A campaign in its most basic form is a structure that links battles in the Warhammer World together and uses them to tell a story. Campaigns are very varied but they are usually played by gaming groups with anything from 2 to 10 people involved. The most basic ones follow a tree diagram between two players. Perhaps your Goblin army is trying to reinforce a large Orc Waaagh! and your opponents Dwarfs are trying to stop you. You fight a Pitched Battle. If the Goblins win, they reinforce the Waaagh! and the next game is a siege while they trap the dwarfs. If the Dwarfs win, the next game is an ambush, as the Waaagh! is overwhelmed without its Goblin backup.

An online campaign is a way of bringing together people across the world to play a huge Warhammer campaign. Think of them as (hopefully better) versions of the Nemisis Crown or Storm of Chaos that Games Workshop ran. The players fight for a team (called a faction) in an effort to triumph over the other teams involved the campaign. Usually these factions are organized roughly by race, by forum or by traditional alliances. Each faction is trying to take as much territory as they can from the others while defending their own. A map is used to represent the area of the world that is being contested. Each faction starts with a small amount of territory and must use points gained by fighting games to capture more.

Don't worry about this. It can seem a bit overwhelming to new players, but the basics are very simple. You fight games, and your faction decides where on the map it will attack with the results it has available each turn. Read through the rules post for the campaign, but don't worry about remembering everything straight away. The main thing is to sign up for a faction and get stuck in. Get to know your team mates in the forums and they will be more than happy to help you understand the rules. Don't be afraid to speak up though. Just because someone seems to know what they are doing, doesn't make them right!

No to both questions. You can use ANY game you wish in the campaign, against any opponent provided you played it after the campaign started and you only report each game once. The online component refers to the map and the results, which are posted here at animositycampaigns.com. The games you play can be online or offline varieties. Most campaigners submit games played at their local club against people not playing in the campaign.

Most experienced campaigners find that playing smaller games is the best way to get enough to go around. You can fit in 2 or even 3 500 point games in the time it takes to play a 2250 point battle. You can also 'bank' unused games, for use during later stages of the campaign so this approach makes sense. We keep the turns relatively short to keep interest up and stop people form getting distracted. It also keeps the immersion up.

Fluff is the slang term for stories or fiction written by players. Part of the fun of playing in a campaign is seeing all the stories that the players produce and getting immersed in the idea of a real war taking place. We encourage all players, regardless of skill, to have a go at writing as it will contribute to your factions final tally when the dust settles. A good place to start would be to come up with a name and a background for your general then try and work this into your battle reports. Instead of telling people 'I moved my black Orcs to try and counter charge his Clanrats' try and put it over as a narrative. 'Gitgit urged his Boyz forward, the heavily armoured Orcs surging forward hoping to catch the ratmen off guard'. Fluff does not have to be very long, it is the cumulative effect of lots of little bits that really makes a campaign special, so get writing!

Diplomacy is a part of most online campaigns. Each faction typically nominates a diplomat. Their job is to communicate, via PM, with the diplomats of the other factions, offering deals, alliances, insults, whatever they think is the best strategy to further their faction goals. The basic idea is to stop your enemies attacking you before it is too late. How you go about doing this is up to you!

Special projects are put in play by the GM team to keep things interesting. If a faction captures a city that contains large reserves of gold, the GM team might reward them with new equipment or mercenaries. If a faction sacks the capitol city of another faction, the GM team may give them a bonus to their reports next turn to represent the surge in morale. Keep an eye out for these events.

Animosity was the name of the first Campaign run by Da Warpath back in the wake of the Storm of Chaos campaign in 2004. It represented a Greenskin Civil war, but several other races tagged along for the ride. Since then, unwilling to give up on a good thing, there have been two and a half (don't ask) more Animosity Campaigns, this time set in the kingdom of Araby. Animosity 4 is scheduled for release late in 2009 and this website is designed to be a home for that and any future campaigns run by the Animosity GMs