world although Defence effective are high.

    However, we are ready to evolve the background if you suggest us something

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Un bon point de départ serait peut-être d'établir à l'échelle du monde et comment ça marche, aussi la taille et la portée des tribus, ainsi que le trafic normal dans et hors du monde et les itinéraires et les méthodes de l'arrivée de tribus.

      Travailler ces choses avant le début de la campagne signifie que si des questions se posent au cours de la campagne, les réponses sont plus faciles à travailler.



      Delete
    2. Yes all invasion will be detailed, it's a massive waaagh who regroup 3 big boss greedy for power but time allies against the imperium.

      We try everything to be coherent and of course in connection with GW background.

      Imperium will be really defender, only ork can attack a zone, but if ork lose battle,Imperium leads a counter attack in territory where orks comming. So there will be no imbalance, to choose the attacker and no player will be penalized at attack or defend.
      Orks can't progress below 51% control of warzone to prevent a rush to the capital.

      Brainstorming have running lot of times, and if absurd things is obvious there will be updates with help of communauty.

      French is difficult you can speed in english i thinks it's better for my understanding ;).

      I hope that answers your expectations, but to give you mouthwatering, website will have 21 pages of background.

      Cheer

      Delete
  4. Oui, bien.

    C'est un meilieu grande, avec plus possibilities. Augment le taillie des armies et voila.

    Je peneu votre Anglais c'est preferable {to} ma Francais !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very intriguing, will have to look this one up!

    ReplyDelete
  6. wow, I'm loving the look of this, great find!

    ReplyDelete