Hey all, my current Deathwatch game (which started with rank 4 battle brothers and is up to rank 7 now) is nearing the end of it's current arc and I am thinking of kicking off a new campaign with rank 1 marines, focusing as much as possible on using published DW material (to save me time). At a quick glance at the available resources, I've identified the below as potential sources of missions. Has anyone else run a similar campaign? Any recommendations on which were good, which were bad, optimal order etc?

My current view of the likely order of progress:

1) My own homemade intro - involving assassinating a Tau sympathizer on a planet in the Canis Salient which is not 100% Imperial compliant

2) The Extraction adventure from the Core rulebook

3) Final Sanction

4) Oblivion's Edge

5) Shadow of Madness

6) The Emperor Protects mini-campaign

7) Fall into Darkness adventure from the Jericho Reach

8) Rising Tempest mini-campaign

9) Ark of Lost Souls mini-campaign

10) Missions to investigate one or more tomb worlds (I will drop breadcrumbs pointing to this through the other missions or during down time)

The alternative to the above schedule would be to run the first 4 in that order and then provide the KT with the option to choose their next mission based on a series of Intelligence briefings - essentially saying that their watch commander believes they have proved themselves capable and intelligent and that he allows his pool of seasoned Kill Teams to 'bid' for the missions they believe they are best equipped to take on. This would allow me to throw in some little side missions that are just brief, one session affairs, based on some of the unfleshed adventure seeds in the various source books.

Any thoughts on this style of campaign?

Final sanction is a solid adventure that is well paced and written and a good follow-up to Extraction. I think your campaign plan is absolutely fine if you're wanting to save some time and sweat, and I like the sort of semi-sandbox nature you're going for.

It looks good.

MR.

So I've done some more reading and formulated the following path for the game:

The campaign will open with the KT getting a briefing on the broad strokes of the crusade, the salients, the enemies, the "allies" etc (my previous DW campaign was actually set in the Koronus Expanse, so most of my players know very little of the Jericho Reach setting). From there, the team will be deployed to either the Canis or Orpheus Salient. I might allow the team to express a preference to the watch commander for which Salient they deploy to, based on any relevant talents/deeds etc that they picked up through character creation that favour them combating either Tau or Tyranids.

Then I will run a series of missions, depending on which Salient they choose. For the Canis Salient, I will run them through the intro assassination mission I mentioned above, then Shadows of Madness, followed by Traitor's Dawn (from First Founding). In the Orpheus Salient, they will go through Extraction, Final Sanction & Oblivion's edge. Once this initial deployment is completed, the KT will be debriefed and re-deployed to the other set of missions. Finally, they will be sent to the Acherus Salient - where I will launch them through the Emperor Protects meta-adventure.

From this point, I will present the team with breadcrumbs pointing to either the Rising Tempest or Fall into Darkness adventures and possibly some sort of recon mission to a Tomb World; they can choose the order of tackling these, but eventually will move on to the Ark of Lost Souls mission... Then finally, they will move onto a more substantial series of encounters with the Subhekhar Dynasty as the campaign finale.

Ark of Lost Souls can be pretty dangerous, not a bad idea to leave it late.

Have you looked at the adventures at the back of First Founding and The Emperor's Chosen? The latter is pretty risky.

Have a plan to include the one in first founding alright, have not seen the one in Emperor's Chosen yet, will probably save it to the later deployments, either just before or just after Ark of Lost Souls. Thanks for the tip

Still here folks, though I dunno if anyone else can even read this... handy place for me to collect my thoughts anyway

Have kicked off the campaign I had mentioned in this thread, starting with a deployment to the Orpheus Salient.

I have a potential pool of 7 players, so (depending on the nightly attendance) a game session can end up covering a surprisingly small amount of play.

Despite having had 6 or 7 sessions so far, we have only managed to get through Extraction (Core Rulebook) and about 75% though Final Sanction, but it's been pretty enjoyable for all that. My intention is to run directly from the current mission into Oblivion's Edge, then let the team debrief at Arkhas before taking on Fall into Darkness.

That should wrap up their Orpheus Salient deployment and leave them back in Erioch (where I might engage them with some intra-Inquisition conflict for a session or two).

From there, I think we'll jump to Shadow of Madness as the first stage of their deployment to the Canis Salient, before moving to Traitor's Dawn.

That should bring us on to the Emperor Protects, to engage in the war against Chaos in the Acherus Salient.

From there I'll try to encourage the team to do some of their own research and legwork and see where it leads them, but I'll have the options of Rising Tempest, Ark of Lost Souls, The Longest Watch and the Outer Reach to put them through, as well as the possibility of hunting down the Dagon Overlord.