It can be hard to feel involved in the hobby right now, with seemingly everything fun on lockdown. Sure you can paint, but painting without a goal, or promise of being able to use your finely crafted models in the near future can be very difficult for some. So when there’s something cool that you can participate in, it’s worth sharing. In this case, that’s Animosity Campaigns: The Burning Winter, a unique, narrative-driven, global campaign that started in 2004 over forums, set in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles universe.
2020 is the group’s second Age of Sigmar-themed campaign and it takes a novel approach to the structure. Rather than a map-based structure like traditional campaigns, the players are grouped into Coalitions which are loosely based on the Age of Sigmar Grand Alliances (with a few liberties taken). The storyline itself is centered around powerful NPCs, called Figureheads, with their own agendas. They are in turn bolstered by the coalition’s armies and characters who will help drive them onto the narrative path the players choose. Each week, a narrative branch is presented and players may help choose which of 3 branches is taken by contributing some sort of creative contribution. These can be:
- Gaming – Conventional Age of Sigmar gaming. Due to COVID-19 the organziers are stressing strongly to do so in a safe and productive manner, so this can include remote play, single player games or a Soulbound RPG session.
- Hobby – Painting, modeling, all that stuff. The more creative the better
- Writing – Short stories between 500-2000 words.
- Storytelling – Photos of staged duels, dioramas, etc.
- Arts & Crafts – Sketches, cosplay, etc. Whatever comes to mind!
All of these things should wrap into the narrative in some way. Just any old pic of your models isn’t really helpful to the story. You can contribute one of each of the 5 categories so the more you’re involved the better chance your faction has to win!
When does it start? Soon! Wednesday the 22nd of July, 2020. It’s not a major time investment, you only need to throw in some creative work once a week for 4 weeks, as the campaign ends on August 23rd
Useful Links
- Main Website
- The Story So Far
- The Coalitions
- How to Participate
- Community Page – Which also includes a link to their Discord
I’ll be participating as a member of the Perpetuals, as suits my avatar. I hope to see some of you there!
I’ll leave you off with a spiffy trailer:
