Warhammer 40,000 Homebrew Narrative Campaign: Ork Versus Eldar

My oldest daughter initially got into Warhammer 40,000 by playing Dawn of War. Her first real-time strategy was StarCraft II, which she became interested in because she saw Melissa and I playing a bunch of Co-Op together (never maxed out Mengsk or Zeratul, though she very recently got back into it so I'm hoping to get at least one to level 15 before we stop again).

We started playing that when she was around 7 or 8, and then when she started to get understandably bored with it I mentioned Dawn of War. I picked up a few copies on Steam and we started playing that together, and she enjoyed it quite a bit more than StarCraft II despite it definitely showing its age (I showed her Dawn of War II but it just never took, and coop on that game is laggy as hell).

I then made the mistake(?) of telling her that Dawn of War is based on a tabletop wargame called Warhammer 40,000, showed her the minis, and she said she wanted some for Christmas. I initially bought her a tactical squad of Space Marines (her favorite army) and some Necrons, figuring that she could just play with them and do whatever, but then saw an Indomitus box on Amazon for like $160.

I bought it (a purchase which would quickly snowball into us having 1,000 or so points of almost every faction besides Genestealer Cults and Custodes), and after painting and assembling most of the box we went through some tutorial games where you play a captain squaring off against some scarab swarms, and a trio of assault marines trying to stop some necron warriors from marching across the map.

I think this set her expectations on what the game would be like. While she loved Dawn of War (and still does), after trying a few "normal" games where she was beaten pretty much every time despite handicaps and the wife and I pulling punches here and there, she said that she preferred, in her words, the "story missions". 

Warhammer 40,000 has a kind of narrative play, but for the womenfolk it's far too complex for them to even want to attempt to grasp (heck, for the normal game I wrote a kind of idiot's guide so they wouldn't have to pore through a nearly 400-page rulebook), so I started devising campaigns where you'd start small and build up gradually, learning the game and new units over time, similar to how StarCraft II approaches things.

This plus me writing up very streamlined army lists with only a few strategems worked well for both of them. Here's an example roster, featuring Melissa's initial Eldar force:

Other rules:

• At the end of a Mission, both sides receive Requisition Points. These are not the same as RP you get in the default Narrative game. Generally each side would get more than 100, which are spent to add/replace slain troops (so think of them like the points you'd spend to build your army). The winner typically receives more (though not a whole lot more), though often the loser receives some sort of temporary/one-time benefit the next Mission to avoid a sort of death spiral.
• Squads don't always have to be purchased at full strength. This allowed Melissa to buy a three-man squad of wraithblades.
• Every surviving unit has a chance to receive some sort of benefit to reflect growing experience. Similar to default Narrative rules, but instead of recording all this crap on a crusade sheet I just modded the text document.
• Warlords/Characters can't normally be fully slain. Instead they recover a random number of Wounds and are available next Mission. You can keep them out of the next Mission so that they recover additional Wounds.
• Vehicles have a similar drawback: if destroyed the vehicle has to be repaired before the next mission, meaning random Wound recovery.
• Slain troops have a 1 in 6 chance of being perma-killed, meaning that you have to spend RP to replace them. Otherwise you get them back for free. Multi-wound models like wraithblades can also die, but you have to nat 1 every Wound so it's not nearly as likely. 

All in all probably not all that balanced (even the missions were likely way too swingy to be fair), but they still had fun.

SUPPLY GRAB (Mission 1)

This one was a winged autarch and some guardians versus a mek with a big-ass shock gun and some boyz. The objective was to grab supply crates worth varying amounts of Victory Points. Whoever got the most by turn 5 won, and these were turned into bonus RP as well. Killing each other awarded nothing unless that unit was also carrying supplies, in which case they were dropped and you could pick them up.

Here I think Melissa won by only a handful of points. I definitely recall her massacring the mek and that plus the gun absolutely sucking soured our daughter on using him after that point.

(Couldn't find any pictures of this one. I know I took some but no idea where they went.)

CHAOS UNLEASHED (Mission 2)

Here the orks were looking to harness the power of chaos in order to gain an edge against the eldar. There was a noctolith crown on the map, which would randomly spawn flesh hounds: the eldar got Victory Points by killing them and succeeding on using a mission specific psychic power by the bloody skulls and giant-ass Khorne rune.

The orks got Victory Points by "subduing" the flesh hounds (ie, beating them up in melee but not killing them with ranged attacks). They could also drink from the blood pools to get VP and other bonuses. I forget how I did it, but the skulls were worth less VP. The benefit here was that the orks automatically got VP by spending an action to drink, while the eldar had to succeed on the psychic power, and only Melissa'a autarch could try (though they could also just gun down flesh hounds for VP).

Flesh hounds would move to attack anything that got close, or otherwise attacked them.

Here Melissa hunkers down on a ruin, but the orks have no real reason to go there, anyway. Also looks like our daughter's squighogs wiped out the first wave of flesh hounds.

Pretty sure Melissa tried flying over here to get the Khorne rune out of desperation, but...

He ended up getting sandwiched by the surviving squighogs and taken out (he got better).

I think this ended in a draw, and while I gave our daughter the option to add flesh hounds to her army she instead added a deff dread with three klaws to better handle the wraithblades. The next battle she didn't have the mek; I think she swapped him out.

ASSASSINATION (Mission 3)

Here the orks were trying to kill an eldar farseer, though I forget the narrative reason as to why. Probably something to do with chaos as a secondary enemy. The orks had 5 turns to pull this off, and managed to do so at the very end of round 5: the warboss declared a charge and just barely made it, and the farseer was obviously no match for five Strength 9, AP -3, Damage 2 attacks.

More of a proper army, finally. Our daughter added a deff dread and warboss in mega armor, plus a handful of boyz. The deff dread was a good choice, as Melissa added a wave serpent and rounded out her wraithblades (before the battle she opted to keep them off the board so they could swoop in later).

The orks start closing the gap, while the eldar hang back and prepare to fire. Way different game when you aren't worried about controlling mid-board objectives.

Even with a squad of dire avengers nearby the orks aren't afraid. Well, the warboss and deff dread at any rate. I think the deff dread is going for the wave serpent since the farseer is inside (we ruled that Melissa couldn't just fly off the board, otherwise there was no way our daughter could win).

There he is! Melissa popped him out the back in anticipation of the wave serpent getting torn to shreds by the deff dread. I don't know if that actually happened, though.

Not pictured: the warboss maneuvering around a ruined wall, declaring a Charge, and just barely closing the distance. Luckily for our daughter she is running Evil Sunz so they go fasta. She probably also declared a Waaagh to get even more speed, and might have even had some sort of red armor relic on the side.

We were very impressed with our daughter's performance, as she technically still had fewer points for her army and I don't think Melissa was going easy on her.

We didn't finish the campaign due to a combination of Melissa's dad dying, new baby being born, work, toddler loving to disrupt our games by grabbing stuff on the table (and generally messing it up), fixing up and selling our farm, and preparing to move well out of state.

The fourth mission was supposed to see the eldar attacking the ork stronghold: I still have the roster, which shows that Melissa added an avatar, wraithguard and fire prism, while our daughter decided to go all in on a stompa.

I don't think we'll finish it: been away too long since we played properly, so we'll start up a new campaign after the move so that Melissa and our daughter can re-learn the basics. The new place has a separate office building with a bunch of rooms, at least one of which Melissa wants to turn into a gaming area, so that'll hopefully make playing, writing, and playtesting easier.