When I asked Jacen to be the best man at my wedding, I didn’t expect him to host the best game of 40k I’ve ever played. But for my bachelor party he did just that. He brought together friends from three different walks of my life (queue George from Seinfeld shouting “Worlds colliding!”) and we rolled dice for two days straight as my Black Legion invaded the planet Valtorium to save the dark sorceress (aka my fiance).
Jacen, my groomsman Greg, and my friends attending kept this a secretive project for months, with me only knowing who was invited and that I needed to paint Black Legion. Fortunately, Jay took tons of work-in-progress shots plus photos from the day (and we’ve sourced many other photos from participants). When I walked in and saw the table, I was immediately blown away and that awe did not fade for the entire weekend. Simply put, this was the most narrative, most jaw-dropping, most epic game of Warhammer I’ve ever played. It left me stunned at the possibilities that can be achieved and wanting more. I’ve said to several people since that this game left me wanting to play only narrative games and that any other mode of play feels like a waste of time.
Now, for your reading pleasure, we’ve done an interview about the day and what went into planning it.
Ian: Let’s start with an overview of the games.
Jacen: The general idea for the weekend narrative was that Abaddon and his forces were attacking an Imperial world who were holding a Chaos Sorceress that he required for a larger scheme. Most weekend two day events run in a tournament style where you play five to six games; this wasn’t what I wanted to do. We had a larger group of gamers that I wanted everyone to play together around this one single narrative of Abaddon’s assault so the idea was that we would all play three larger games. The first game would be an ambush just outside of the city where the sorceress was being held, taking place in the jungle that encompasses most of the planet in the story. The second game would be a siege on the city where Abaddon’s forces needed to break through these fortress walls while giant knights battled around them. Finally, the third game would be the assault on the city where he would be “saving” the sorceress, a typical city fight style of battle.
I: Let’s talk about the jungle table, which was the most visually striking. What went into making that table?
J: My entire summer *laughter*. Jokes aside, it was a bit of an undertaking but I enjoyed it a lot. I’ve never had my own table before, I’ve had a mismatch of terrain for years but some of it was painted (most of it wasn’t) and let’s face it…GW terrain isn’t cheap to fill a full table so I decided to make a board from scratch. I was trying to decide between a desert or a jungle table but then I found some amazing tutorial videos on YouTube by The Terrain Tutor called “The Big Burma Build” which I thought seemed simple enough. I was able to make a fair amount of scatter terrain jungle foliage for about $50 CAD and the fact that people ask me if it’s aquarium pieces (which cost $30-$100 each) is really rewarding.
I had some MDF mechanicum style terrain I bought a while ago that we painted up to have more of a rusted/overgrown feel to match the jungle, which I think ended up fitting perfectly with the rest of the terrain. The real centrepieces of the table though are these three big trees that I made. I felt that if I had these tall trees that almost felt like Redwoods compared to a guardsman it would really make the table pop. There’s something about the terrain coming up to your chest on a table with a larger canopy that you have to reach under and around. It really makes the table feel like a massive jungle. I think the hardest part of the whole process was just making sure that every piece looked like it belonged because if it didn’t then the immersion would have suffered.
I: There were also a lot of immersive elements: the lighting, the fog, the music and sound effects. What challenges did each of these pose? Why did you feel they were important to include?
J: It’s nice that you used that word, immersive, because if there was a keyword for the goal of the event that was it. I wanted to make the most immersive game of 40k that any of us had ever played. Originally it was just the lighting and the sound effects that I had planned on using: I have a background in film lighting so I knew that I could use that experience to set up lighting over the table to bring the desired effects. The first mission took place at night so we had a nice dark blue light coming from underneath the table and a soft bluish grey light overhead to simulate the moon. It was a little dark but I find that if it adds to the game/narrative then people are willing to accept it.
The sound effects and music tracks were all done by a friend who works in the music industry so he was able to make a five hour track that blended the sounds of battle with ambience of the setting and mix in music that matched the atmosphere of the game. At first I was worried we didn’t have enough songs for each game but he spaced them out and with the fade ins and outs it actually worked out well because when a song did hit most people reacted great to it. Sound effects made the players feel like there was a constant battle going on, the ambience built on the immersion of the setting and the music was all catered to the genre of the battle (the first game we had more Vietnam War-era music for a jungle fight and the second game was more modern heavy metal music to match the giant robots fighting).
The fog wasn’t something I originally intended on doing but, once I started building the jungle terrain, I kept building on the idea of what could make it better. I always thought you needed to have a fog machine to achieve the effect but actually a standard household table humidifier works just fine! I bought about $20 CAD in plastic tubing and clips so that I could bring the vapour where I wanted it to be. Things get a little damp around the exit of the tubes, but nothing crazy. If you want to take your gaming to the next level you need to try this: it’s an unreal effect and everyone was blown away by it.
I: Were there any elements you wanted to include but were too complex or where you ran out of time?
J: I don’t believe anything is too complex, that’s something I learned over the course of making these tables. It’s just like painting or converting: if you feel like it’s too complex or hard and you need to wait to become more skilled before you attempt it, then you will probably never end up doing it. The trees were a huge undertaking and I did them without a tutorial: did they turn out as great as I wanted them to? No. Did everyone seem to love them? Yes! Just go for it and you’ll be surprised at the results.
I did run out of time though, burnout is definitely a thing and after a month and a half of building terrain every day I did suffer from it for a bit. But I had a deadline thankfully that kept me going. I wanted the fortress wall to be even larger and more detailed but I didn’t have enough time to finish it to the level I had hoped for. Originally I wanted the final battle to take place within a cathedral and the last third of the city table would be this massive building you enter…yeah, that didn’t happen. It was a nice thought at least and maybe something I could do in the future.
I: Let’s talk about the Jungle Mission. What were the key elements of that mission?
J: So this was only a 4’ x 4’ table and we had nine people playing on it, how do you make that work!? The key theme for this mission was “chaos,” not only because the Chaos forces were ambushing but because I wanted the Imperial players to feel like the battle was chaotic, they were caught off guard, and all hell was breaking loose. Each Imperial player would only be controlling about three units, amounting to pretty much an infantry unit or two with a character and maybe a sentinel or some artillery support, but because the force was so split up I wanted to avoid the long drawn out conversations of “okay guys, what should we do?”. Thankfully, because I was GMing (Game-Mastering) the game, I made it clear that wasn’t a thing I was going to allow and if I heard questions like that come up I’d shut them down (in a friendly manner) and tell them to do what they thought their units would do.
It’s always fun for narrative missions to have unknown objectives: we had a lone guardsman who was scouting and starting way up front be “The Runner”. One player controlled the model and it was very difficult to kill (could only be hit on 6s and had a 4+ invulnerable save with unknown wounds). The Chaos team knew he was an important model, but didn’t know what it was achieving or how much effort to put into killing it.
Lastly–and I know I’ve said it a few times now–but the key element was immersion. This was the first game, it was the first table people set their eyes on and it needed to set a precedent for what was in store for the weekend. I felt like if everyone felt fully immersed in this jungle fight then the rest of the weekend would go by smoothly.
I: The second mission was on a very empty table but still quite striking: why did we pivot to something so different for this mission?
J: Just for the pure juxtaposition. To keep people immersed in the story for the first day, I didn’t want to break down a table and set up another for a second game so instead I just blended the two tables together. While it was technically two separate games it still felt like a continuing story. This super dense forest that everyone just fought in just stops and it becomes a barren wasteland that leads up to a fortress wall. This makes sense defensively because they would want their enemies to have to march through an open field while they shoot them. There was a reason why I wanted the table to be more or less empty though…
I: Okay, let’s talk about the second mission and the overlapping battles: what was happening?
J: This was one of the first ideas that I had for the weekend event. Abaddon and his forces would be lined up across from this massive fortress wall when the main gates open and a couple of Imperial Knights come out to defend/take the battle to the enemy. This is when Abaddon calls in his Warhounds, and has his Chaos Knights do an orbital deployment to join the battle. The idea of a siege happening and the players having to move around the stomping feet of knights fighting each other in their own battle was something I couldn’t remember ever hearing about and it felt like something out of a book. Essentially we had two separate games of 40k happening at the same time on the same table – the knights were engaged in their own battle against each other while Abaddon and his forces laid siege to the wall while using the knights as cover.
This is why the table was completely empty. Firstly, having terrain on the table with 8 knights and an additional 6000 points would have probably been too crowded, but secondly the idea of having moving terrain that you don’t have any control of seemed pretty sweet. Do you follow behind the cover of your Chaos Knight? Does that plan backfire and it explodes hurting your units (and the explosions were mandatory)? The knight battle didn’t last as long as we would have liked it to, but more experience with 10th edition would have helped us understand the longevity of a knight. We could have tweaked some rules to make it last longer, but everyone seemed to enjoy the battle and it did feel like an original concept.
I: The third mission was on a fairly classic city fight board: what was the impetus for this and what made it unique/what special rules were used?
J: One thing I know about two (or more) day events is a lot of people get tired, and we also had several people who don’t normally attend longer events like this. For the last day and final mission, I wanted to keep the game more simple and not have it run long – people did need to leave at a reasonable time. The goal was to just have a city table that was packed with terrain to keep the theme of having great “battle report” style tables going, but also make a mission that wrapped up the story nicely without making it too complicated. I didn’t have any special rules in mind for this one, I just wanted people to have fun rolling some dice on the last day. The soundtrack was more based around songs we knew the group enjoyed and not so much a specific theme or atmosphere: let’s just all chill and enjoy the ending of this story and the great weekend of gaming we just had.
I: How did you find GMing these games? Was there a lot of work? Did you feel you had too much downtime not playing?
J: I love GMing…I’ve just always been too scared or nervous to fully commit to it because I feel like everything depends on you. If you don’t do a good job, then you let people down. To a degree it’s true, but it was also a challenge for me that I was excited to take on, because I had about four months to prepare. It was a lot of work, not going to lie about that but I did have some help. For this specific event I wanted almost everyone attending to be kind of in the dark as to what to expect, so it might have been a bit harder than it needed to be. For the next event I’ll probably recruit a bit more help so that I can get more accomplished in time.
I also learned a lot about just going with the flow, which is definitely a big part of GMing that I’ve seen others do, but never had experienced myself. I found that since I laid out the expectations of this being an extremely narrative game for everyone at the start, when it came time to make decisions on the fly, so long as the decisions I made leaned into that goal then everyone was okay with it, and enjoyed it even if it wasn’t in their favour.
With regards to the downtime, I was surprisingly okay not playing for 2 days while others did! It was a pleasure seeing everyone enjoying the games and narrative that I had spent months putting together. Also hosting nine other people who I needed to make sure had food/drink/etc. was a job in and of itself, so at times when a lot of GMing wasn’t required I was busy prepping food and such. I didn’t really want people to have to step away from the games too much, so I made sure all the meals were quick and easy so the games could just keep flowing.Having the downtime definitely helped with that.
I: Usually you don’t plan a game around one player: what challenges and opportunities did this present?
J: *chuckles* Oh man…try explaining to people that you are going to play an extremely long game of Warhammer, where no matter what happens during the game, the same end result is going to happen. Yes, we played Warhammer all weekend, but really the true goal was for all of us to tell a story where we knew what the ending was going to be. It was the events that happened in the game we played from the start of that story till the predetermined end that uncovered the narrative in between for us, we told that through our gameplay. Trying to convey to the players that you are going to be playing on the losing side of this battle but still do your best and fulfil your narrative objectives. For them it should be like one of those horde modes in video games where you face an endless enemy that keeps getting tougher each level you beat it and eventually you’re going to lose but it was fun trying to get as far as you could.
I: What was the highlight of the games?
J: Just seeing everyone have a great time. The fact that everyone cheered at the end regardless of what team they were on when Abaddon finally got to the end and completed the story in a pretty epic finale, almost dying to the final “boss”. Seeing people enjoying playing on the jungle table was awesome too.
I: What would you do differently if running a similar game?
J: Probably get a bit larger of a team together so we can get more done prior, a bigger team just means we can do bigger and better events. I had a short narrative piece written as a prelude to this game but since then I’ve started getting that pre-game story to be a bit longer to really set the mission up. I think for the next one I’ll have a more in-depth story for the players to get into.
I: Can you talk a bit about the forces you selected and why?
J: Well we knew the story would be about Abaddon attacking an Imperial city so right there we’ve laid out the armies. Every narrative focused event/gameday I’ve been to you just bring whatever army you want and there is some random story being told and the armies that are brought somehow make sense (insert reason why T’au, Necrons and Nids are all on the same side). We knew we had lots of Black Legion and some smaller Chaos armies and a lot of people have some sort of Imperial army so we knew we could fulfil the points for both sides. This means that some people who are coming might not be contributing any models, those that were contributing understood that others would be using their units. In a public event I’m not sure if this would work but this was a private event so nobody had to worry about “models going missing”. In the end though we had a large narrative event that made complete sense by standing by those strict army choices. We also made the Imperial side about 80% Astra Militarum with some Space Marines from a single chapter and Custodes sprinkled in and a small detachment of Adeptus Sororitas emerging from a chapel during the final game in the city itself. Setting the Imperial army composition up like that made them feel more true to the lore.
I: What advice would you give someone who wanted to run their own immersive narrative game?
J: Decide what story you want to tell and design a mission around that idea, it doesn’t have to be complex either. The ending doesn’t have to be predetermined like we had but you should know what the ending narratives are going to be for whichever side does win so that you can conclude the story right there for anyone involved.
I think setting the right atmosphere is incredibly important to the immersion of your game, do as much as you can outside of the actual game itself to keep people locked in.
Lastly, up your terrain game. Making terrain from scratch is generally pretty cheap if you have some basic tools and there’s an endless amount of tutorials online for free. Get some loose foliage or stones/gravel as scatter terrain, blend in your terrain with the table. Make your table look as awesome as the models you’re bringing to it and it’s going to make your game that much more immersive.
Credits
Photos by Jacen, Vajo & Elton.
Models & Terrain:
Jungle Table, Urban Cadians, Assassins, Poxwalkers, & Fortress Walls by Jacen
Black Legion & City Terrain by Ian
Krieg, Sisters of Battle, and Loyalist Knights by Jeff
Salamanders by Greg
Chaos Knights by Chaos Zach
Custodes by Dynastic Zach
Thanks to everyone above plus Darryl and Noah for an amazing game and weekend!