THE VANUS TEMPLE

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’ve been working on a small campaign ruleset for my local Games Workshop. Well the ruleset is complete and can be found here.

We started playing the campaign last weekend as part of the Store Birthday with the new campaign week starting each Wednesday on the late night gaming. There’s a couple of purchasing related boosts but as it’s a store it’s sort of required (and working pretty well actually!).

Basically each week you roll on the events chart, spend your map points and then play games! The average of the victory points you earn convert into map points in the next week. There’s also the Warlord that can gain rolls on a modified Chaos Boon table for killing other characters.

We built a map based on the hexagonal planetary empires sets, creating a set of planets (and we had to create some more due to extra players!). Each planet has a special rule to add a bit of variety. Otherwise your position on the map doesn’t matter too much as it’s just a way of tracking how many tiles you have and what upgrades you’ve bought on the map. This keeps it relatively simple for organising games against anyone in the campaign rather than those adjacent to your base.

The armies start at 400pts with restrictions – no 2+ saves, no more than 3 wounds, no armour above 33 (front+side+rear), no fliers, no Lords of War and an altered Combined Arms detachment. All the restrictions get lifted once you reach 600pts. 

Forces are increased by either building Manufactorums or raiding, giving you a random amount (2D6x10) in points. Fliers can be added by capturing the scattered airfields and repairing them.

  
I’m using my Necrons in the campaign as I have a large collection that needs attention (paint etc). So for 400pts I started with an Overlord with Scythe and Mindshackle scarabs, 10 Warriors, 5 Immortals with Tesla and 3 Tomb Blades with shield vanes, Particle Beamer and Nebulscopes (S6 small blast with ignore cover!). As part of the campaign event roll my Immortals gained a roll on the upgrade table and gained +1 strength on their Tesla weapons! From winning a game at the weekend I got free relic worth 40pts on the Overlord so I gave him The Orb of Eternity. At the end of the weekend I’d earned a total of 4 Map Points.

This week the roll on the events chart was nothing of interest (it didn’t effect me) and I spent my 4 Map Points on claiming a single tile and raiding twice, giving me 110 points to add to my army.

I’d purchased some more Wraiths (I wanted some with Whip Coils!) at the weekend so they gained a roll on the upgrade table which gave them Poison which is pretty good!

For the points I had I dropped the Tomb Blades and added in the Wraiths and a single Tomb Spyder (I can only have a single Fast, Heavy and Elite until 600 pts). 

Last night I played a 4 way game using the Triumph and Treachery style of turns from Warhammer Fantasy – you have a playing card per player, which are shuffled and drawn one at a time to determine the turn sequence and then each phase you nominate a player to be your opponent, for that phase the other players effectively don’t exist and their models are impassable terrain. It works pretty well meaning you can’t plan and team up with people as well as the turn sequence is random. I came out of the game with 2 VP’s from First Blood and Slay the Warlord – no one captured the relic! 

The second game I played was against a guard army with about 70 models, most of them in a conscript squad. The higher toughness of the wraiths and spyder helped them against the lasguns, the wraiths took out about six of the conscripts and the rest ran away and were run down. It was just a matter of mopping up the remaining squads then! I gained the full 6 VP’s for the mission (relic again) giving me an average of 4 VP’s which converts to 3 Map Points for next week!