Collateral Damage: 40k Mission sistem (house rules)

DISCLAIMER: First I want to credit Str10_Hurts for his amazing idea of bringing back some 2nd edition rules, nothing of this can be possible without his previous work. Also I want to explain some stuff. I've been playing GW games for a long time, and GW still having a lot of fun, but I feel as I need more!

To the point, how to make 40k more interesting and friendly and less power gaming?

One of the many possibilities would be bringing back the old 2ed style missions. For those of you that haven't played in the second edition of WH40K, the missions are randomly picked from a pile of cards, and will be secretly played until the end of the game. Then, you must play your own mission, trying to prevent the other player of accomplishing(sp?) his own mission.

This is intended to be a free game expansion and not to make money. You're also free to reproduce and modify all of this article or only the part you like, since you credit to us and this site, also quoting the Disclaimer. The artwork showed here is property of their actual owners and no IP law breaking is intended in any way or form. If you own some of that artwork and don't want it showed in this site please e-mail me and it will be removed.

~Aiwass

Ok, GW purists, better you stop reading from now or you're in risk to fail your Perils from the Warp test and become a chaos spawn.



GENERAL WARNING: This rules are intended to be fun, but necessarily complicate the game a bit.  Also incomming wall of text!

There are lots of ideas that can be implemented here, I taked some from other games (GW Space Crusade Events, FoW from Ambush Alley, Planetstrike, Spearhead -both from GW, some details from Flames of War).


Implementing this kind of play may (must) require some changes in the game. In this first article I want to explain the card types.

The card types:

-Mission cards
-Order cards
-Strategic Assets cards
-Events cards

Now let explain the card types and how it change the game.

Mission cards:

Instead of rolling for a mission for both players like in the rulebook, each player must draw a card from the Mission Cards pile (facing down) and keep this mission in secret. The Mission Card includes also the required deployement rules for such mission. Let's see an example:

First of all, this is just a sample Mission Card, is not finished in any form. Thanks to Str10_Hurts for the "terrain" features of this card.

The card shows various elements: Mission name, terrain (is just a sample, how to place the terrain must be explained later in the Instructions), your deployement zone in light brown, the "no man's land" zone in light yellow, the mission rules in text, and the special rules in the bottom of the card.

As you can see here, this mission allow a POW (Prisoner Of War) special rule, this rule and others will be explained later in the Instructions.

Note that each Mission Card can allow different Special Rules and deployement types, and that means that you can find yourself sharing the deployement zone with the other player!

Order cards:


Each player get some Order cards before the game start. You can draw 1 Order card per each 500 points of army rounded down (ie an army of 1500 points can take up to three Order cards, and an army of 1750 can also take 3 Orders card). This will be explained in later, in the Instructions.

You can use up to one Order card per turn, following the rules given in the card. Here is an example:

You can stop here various elements: Order's Name, Artwork, Phase (indicates in which phase of the game can be used the card), Bonus (indicates the benefits of playing the card), and Rules (indicates how the card is played).

Once you've used a Order card, that card is lost and you can't use it anymore in the same game.

This is a sample card and is not finished in any way, is just showed for example pourposes. The writing in this card is intended to be ambiguous because is just a sample card to show how it works.

Example of play: John Doe owns 2 Order cards, one of them is Closed Assault!. John have a unit of Tactical Space Marines in range of assault, near a huge brood of Termagaunts. He wants to soften that unit before assault, to improve his chances of wining the assault phase and then contest an objective. John decides to use that card atthe start of his Shooting Phase, and now his Tactical Squad gains the relentless USR. He open fire with his Space Marines over the 16 gaunt brood, killing 6 of them. Due the Relentless USR he can (and must since card state it) assault the gaunt unit. In his Assault Phase John assault the softened gaunt unit killing 3 more gaunts. The gaunts only manage to kill one marine, losing the Assault Phase then taking 2 more casualties due the Fearless (they are in Synapse range) USR. The gaunts remain in close combat, but only five gaunts remains alive, with a little luck John can win the next Assault Phase and claim the Objective.


Strategic Assets cards:


This cards don't differ too much of the Assets given in Cities of Death, Planetstrike or Apocalypse. Just the fact that are cards instead of text in a book and that are also randomly drawed from a pile of cards. You can take one Strategic Assets cards for every 1000 points of army (rounded down), much like the Orders cards, plus one more card for every HQ option you have in your army what actually use a HQ slot in your FoC (ie, no Command Squads are allowed to take Strategic Assets cards). This will be explained further in the Instructions.

Sample Strategic Asset card:

Like the other cards showed in this article, that one is just a sample card. Is not finished in any way.

The Strategic Assets cards work pretty much in the same way as the Orders cards to avoid (more) complications. So we can move to the  Event cards :)












Event cards:


Many factors can vary the flow of war. Temporary tactical advantages, weather conditions, unexpected reinforcements, bobby traps, secondary objectives...

All of those things (and some others!) will be represented in the Event cards. At the start of every player turn, the current player must roll a dice, if a "1" is rolled, then draw a Event card from the event pile. Alternatively, if you want to see more Events in your games try this: At the beginning of each your turns, draw a Event card from the pile.

Sample Event card:

As you can see, this card type is already similar to the above, again, to avoid more complications. Event cards differ in the fact that can buff your enemy's army instead yours! There are many different events and I try to cover many aspects of the war as I can, like wrong coordinates, fire, ambushes and so on...

In the next article I want to cover other aspects of that rules and upload the basic Mission cards. As always, feedback, comments and criticism is not only welcome, also wanted!