Comrade's Wargames

Last month John and I kicked off a mini-campaign that we have been working towards for several months.

Seditious Whispers is John’s baby: a short, Inq28-style narrative campaign set in our homebrew Warhammer 40,000 setting and focused on the shadowy efforts of Inquisitor Zoltav Throckswain as his warband attempts to outmaneuver The Quorum of the Deep, a nascent Genestealer Cult uprising on Hive Sacrament on the planet Gamma Euphorion Prime.

From a timeline perspective, the events of Seditious Whispers take place before the widespread conflict in The Cauldron, our previous narrative 40k campaign.

We’re using Shadow War: Armageddon to play out the campaign. If you’re a regular reader of Comrade’s Wargames, you’ll no doubt recall that we’ve been exploring this particular ruleset for the last 12 months or so. After probing the edges of SW:A, we’ve concluded that it’s a serviceable option for Inq28 grimdark skirmish games of all sorts.

Oh, and the best part about Seditious Whispers? John made it into a zine. Check this out!

He did the layout & illustrations himself! Absolutely cracking.

Getting Started

The zine lays it all out: Seditious Whispers is designed as a short, tight, focused narrative campaign for two players. Per the campaign guidelines, we’ll play 4 sessions (approximately) followed by a campaign finale.

Inquisitor Throckswain builds a 1,200 point list to start the campaign and may not buy any additional reinforcements. He’s got what he’s got, for as long as it takes.

The Quorum of the Deep player (John in this case) assigns warbands of varying point values to each of the four locations. Throckswain and his cadre investigate these locations, never knowing exactly what they might uncover. Along the way, Throckswain gathers Intelligence points, which accumulate toward the inevitable endgame showdown.

For our first session, I randomly selected the Logistitium Dockyards to investigate. It was defended by a Minor Cell – a small warband, not quite as potent as my team. The campaign instructed us to set up and play through a Hit & Run scenario, which further limited the number of figures each side could bring.

So both John and I had some important pre-game decisions to make…which of members of our warband do we bring along to explore the Logistitium Dockyards?

Into the Grimdark

We set up a lovely table with some industrial terrain to suggest a dockyard on the periphery of the hive quarter. It was the perfect location for some rookie cult members to choose for a meetup! They were gun runners, delivering a batch of illicit weaponry to be carried down into the depths of the underhive – no doubt intended to arm the seditious rebels down below!

Most of the cultisits deployed in the center of the board. I had rolled randomly to determine which of three possible victory conditions I was pursuing. In this case, Throckswain needed to overpower and capture a particular henchman, to be dragged back to a holding cell for gruesome interrogation. In game terms, I had to incapacitate one specific figure in hand-to-hand combat. John had to merely survive and defend against my probing attacks.

John made great use of the “hidden” ability, which is a fairly generous rule in Shadow War: Armageddon that lets any model stay largely out of sight as long as it skulks near a piece of obscuring terrain. Since our table was choked with scenery, and since skulking is very flavorful for Inq28 gaming, we took a liberal approach to the hidden rule and encouraged models to make use of it throughout the game.

It was fun and effective, and it encouraged players to get in close for frantic firefights and/or melee combat.

And so Throckswain and his warband arrived to witness the spectacle of the illegal weaponry changing hands between the fervent cultists. They were desperate the conclude the deal and slink back into the shadows. The Holy Inquisition would not stand for such trespass!

At the Inquisitor’s signal, his warband revealed themselves and advanced upon the cultists. Laser fire cracked and sparked off the rusted bulkheads of the dockyards. Half-human genestealer mutants craned their necks, trying to spot their attackers. By all accounts, they were surrounded by half-glimpsed assailants.

As the Inquisitorial warband closed in, the cultists rallied and began maneuvering to oppose them. Return fire dropped Ishmael Koronis, a promising acolyte renowned for his ardent faith. He was last glimpsed crawling on his hands and knees up a rusted staircase.

The cultists split their fire as Throckswain and his fighters closed in. With so many targets, it was no surprise that a close combat zealot – the ruthless Acolyte Eustace Erepatian – managed to close the distance and charge into combat with his heavy chainsword.

Erepatian hewed left and right with his sword, rending flesh and bone, before ultimately falling in combat with the dreaded foes of the Imperium.

And still the acolytes closed in, an inexorable tide bringing the Emperor’s light to the darkest corners of Hive Sacrament. Truly, they lived up to their name: The Last Lighthouse

As the cultists tried to gain the upper hand, Inquisitor Throckswain spotted his quarry. A shotgun-wielding cultist with a lumpen, inhuman countenance bore a clutch of data cubes in his shoulder bag – the very intelligence that Throckswain was sworn to retrieve! Quickly, before the wretch could flee, Throckswain made his move. Together with his trusted lieutenant, Interrogator Lysander Frost, the Inquisitor closed in and placed the vile alien under arrest.

In a stroke, Throckswain had secured the victory and denied the cultists’ their prize. We continued the game to see if the cultists would quit the field and flee – indeed, they did so within a turn or two.

Conclusion

Three cheers for the defenders of the Imperium! Throckswain and his cadre had carved through the minor cultist cell, leaving hewn bodies and brutalized survivors in their wake. The two acolytes who had fallen in combat – Erepatian and Koronis – recovered from their wounds, more or less intact.

So that’s a wrap on our first session of Seditious Whispers! I’m liking the narrow scope and clearly defined endgame that John has come up with. Stay tuned for the next session!