The Beard Bunker

If you're going to create your own sector of Imperial space to situate your games of Warhammer 40K ( and in 2020 we did ), it follows that you would want to fight some one-off battles in it, as well as short campaigns, and some all-out wars. Following on from the Word Bearers' raid on the Lachesis system (which we played through in 2022 and  wrote up on Goonhammer ), everyone's favourite Chaos-worshipping gits finally invaded the system in July of 2024, when we added a persistent warzone . We then caught up with happenings in that warzone in October . This last January, the war ended over one final weekend of butchery. Today's post consolidates all 18 months of the campaign's narrative, followed by my reflections on how well the campaign structure worked. An Overview of the Lachesian War The extract below is the first chapter of The Lachesian War: its Causes, Occurrences and Consequences by Diokles Adrastos, Chief Librarian of the Cobalt Scions. Before I embark upon...

For the last year or so, we've been conducting an experiment: to what extent is it useful to have an ongoing warzone that enables an easy narrative context for games without having to come up with a whole new situation every time? We've had a persistent region of space for years, with all our campaigns becoming part of the region's history. That's nothing new, and it's still something that we keep track of on our campaign wiki. A specific warzone, however, is a long-running war between specific factions, enabling more focussed storytelling. You can read about the initial concept in this post from July last year . As such I'm not going to re-explain the concept, but instead talk about how it's going, both in terms of enjoyment and the emergent narrative. How well is the system working? The initial battles went very well for the Imperium, which gave us some concern that one side might run away with it, making the whole thing feel a bit futile. However, the rub...

Four years have passed since we first created the Eridani Sector setting for our games in the Warhammer 40K setting. It's serving us well, and in that time we've played multiple campaigns and events, but we also identified a problem: with a sandbox this big, you can end up getting pulled in lots of directions, and gaming weekends can become a bit unfocussed. Furthermore, if you have to come up with a reason why you and your opponent's armies are fighting in any given system every time you play, that narrative legwork can feel a bit laborious, particularly when you just want to play a knockabout game of 40K without thinking about it too hard, and still want that feeling of the battle contributing to a wider narrative. Our answer to this is creating some active warzones in the Eridani Sector, where longer wars are being fought across a system or small group of systems. Players in our group can still fight battles anywhere in the sector, but if their armies fit the sides prese...

Today's post is about just straight up ignoring official rules, in the right context. In this case, the rules were ignored during a GM'd 40K campaign, so no actual players were harmed by my tinkering. More on what I changed later, first: some context as to why I so enthusiastically painted up Bulbus McThew (PhD) in time for said campaign.* Some months ago, Tom came up with the idea that noted wraith-fancier Drew and my own infrastructure fetishists the Cobalt Scions should fight a four-day war against some Tyranids. GM'd 40K is something we've done before, and is, for me, the absolute Bentley of 40K playing. Louchely flicks engine grille with the seductive power of a walrus in a party hat.  Given that I already had over 3,000 points of marines ready to go, I strongly didn't need to paint anything else for my army. But the format of these narrative campaigns - where all your units get split out into battle groups in each phase of the story - means that you are rew...

Painting regiments for Warhammer Fantasy Battle is quite a commitment. Consequently, when playing a narrative campaign in which there are multiple regiments running around the campaign map, it's impractical to paint a whole block of 20-35 miniatures for every regiment in the story. So I cheat. How? By painting extra command groups to swap in to a regiment. I've now done this twice: for my handgunners (now either the Schillings or the Powderkegs) and, as of this week, my greatswords. Drew and I (and even Jon, a bit!) gathered around a painting table to add not just the command group, but another 8 regular lads to bump the unit up to 28. Regiment: The Count's Own Captain Rike Ludenhof is the daughter and heir of Count Aldebrand Ludenhof. After returning to Hochland after graduating from the University of Altdorf, she founded the Count’s Own since she felt an Elector Count should have a proper bodyguard, and that said bodyguard would need to get some battlefield experience if ...

  This post is more a public service announcement than an article, but since I've poured a lot of love and effort into the subject of this announcement, and since I'm not taking up our regular Monday slot with it, I figure the world will cope. Just about. Back in October, Jeff finally brought his Word Bearers up to Oxford, and we spent a week enacting an orgy of miniature violence known as the Raid on Lachesis . A self-contained week-long 40K Crusade campaign with a big ol' campaign map, a lot of narrative, angry marines, and a whole bunch of truly heroic Imperial Guard. This post, then, serves purely to direct those of you who enjoy this sort of thing over to Goonhammer. It's split into five parts, because we did not skimp, and this way it's easier for you to savour it over multiple sittings. Part 1 : rules, maps, artwork, lore. Part 2 : The players that fought in the campaign, and their armies. Part 3 : The beginning, in which there are Imperial heroics. Part 4 : ...

Stormborne Dwarves hold steady during the Battle of the Northern Pass I returned to the Old World in April this year, starting out on a new roleplaying wargame* campaign. Now that we've been at it one evening a week for 6 months, I thought I'd give a broad update on how it’s going, and share some of the minis I’ve painted up for it. Jon and Drew are, respectively, playing a (drunken) Empire Captain and a bull-headed young Bright Wizard. Their characters, and the regiments they command, can gain or lose skills depending on how the story unfolds. The regiments can also grow or shrink in size, depending on recruitment rolls and battlefield casualties. *Explainer: what's a roleplaying wargame? Rather than a player versus player experience, a roleplaying wargame is when one player is the Game's Master (or GM), and the other player(s) function much like the players in any other roleplaying game, but where the conflict is resolved in battles rather than skirmishes. Players ha...