Welcome to Operation Solar Wind – An Introduction

Greetings Generals and Admirals, welcome to Operation Solar Wind.

For the beginners:

This will be the home of the strategic role playing game that covers the Imperial attempt to reclaim the Thraxx system from the clutches of Chaos. For those of you unfamiliar with the previous (and current) strategic roleplays run by Erkyde, Jenn Burdoo, and most notably Combat Medic (and his stellar Beltane campaign - the first majorly successful roleplay of this type), this will hopefully give you some sort of idea of what to expect.

So, as I was saying, this is a “strategic” role-play. Those of you participating in this game will play the roles of Imperial Guard Generals or Fleet Admirals. Unlike most other role-plays you may have experienced however, you will not (in general) directly participate in the action; this role-play isn’t about fighting the forces of the Archenemy in close proximity with your gun blazing. In this game you will be sitting in the background for the most part, in command of thousands of his Emperor’s soldiers.

Your soldiers, tanks, titans and aircraft become the means by which your character accomplishes his or her goals, instead of the customary powersword and bolt-pistol. In this game your character will be responsible for anything between 10,000 and 100,000 brave soldiers of the Imperium, and it is your job to give them orders, look after their morale, and (hopefully) lead them to ultimate victory.

That being said, this game will require those of you unfamiliar with strategic warfare to learn a couple of new tricks. Games on this level can intimidate new players quite a bit. Try to think of it as somewhat like a turn-based strategy game on your PC, only this game has no exact rules – just like real life. The game is fully intuitive, anything you could do in real life you can do in the game. Want to order your soldiers to build a trenchline? Done. Want that trenchline to consist of an anti-tank ditch, followed by four concrete strong-points each housing 400 soldiers? Done. Want to order all your men in the 5th regiment to give their knives and forks to their nearest commissar? Done.

Ok, that last one was a little bizarre but it should give you the idea that you can do whatever you damn well want – there is no little set of rules to prevent you doing things, only good old common sense. Eg: you can’t order your troops to fly if they don’t have transport aircraft.

Hopefully that gives you a little idea of what this game will be about. I realize that new players will still find this a daunting prospect, so there are a couple of things you can do to help get you involved in the game. The first is sign up for the small training scenario I’ve created, so you to try your hand (sign up is in the Roll Call thread) and get familiar with things before you are hurled into the breach. The second thing you can do is have a look at Beltane and Imbolc in the Harbringer War Room thread. Lastly, you can post as much as you like in here, and numerous helpful people are online on MSN a fair bit to give you a hand. Those include myself and Commissar Molotov. There are a couple of other people who could provide assistance, in the form of more experienced players who will fight alongside you. Their contact details will be posted once we start a proper sign up.

Good luck, and have fun!

For everyone:

Righto, welcome once again to any prospective players. Now down to the specifics.

This strategic role-play will be somewhat similar to the Gensal campaigns in that is a high level campaign where you will play the men and women in command of a large force. However, to avoid falling under the shadow of Beltane, and also to provide something a little different to the DI boards, there are some differences….

1. This is going to be a system wide assault by an entire Imperial Task Force. You, the players, will be in charge of the entire thing. Yes, the entire Task Force. In case you were wondering, that includes 9 Army groups (approximately 1 million men, tanks, guns, etc) as well as the space fleet required to carry and defend those soldiers. You will be required to retake the entire system if possible, including two planets as well as asteroid based mining stations. How you go about this is up to you, with a little direction from Lord General Kiyoshi on just what he wants you to achieve.

2. To allow for the rather large scale of this undertaking, the detail level of the campaign will not be as high as Beltane. Essentially this means that you can fight at the Corps level (25000 men) instead of the Regimental level (5000 men) as desired. If you want to get more specific, go nuts, I’ll tell you when I start hitting overload in the detail department.

3. To facilitate fighting on this huge scale, you will not be required to directly order about every unit under your control. You will be allowed to choose one or two special officers that you can send to look after part or a whole of your forces. Essentially you give them general orders, and leave the details up to them. However, whilst these officers will take your orders, they will be under GM control as NPCs (non-player-characters), so don’t expect them to always do things as you might have done....

4. There will be two levels to this campaign – higher strategic command and Operational Command. Higher strategic command will consist of some of the more experienced players and will be responsible for coordinating the overall fight for the entire system. I’ve dubbed these men and women as the “Thraxx Strategic Council”. The TSC will consist of four or five experienced players and several NPCs who you will meet once we get started.

Operational Command (OC) will consist of lower ranked Generals in command of one or more Corps of troops. This level of command would well suit newer players, since the complexity level will be much lower. Your role will be to command the actual forces involved in the invasion of Thraxx under general direction from your commanding officers on the TSC. You will be more than welcome to join the strategic discussions, but your primary role is command the troops in battle. If at a later stage you feel you want more responsibility, you can be promoted to the TSC.

5. This campaign will allow for politicking. Since we will hopefully have quite a few players and NPCs kicking around, each with their own agenda, things might not always merely be a matter of ordering your troops to victory. Members of OC might wish to progress to TSC at the expense of their superiors, or perhaps one of the NPCs decides you really don’t deserve to be in command of 5th Corps… so having friends in the TSC and OC (and even outside the Thraxx theatre) might all of a sudden become just as important as the Chaos hordes beating on your trench-line.




Anyways, that is the general intro. Over the next few days I’ll be posting up the system maps, Imperial Intelligence reports and Thraxx system overview for your perusal. I’d also appreciate people who wish to play making me aware of their interest and experience levels.

I look forward to seeing you on the battlefields of both the emptiness of space and the hives and factories of dirtside…

Greetings Generals, Admiral, and Dragon Lord. I have just made the first official post to start Operation Solar Wind running.

Just before we start, I'd like you please note a few things. Firstly, this is a Roleplay FIRST and a Strategy game SECOND. You are playing characters, not a computer game where your only objective is to win. There is no "winning" in this game, I want people to approach the situations as their characters would, even if this means that a less than optimal decision is made. Similarly, I don't want to see a single out-of-character post having a go at someone for making a bad strategic decision that is a good character decision. If you want to punish them for fowling up your plans, do it in the game. Don't bitch about it outside the game.

The setting for this game is going to be dark, gothic, and probably very, very nasty. I am more than happy for your various characters to make enemies of each other, even hate each other. Men in such positions of power are unlikely to play nice. I would however strongly counsel you to be careful about just who you offend though, as even Captain-Generals are easily replaced. Yes, you can die. Easily. In fact, I am confidently expecting some people to go through a couple of characters, whether via death, transfer, assignment to the penal legion, or even defection to Chaos.

The first part of the game is largely to introduce the characters, we get to the part where you order your thousands of troops to butcher the enemy very shortly after that. If you are just chomping at the bit already to unleash explosive death on the Archenemy I apologize, but seriously, you can get yourself in to more than enough trouble before the landings even begin. I also need the extra time to finish up a few of the minutae like full force dispositions and logistical elements - but I figured I might as well start the RP part whilst I fight with that, plus Bootcamp is still running and should give most of the rest of you combat-cravers a chance to blow things up until we hit full stride.

Over the next few weeks I will be tweaking the forum to figure out what the best format is. If I delete something you like, tell me. If I don't create something you want, tell me. If you have suggestions for improving the game, PM me or post it up. I try not to be one of those GM's that beats down people for suggesting improvements - but please keep things POLITE people, otherwise I'll start using the GM-stick to beat you about the head.

Good luck guys, and enjoy.

For those of you unfamiliar with some of the units used, here is a basic outline:

Light infantry - Imperial guardsmen with lasguns and flak jackets and *maybe* the occasional squad support weapon.
Medium infantry - As above but with more support weapons.
Heavy infantry - Imperial guardsmen in carapace armour, hellguns, grenades, and heaps of heavy weaponry.
Airborne - Like light infantry only trained in using parachutes, grav-chutes or valkyrie transports for rapid deployment. They also tend to be much better quality soldiers.
Special forces - Imperial guard veterans with a penchant for sneaking around, blowing things up, and operating independently. Tend to be armed quite well, but lack heavy weapons because they slow them down too much.
Logistics soldiers - Clerks, cooks, cleaners, doctors, supply sergeants and all other non-combat personnel who are essential to the running of a combat regiment.
MPs - Stands for 'Military Police'. Basically light infantry who help the Commissariat keep order, but also fulfil roles like guard duty, and often act as traffic cops
Adeptus Arbites - Ultra-mean, carapace armoured, shotgun wielding, near fearless MPs.
Engineers - Non combat engineering personal who can build things like airfields, fortifications, bridges etc.
Combat Engineers - Soldiers trained as engineers. Good for demolitions, removing fortifications, building things whilst under fire, etc. Also tend to be good assault troops, as they tend to carry lots of explosives and short range weapons.

Rough riders - Imperial guardsmen on horseback

Motorcycle - Two or three wheeled scout bike. Possibly but rarely equipped with a mounted gun.
Truck - Just like the ones we've got now.
Armoured Truck - A truck with armour and anti-infantry weapons such as stubbers. In the case of the Valmare, the trucks are also sealed against the environment.

Tank - A standard tracked main battle tank, normally sporting a large anti-tank cannon in a turret, and several smaller anti-tank and anti-infantry weapons in the hull or in sponsons. Example: Leman Russ.
IFV - Stands for 'Infantry Fighting Vehicle'. An armoured troop carrier, generally armed with anti-infantry or light anti-tank weapons. Example: Chimera
Siege Tank - A heavier, slower tank with greater firepower designed to attack fortifications. Example: Demolisher
Light Tank - A fast, lightly armoured tank generally used for scouting or assisting airborne infantry. Normally mounts an autocannon or light anti-tank weapon. Example: Razorback without the troop capacity and a bigger gun.
SP AT Gun* - Stands for 'Self Propelled Anti-Tank Gun'. It is a tank chassis with a big anti tank gun and little else. Example: Leman Russ Vanquisher with no sponsons.
SP AA Gun* - Stands for 'Self Propelled Anti-Aircraft Gun'. A tank with anti-aircraft cannons. Also moderately effective against tanks, and highly effective against infantry, but pop like caps when shot at. Example: Hydra.

Salamander - A fast, ultralight recon tank.
Hellhound - Tank with a huge flamethrower.

Mortar - Standard issue Imperial Guard infantry mortar. Man-portable... barely. Good against infantry, useless against tanks.
SP Artillery Pieces* - A very large artillery piece mounted on a lightly armoured tank chassis. Example: Basilisk or Griffon
SP Heavy Artillery Piece* - Massive artillery piece designed for stationary bombardment of fortifications or very heavily armoured targets, mounted on a lightly armoured and very slow tank chassis. Example: Bombard
SP Rocket Artillery Piece* - Big, long range rocket launcher mounted on a lightly armoured tank chassis. Example: Whirlwind

Manticore - Like an SP Rocket Artillery Piece only fires much slower, and the rockets are big enough to flatten city blocks.

Construction Vehicles - Bulldozers, cranes, excavation units, etc.


* - Anything marked with a * also have versions that are not self-propelled. Ie: they require a tractor, truck or similar vehicle to move them. Otherwise functionally they are exactly the same.