scenarios

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Grimdark Future: Cultists Rampant!

Posted by Comrade on May 10, 2023
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Following their tactical defeat in the darkest depths of the sumps in Hive Sacrament, the forces of the Imperium fell back in the face of a frenzied pursuit by a hodgepodge of cultists. Some were sworn to serve the hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum; others bore the sigil of the many-armed Star-Children. Shockingly, among their number strode a few power-armored Astartes of the Dark Angels. Why would the Sons of the Lion make common cause with such vile heretics? Truly, it was a riddle wrapped within an enigmas.

Welcome, dear reader, to the second session of our Grimdark Future campaign, The Cauldron. The first session was an epic 8-player affair, featuring two side-by-side games set in the lower levels of Hive Sacrament. With the forces of the Imperium generally routed (with some exceptions), it seemed appropriate for the heretics to continue their uprising by pushing into unexplored areas of the underhive.

The heretics caught up to their quarry in an abandoned service sector, which showed signs of having been the site of a battle years or even decades ago. Here, amongst the blackened platforms and rusted catwalks, the defenders of the Imperium would make their stand.

Here’s our table setup, featuring some exciting new pieces of terrain.

We’re playing Grimdark Future Firefight for the first portion of this campaign, starting at 250 points and escalating to larger games as the campaign proceeds. For this game, each player brought 350 points of units. The game was structured as a 3-on-3 team game, which was large but not unmanageable (since we are veteran OPR/Grimdark players).

As the game got underway, the cultists boiled forth out of the depths of the underhive, sweeping like a foul tide into defensive positions that were thinly held by elements of the Adeptus Sororitas, Imperial Guard, and Space Wolves.

John’s Guardsmen and Rian’s Sisters of Battle had a fairly advantageous deployment zone, as it featured a lower level where they could maneuver in the backfield in relative safety and out of line of sight. From a tactical standpoint, I couldn’t easily see their units from where I was sitting, and I honestly forgot where some of them were located! Literal stealth!!

Daniel’s newly painted Genestealer Cult warband, the Starchosen of Manifest Salvation, played a central role in the heretics’ assault. Quite a few of his hardest-hitting units had the ambush or scout ability, which in Grimdark Future Firefight gives them the ability to either deploy further forward or pop out and ambush unsuspecting units later in the game. He used both abilities to great effect.

In the pic below, Daniel’s crusty mutant races forward to menace a fire team of Imperial Guardsmen. This beastly creature was defeated, but his mere presence disrupted John’s advance and helped isolate his snipers so my long-range cultist riflemen could pick them off.

Speaking of snipers, they proved to be a high risk / high reward unit for John’s warband. They seized the high ground early on and laid down punishing fire on the few heretics who were caught out in the open. After some losses, the heretics adjusted their tactics, sticking to cover and using their relatively few long-range firepower to eventually take down the snipers.

On the flank, Parker formed up his Space Wolves and advanced to meet the cultists. After some hot dice rolls in the opening turns, I was confident about my chances here. Unfortunately, the Space Wolves rallied and pushed back the cultists, ultimately seizing the objective on this flank.

In the end, the heretics had swarmed over most of the board, despite taking horrendous losses. The game came down to a handful of key dice rolls in the final couple of turns.

One such clash came when Parker’s Space Wolf equipped with a jump pack (!) and a flamethrower (!!!) landed behind my long range cultist sniper. In a miraculous display of zealotry, the cultist made all his saving throws and managed to return fire and pin the Space Wolf, effectively neutralizing the threat on the final turn of the game.

And so an uneasy silence settled across the abandoned hive sector. The defenders of the Imperium withdrew to better defensible positions elsewhere in the underhive. The cultists went to work harvesting equipment and weapons from the fallen warriors and carrying out unspeakable rituals in the black depths of the hive.

Truly, a dark tide is rising in the depths of Hive Sacrament. While the pilgrims still go about their holy duties in the upper levels, the fate of the Gamma Euphorion star system is being decided in the grim, gore-splattered underhalls of the resplendent hive city.

And so our second campaign session concludes with the hard-pressed defenders of the Imperium once again seeking to stem the tide of heresy. Stay tuned for more – our next game(s) will see the players bringing 500 point warbands for Grimdark Future Firefight. More to come soon!

Nightwatch: Slaughter at Bloodwater Canyon

Posted by Comrade on November 28, 2022
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Our Nightwatch campaign ratcheted up another notch at the game last month. This was our fourth session of our anticipated seven-mission Long Hunt, and the threat level was increasing as our heroes ventured further into the Hattendorf Border Marches.

Picking up where last session’s game left off, this game saw the children who had been rescued from a gruesome fate delivered safely to an abandoned minehead located inside Bloodwater Canyon. I’m sure that name is just a colorful local metaphor, right? And I’m certain, absolutely certain, that the mining site was closed down because its local mineral wealth had been extracted successfully. Not abandoned because the crew was dragged into the badlands and eaten alive. Right? Guys?

Anyway, the children were wisely left at the mine site while the heroes set up camp nearby. During the 20 minutes they were gone, however, a band of feral beastmen arrived atop the canyon ridge, war horns a-blaring and skin drums a-banging. It seems the abandoned minehead was not the sanctuary it seemed. To arms, hunters!

This game was an opportunity to use a giant piece of terrain that John had created months ago during the initial worldbuilding phase of our Nightwatch campaign. The canyon wall was placed along one edge of the battlefield to create an imposing physical feature for the beastmen to use as they swarmed into the mine site.

We put two of the four spawn points (from whence the bad guys would arrive each turn) behind the canyon ridge, and by the first turn, the bad guys started scaling the cliffs to menace and mangle the stalwart defenders!!

The heroes initially placed their defenders in the comparative cover of the mining site. They quickly realized that the sheer pace of arriving monsters meant they would be rapidly overwhelmed.

With steel in his hands and determination in his heart, Jim’s bladesman Sir Joshua climbed a ladder to the top of the canyon and stood on the ridge. There he met the marauders in single combat as the sun set and cast a fearsome silhouette against the rocky terrain below.

It was a shaping up to be a real bloodbath up on the gnarled ridgeline. And they just kept coming! Sir Joshua definitely had his hands full.

But this wasn’t the only spot where the beastmen were emerging! Two other spawn points were also located in the grim ruins to either side of the minehead. Per Nightwatch rules, we rolled randomly to select two of the four spawn points per turn to deploy the next batch of bad guys.

So the players had to wisely deploy their defenders to cover the approaches to the mining site. This meant plenty of action for Paul’s elf archer, Vince’s alchemist, Daniel’s wizard, and the various hirelings and henchmen who had been hired over the last few sessions!

By the second half of the game, the really bad guys started arriving — Terrors, in the parlance of Nightwatch. These bruisers are among the strongest monsters that the players will face in a typical Nightwatch campaign.

They emerged howling and snarling in the waning turns of the game, and their sheer brutality challenged the players, whose resources and resolve were in thin supply as the game neared its end stages.

By this point, the ridge was strewn with corpse markers, each one denoting a fallen foe. Nightwatch has several secondary missions that involve looting or harvesting bodies, so we were obliged to track the dead as they piled up. And piled up, and piled up. Poor Sir Joshua was knee deep in the dead by the end of the game!

Despite the absolute onslaught of vermin and terrors pouring into the canyon, the heroes held out — barely. If the tide of darkness had been any stronger, or if the defenders’ resolve had faltered just a bit they would surely have fallen. As it was, they beat the beastmen back, rescued the poor little kids, and spirited them away to maybe a slightly safer venue to rest and recuperate.

Nightwatch provided a great game and kept the tension high. You could see the players’ eyes get wide as the Terrors started arriving in the latter turns! But they kept their composure, worked as a team, and survived this onslaught. Future scenarios will not be so warm and gentle. Enjoy this win, hunters, for it may be your last!

Grimdark Future: Assassination Mission on Pestus Maximus

Posted by Comrade on October 25, 2022
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An iridescent drizzle of acid rain hissed off the crumbled machinery at the chem station. Nearby, a small knot of poxwalkers was unfazed by the caustic precipitation; the mindless zombies simply stood sentry and awaited orders, even as their flesh slowly melted away under the relentless rain.

The squad of Plague Marines overseeing the zombies showed more agency, surveilling the perimeter of the chem station and keeping an eye out for interlopers. The Maggot Magnates legion was visiting the shrine world of Pestus Maximus for a specific purpose, and they would not dither any longer than necessary on the accursed planet.

Suddenly, the vox crackled with a whispered warning, and the unmistakable roar of engines drifted in from beyond the perimeter.

John and I got together towards the end of summer for another game of Grimdark Future. John was trying out a list built around a specific expensive, high-powered model (an Imperial assassin) and so we set up a game focused on delivering the assassin to wipe out a high-value target — my Death Guard Lord of Contagion, Brasque Krakmarrow, aka the Grave-Wurm of Endymion-Delta and the Gift-Giver of Vortulai Hive. A truly vile chud if there ever was one!

The game began with John’s Taurox transport motoring into the chem station, where it was met with a trio of Myphitic Blight-Haulers and a small mob of poxwalkers. Inside the transport was a well-equipped squad of inquisitorial acolytes led by a very capable inquisitor.

As the Death Guard moved in to engage the Taurox and its scrappy occupants, a smaller group of Imperial agents crept through the rubble near the chem station. The agents included a pair of acolytes escorting a psyker, who was carrying a teleport homing beacon that would be used to deploy “the asset” — the assassin!

The inquisitor led his acolytes into the comparative safety of the chem station, where they would attempt to hack a data terminal while the Death Guard’s attention was focused by the imminent arrival of the assassin.

When the assassin arrived via the teleport homing beacon (anytime after turn 1, per the Grimdark Future rules) John was immediately presented with an agonizing decision: where to deploy his shiny new toy soldier?!?

Gentle reader, I cannot tell you how much time the two of us collectively spent trying to analyze and strategize the best possible placement of his assassin. Empires rose and fell, seas evaporated into dust, and still John was second guessing about where to put his little man.

Ultimately he plopped him down within easy charge range of my 5-man squad of Plague Marines, which had been camped near an objective for most of the game while they harassed the advancing Imperials with accurate heavy weapon fire.

Across the battlefield, the Death Guard army was doing an admirable job plugging the gaps in their defensive line. The three Myphitic Blight-Haulers motored up to the chem station and began pouring on the fire. This led to a head-smack moment for John as he realized his guys are armed with swords, not guns, and so he sent them clambering down from the chem station’s parapets so they could assault the Myphitic Blight-Haulers.

This proved to be a fairly indecisive battle that dragged on until the end of the game.

The psyker with the homing beacon, his life’s purpose complete now that he had called in the assassin strike, was dragged down and dismembered, along with his escort, by a staggering mob of poxwalkers. He will be remembered in the Tome of Heroes!

What’s left? Oh yeah, the assassin! Having dealt with the squad of Plague Marines, the red-robed killer pivoted toward his true target: the Lord of Contagion! This set up an epic clash of for the ages.

Lumbering behemoth versus spritely death machine! We traded blows for a turn before, stunningly, the Lord of Contagion hefted his might plague axe and cleaved the assassin in twain, casting side the ruined body and grinding the warrior’s entrails into the dust with his massive steel-shod boots.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the assassin represented half of the entire points value of John’s army. Without that unit, he didn’t have much left to oppose me, and we agreed that the forces of Chaos had won the day.

And so John’s intensely focused army list had shattered like a glass torpedo on the rusted armor of my Chaos army. The Imperial landing party slunk off to lick its wounds. With any luck, they’ll be able to piece the assassin back together from the gore-slicked pieces that were recovered from the battlefield on Pestus Maximus. Stay tuned for more!

Age of Fantasy Skirmish at C3 Game Con

Posted by Comrade on June 3, 2022
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Back in February I volunteered to run a game at C3 Game Con, a brand new local game convention in Corvallis, Oregon. As it was the first year for this event, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Corvallis is home to Oregon State University, so I knew we had a captive audience of students and young adults who were likely to check out an event like this.

The convention was heavy on anime, cosplay, RPGs, and board games. Age of Fantasy: Skirmish seemed like the perfect way to to give them a little visual spectacle and maybe rope in some new gamers.

I set up a basic four-player scenario centered on Bayard’s Holdfast, the nifty little dwarf fortress I painted up last year. Two players would command the dwarf garrison tasked with defending the holdfast. The other two players were in charge of undead raiding parties tasked with smashing through the defenses and sacking the charred remains of the fort.

As you can see, I had a round tabletop, which actually helped the scenario – I was able to plop Bayard’s Holdfast into the exact center of the table and then arrange the attackers and defenders around the perimeter.

My players were fairly new to miniature wargaming. Only Parker had dabbled in painting & gaming before sitting down at the table. I selected Age of Fantasy: Skirmish because it is a simple, easy to understand ruleset for people who are fairly new to this sort of gaming. I whipped together some unit cards for each player’s warband, and of course they got their own copy of the rules to look over before the game.

The game started with a general advance by the undead players. They had to occupy the courtyard in the fortress and outnumber the defenders by the end of the game to secure a win. They could also gain a minor victory by slaying the dwarf artillery crew, which started the game in an outbuilding far from the tower and had to hustle to safety.

The dwarven defenders quickly understood their role in the scenario, and they mustered a stout defense that saw their elite troops meeting the undead near the crumbling stone walls on the perimeter of the fort’s territory. Fearsome blows were exchanged as the undead forces gradually pushed the dwarves back.

But! The dwarves had an ace in the hole! If they could get their artillery crew back to the fortress in one piece, they could load & fire the mortar mounted on the parapets. Thankfully, they were able to achieve this goal by the closing turns of the game, and they rained thunderous devastation down on the undead that were swarming around the walls of the holdfast.

By the end of the game, the undead legions had reached the walls (in fact, the ghoul king shown here was actually able to breach the defenses and begin rampaging through the courtyard). However, the stout dwarven defenders had succeeded in waylaying or defeating the bulk of the undead warbands, which meant that the defenders had secured the victory. The surviving undead warriors retreated in good order back to their nefarious swamp hideout.

Age of Fantasy: Skirmish is a great game to try out with new players in a convention setting. It requires some prep work – I don’t think the game would have been nearly as successful if I hadn’t put in some hours making the unit cards and handouts. But the ruleset is solid and it definitely ticks the boxes in terms of what a new player will expect from a wargame experience.

And I’m pleased to report that C3 Game Con was a wild success! We had more than 500 attendees over two days, which was way above our expectations and suggested there’s a big demand for this sort of event in Corvallis. I’ll be signing up to run some games next year for sure!

Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Scenarios Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes

Posted by Comrade on May 23, 2022
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I’m doing a bit of public service here by re-publishing the beloved fan supplement entitled (you guessed it) Scenarios from Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes.

The original PDF supplement (all 172 pages of it) was created by James Diemer and hosted on his now-defunct Hour11 Wargaming blog. The supplement has been gone from the Internet for at least a few years, maybe more. All that’s left is a wasteland of broken links on gaming blogs around the world that had been inspired and energized by the crackling creativity in this massive tome of scenarios.

Of course, I had already downloaded a copy to keep handy on my computer. Little did I know it would become a rare artifact! I reached out to James via the email address in the scenario document and asked for permission to re-post this supplement on my blog. He never responded, but judging by the generous notes from the author on page 2 of the document, I don’t think he will mind.

So there you have it – a legendary lost resource has been rediscovered! This supplement takes Song of Blades & Heroes – one of my all-time favorite skirmish games as well as the game that single-handedly kickstarted my resurgence in this hobby – and adds in all of the glorious Warhammer and Mordheim scenarios you remember from your younger years. Share it, adapt it, enjoy it … above all, have fun with it!