Doubles Campaign Weekend: Whose Mine Is It Anyway?

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start when trying to make narrative campaigns happen, but today’s post will walk you through the Beard Bunker’s most recent campaign weekend, and honestly the process couldn’t have been simpler. In summary, it went like this:

I met this guy RJ in a previous weekend campaign (part 1, part 2) put together by Bristol Tom, whose beautiful Ynnari army is incidentally featured in this month's White Dwarf (issue 514). I liked the cut of RJ's jib, so under the misapprehension that he'd now moved to Bristol as advertised, I invite him for a day’s gaming.

RJ tells me he’s still in Fife.

We proceed anyway, but make it a weekend.

I ask him what he’ll bring. He tells me necrons.

I ask the other necron appreciators in our group if they’re down.

They are.

I rummage around our wiki for worlds that’d suit a necron raid, and find the under-utilised blackstone mines of IOL-804. I fill out the background a little, take the same illustration I already used in the wiki, and slap some map markers over the top to give us locations to fight over:

Crucially, the markers are all assets within a Google Drawing, so as the campaign goes on we can rename/alter/destroy locations on the fly. The two boxes on the right hand side are there as a spot to keep brief notes of each game so we can remember what's going on.

We don’t have any campaign rules. We just agree to talk through it. The necron players decide which locations to attack in the first round of games. After that first round of games we’ll discuss how they went, and decide what the two sides would like to do next in the story. We update the map as we go to keep track of the major events.

That’s it.

See this is why narrative wargaming can be hard to write about; no-one’s particularly thrilled with the answer “just make it up as you go” if they’re not used to making things up. But when you’re as familiar with the setting and the game as we are, there’s no need to make it complicated.

RJ: On the night of Warfare’s Eve, Charlie, Tom and I had a great conversation about how to evangelise narrative gaming. Basically, we’re collaboratively telling a story through gaming. While under-represented in wargaming, it’s wildly successful in D&D, with juggernaut YouTube channels dedicated to it, so perhaps viewing things through the frame of D&D might be successful. In that format, making things up as you go is seen as a feature not a bug, so I resolved to partake in some role-playing throughout the weekend. I was delighted that Tom was so up for being my Overlord Munukh the Unyielding’s grovelling underling and he was tremendously good at playing the part and in being so, encouraged me to keep going with it myself. 

The only other note about the format is that we’re playing doubles so that RJ (who hasn’t played with the rest of the group before) can meet as many people as possible. This does slow the games down considerably, but that’s OK - we’re only aiming for two games each day.

Here’s how it went.

The armies

RJ has brought his Temmekh Dynasty, led by Overlord Munukh the Unyielding, supported by his entirely un-deranged sister Heltek, Slaughterer of Children, Scorcher of Earth, Ender of Fates, Destroyer of Histories, Uncorroded Slayer of Empires, Hierarch of the Ghoul Stars, Despiser of the Yabi-Yabi, Awakened Heir to the Crown World, Undying Commander of the Lost Legions, The Great Awakener.

RJ's wobbliest doughnut oppressing an Imperial shack

Our Tom usually plays as Trazyn the Infinite (see Ooops New Army, Necron Edition), but decides it’d be fun to play a junior lord bowing and scraping his way into the good books of Munukh the Unyielding. Tom revels in playing the spavined assistant, and this seems like a golden opportunity that RJ is only too happy to engage in. RJ names Tom’s Overlord Akhsuuq.

RJ: ‘Akhsuuq’ came from thinking about two things I associated with Tom’s necrons. They usually follow Trazyn’s orders, who is the great acquirer and his overlord would be subordinate to mine in his campaign. ‘Acquire’ and ‘subordinate’ had their ends lopped off to be ‘Aqcu’ and ‘Sub’, pushed together into one word and then necronised to make ‘Akhsuuq’. It’s an easy and fun way to make names for your own narrative characters that immediately adds novelty and a sense of history, while also eliminating that pesky ‘blank page syndrome’.

The ever-loyal Akhsuuq

Maisey has just blown his own previous record out of the water and is playing the necron army he painted in a 1,700 point batch. They need no name; they are destroyers here to slaughter all life they encounter. 

Maisey: No need for a name?! The Great Vindaloovian Dynasty will not forget this slight in a hurry!

Ooops. The irony is, I love a good hurry. Goes great with a Slaan bread. (Maisey hates puns, this is the only stick I've got to hand right now.)

Necron Warriors of the EXTREMELY GREAT Vindaloovian Dynasty

On the Imperial side I am playing my beloved Cobalt Scions, while Kris and Pete are playing Ultramarines and Blood Angels respectively. Together we represent the Imperium’s first responders, so it makes sense that we’re painted red and blue.

Pete's Blood Angels during the defence of Aterizar's power station

My Cobalt Scions and Kris' Ultramarines take cover in Port Aterizar.

How it went

Phase 1: Necron Shock & Awe

RJ and Tom decide to team up and descend upon blackstone mine Alpha-4, and immediately demonstrate their mastery of panto, with RJ issuing imperious edicts while Tom bows and scrapes in the hopes of being given the necron equivalent of a biscuit.

Pete and I are reduced to laughter, and our marines are reduced to kibble by a selection of doom lasers. Munukh (RJ) rewards Tom (Akhsuuq) for his triumph by renaming Delving Alpha-4 to Akhsuuq’s Rising.

Pete: Watching Tom grovel his way to a win for the necrons was like watching a goldfish plot a coup; deeply entertaining, mildly threatening and weirdly effective. 

Akhsuuq: These pathetic meat-bags call it grovelling, when the truth is that they are simply too brief and irrelevant to be able to soak in the full majesty of the magnificent Munukh the Unyielding.  Obsequiousness is natural and proper and the very least he deserves.  And it was rewarded, after the battle the great lord honoured me with the title Akhsuuq the Defier of Fate, and granted the mine a fitting name in my honour.  His benevolence to those who appreciate him is as unending as his wrath towards his foes.

RJ: ‘Defier of Fate’ is another example of how you can give your own characters sobriquets forged by moments in their tabletop battles. Akhsuuq was rolling a magnificent amount of sixes, as ordered, seemingly in defiance of chance, or, to make it a bit more necronic, fate.

Meanwhile, as a distraction, RJ dispatches his Destroyer Cult allies (Maisey) to the hab zone of Port Aterizar, and despite the Ultramarines (Kris) teleporting a bunch of the First Company in at short notice, nothing can be done to stop the slaughter.

Maisey: The Vindaloovians despise all humans. Scum scum scum scum.

Between the loss of territory and the wanton butchery of Imperial civilians, the Imperium is off to a terrible start.

Phase 2: The Imperium Strikes Back

With the necrons having made good inroads on Kryaskonis Alpha, RJ Tom and Maisey decide to go after targets on Kryaskonis Beta.

Heltek the Entirely Sane decides to show her brother she’s just as badass by attacking the sun-scorched noctilith mine at Calidum. Unfortunately for her, a thematically deranged necron army list allows Pete’s Blood Angels to adapt to the alien onslaught. Soon, the only thing Heltek has to throw at the Imperium’s Finest is inventive cursing delivered with such sustained vocal fry that you’d think RJ is a professional voice actor.*

Pete: Blood Angels don’t adapt. We simply apply more rage until the problem stops moving. It was a lot of fun.

Blood Angels applying more rage to Overlord Heltek

Meanwhile I’m delighted to be playing through my Cobalt Scions’ first in-fiction team up with their primogenitors, the Ultramarines, in the defence of Port Skavos. I imagine Captain Lucullus being overjoyed to greet Captain Agemman, given that he wouldn’t have seen him since he left the Ultramarines’ 1st to help found the Cobalt Scions at the outset of the Indomitus Crusade.

The ensuing battle starts with strong moves by the necrons, with Akhsuuq and the Destroyer Cult (Maisey: Vindaloovians!!) removing the Marines’ heavy support at the outset. Kris and I were fairly sure we were hosed, and our complete inability to deal with Tom’s Wraiths only reinforced this impression. Eventually, though, we whittled the necrons down over an incredibly lengthy game that rumbled slowly towards a fifth turn victory for the Imperium that came down to an advance roll in our final Movement phase.

Cobalt Scions and Ultramarine Veterans engaging the Necrons in Port Skavos

Sunday dawns, and we are joined by Andy’s Ikarran Dynasty, and further Imperial reinforcements in the form of Harvey’s Imperial Guard. Given the slow pace of Saturday’s doubles games, we elect to go from 1,000 points per player down to 600, which turns out to be a nice compromise.

With the Imperium having held the line in both Calidum and Skavos, the necron players decide to abandon Kryaskonis Beta and focus on Alpha instead. We join our two tables up into one huge one that displays a strip of Aterizar from the edge of spaceport terminal 1 to the power station on the outskirts. Whilst we’re playing two separate games, it has the benefit of looking like one big one.

Idiots for scale. Photo taken mostly to tease the Tom I mentioned in the intro.

We had a road that stretched down all twelve foot of the table for added continuity.

Unfortunately for the necron players, the Imperium’s firepower proves too much at this point, and the necrons’ assault on Aterizar is repulsed.

Phase 3: Doomsday Scheming

With time for one last game, RJ declares that if the Temmekh Dynasty cannot claim the planet, they will at least render it lifeless. Munukh and his faithful underling Akhsuuq start converting their captured blackstone refinery to emit psychically charged noctilith dust. If left unchecked, it will render the planet uninhabitable for humans. Harvey’s Imperial Guard and my Cobalt Scions join forces and mount an assault on the necrons’ doomsday device.

Delving Alpha-4, now 'Akhsuuq's Rising' shown under Temmekh control immediately before the Imperial counter-assault.

We build the battlefield to represent industrial infrastructure co-opted by the necrons: lots of industrial stuff with some necron terrain sprinkled in, with various peripheral sections all connected by pipeline to a central structure. That way, each side of the field has a backfield objective, and there’s three in no man’s land.

Akhsuuq's Rising. Also my knees.

We talk through how the mission should work. We settle on progressive objective scoring, representing the Imperial attackers doing damage, and the Temmekh Dynasty defenders fixing/reinforcing structures. Very simple, no secondary objectives. Do or die, it’s all about finishing or destroying the doomsday device.

It proves to be one of the best 40K doubles games I’ve ever played.

Pete: I was watching from the sidelines for this match-up, and I agree with Charlie. Truly epic to behold.

Harvey: It’s rare that games, especially the finales of events like this one, truly live up to feeling like the climactic final scenes of something out of Black Library. A huge part of that was RJ’s PANTO-AF villainry, which I will never not be a fan of, but the way the game played out was also just so organically thematic and cool.

Both sides took chunks out of each other early on, though RJ’s evil overlord teleported into the Imperial back lines right at the start with a rudely tenacious retinue of Lychguard who managed to completely take the wind out of the Cobalt Scions’ firebase. From there the Imperials began to run out of the sort of firepower required to keep killing units instead of maiming them, and the necrons started to win the inevitable war of attrition.

Charlie: The main point in our favour was that we moved up aggressively enough early on to keep the majority of the necrons in their backfield for the first half of the battle. This let us sabotage different parts of the Temmekh infrastructure early on and build up a lead, but we couldn't sustain it.

Harvey: It was looking bleak for the Imperium in the later stages, with control of the field slipping further and further from their grasp. The necrons would have succeeded in their plan if not for some plucky guardsmen who charged into the centre ground and held it for precious moments, just long enough to score an extra victory point wire the central objective (the main-and-extremely-explosive furnace) with melta charges. Their heroics put the Imperial lead on points out of reach of the xenos invaders, and this was the way we imagined it happening, straight out of a book. The 31st took horrendous casualties as their heroic move turned into a full rout the moment the charges were set, and the game ended with just two scions and a handful of Nightfallers left combat effective. They quit the field, the necrons approached the central tower, a warrior peered over at a gently blinking light... then BOOM! Reanimate that.

Such a fun game, such a fun crowd. 10/10 would show up halfway through a narrative campaign again.

RJ: One of my favourite moments was, in terms of game mechanics, completely irrelevant. The battle had already been lost for the Temmekh Dynasty, but as Harvey said, it really did feel like the end of a Black Library novel, as the victorious guardsmen evacuated while the necrons unfeelingly marched after them, hosing their backs with gauss fire just to spitefully murder them. In my mind, I could see them running, many dropping, as crackling, green, streaks of energy flew past and through them.

Akhsuuq: The great Munukh the Unyielding is, naturally, a much more experienced necron general than I am.  Before the final battle, I beseeched the great lord for a crumb of advice on how best to combat the unworthy foe.  His advice was as gloriously enlightening as it was devilishly simple.  “Roll sixes,” he told me.  “Sixes for days…”

RJ: One of the great things about role-playing through the battle is how perfectly common gaming chatter can take on a far more amusing aspect, once it's filtered through your character’s voice, be it resonant, haughty and commanding or shrill, toadying and on-edge. “Sixes for days” became something of a catchphrase.

Charlie had, once again, been the orchestrator of one of my favourite gaming experiences, ever. Thank you so much, Charlie, it was amazing that you grew this entire thing out of a misunderstanding about where I live for, what feels in large part, my benefit. Big thanks as well to all the others who played as well, you were all the loveliest, most welcoming people and I hope we can all do it again soon.

In summary, make stuff up

As enticing as the concept of complex map mechanics and levelling up one's dudes might be, this weekend reminded me that all that stuff is garnish. At its core, narrative gaming is about playing make believe with your friends. The general fear is how to make it feel fair, but for a narrative experience I think it's more important that the story stays interesting up to the end.

That's harder to do in a rules-based environment.

In terms of the numbers, the Imperial players lost their first two games and won the next four, so the seventh and final game would, in a fair system, have been a foregone conclusion. But fair isn't necessarily interesting. RJ’s suggestion of a doomsday device meant that, sure, the Necrons wouldn't be achieving their main goal of stealing both the Imperium's mines and their labourers (his dynasty are rich and underpopulated, so meat-based labourers are repulsive but useful, and open up more narrative possibilities). But having that final doomsday option means that the Imperium could still have lost in the final battle, and that kept it exciting for everyone.

I'd say that's a great reason to put fairness in the bin.

Beard Bunker dice, and photo of Beard Bunker dice mid-roll, courtesy of Kris

__________________________________________

*RJ is, in fact, a professional voice actor. He uses these skills for some fun side projects, including the Oldex podcast, which is like an audiobook of old 40K Codexes.