Welcome back to Fury of da Beast, the 40K cooperative play supplement where you and your friends battle against the Ork hordes. Last time we ended with one mission available for each of the campaign phases, meaning you can now play through the whole Ork invasion from start to finish. This week that story can get a lot more varied, since another three missions have been added to the roster. As the fourth Beast post, today’s entry also marks the halfway point of the project.
Accessing the Rules
You can access the rules here, or by clicking on the choppa below. The rest of this post covers what’s been added, how you can get involved, and what’s coming down the road.
The New Missions
As with Fury of the Swarm, each mission in Fury of da Beast endeavours to give you and your comrades a unique tactical challenge, designed to evoke the different narratives that emerge from Ork invasions.
Repel Boarders
This Rokfall mission is very much here to enable you to play entry-level Boarding Action mission Access Junction Primus against loads of Orks. I really want to write a Boarding Action mission with more narrative bells and whistles, and a different layout, possibly also with blackjack, and well-compensated adults of negotiable affection. I was tempted to do so instead of redoing this mission from Fury of the Swarm, but when one is trying to write an entire 40K supplement, one has to make some difficult decisions due to time constraints. I’d definitely like to revisit this idea after the completion of Version 1.
Resupply Run
Another testament to my optimism in thinking I could just port missions from Swarm, Resupply Run has had to be completely reworked to accommodate Orks. It’s a classic narrative format: you have to escort a convoy of desperately-needed supply trucks, and you get ambushed by Orks. What I love about this mission is that this is an iconic scene that you just don’t see play out in the average 40K game. You can use any vehicle to represent a supply truck, but luckily for me, my friend Tom had some 3D prints that look right at home in the 40K setting. I also think most factions’ standard transports tend to work well for this; Rhinos, Tauroxes, Chimeras, Devilfish… all good stuff, though ironically none are as perfect as the iconic Ork Trukk. Hey, there’s no reason you can’t play Fury of da Beast as an Ork civil war…
Cut Off the Head
The missions in Beast are a lot more self-contained than the mission briefs you get in a standard official mission pack. While this does create a fair bit of repetition compared to the official mission pack format, it does give me a lot more levers to pull and stops you having to refer back to previous sections.
It also means that stupidly specific missions like this one can be attempted.
I will be very, very curious to hear from people who try this mission. There’s a lot going on, and a bunch of things I left on the cutting room floor. Is it too complex? You be the judge.
Anyway, preamble aside: Cut off the Head is an assassination mission. You have to quietly take out the sentries, and can even take out whole units of drunken sleeping boyz if you’re really lucky, but ultimately you’ll need to both butcher the Orks’ Warlord and then extract at least half your army to win. The extraction is in many ways the main challenge of this mission, although if you raise the alarm before you’re ready to launch your strike on the Warlord then it’s going to be a spicy old time.
Rule Changes in this Version
None yet! It’s just as it was in version 0.1.
The Roadmap
Note that for the first time, the remaining roadmap now shows all the upcoming mission names.
March 18th: More Missions
New missions The Straggler (Evacuation); Sabotage (Fulcrum)
April 1st: Design Commentary
How it’s going, and how to write army lists for FotB
April 15th: More Missions
New missions Hold the Line (Fulcrum, can also be played during Rokfall and Evacuation); The Hunt for Red Orktober (Fulcrum)
April 29th: Version One Complete
Nemesis system, PDF of the rules. Version One complete.
Fury of da Beast So Far: Feedback Concerns
As planned, the lead time I’d created with all my preparatory work has largely been used up. I’ve tested one of the two missions due on the 18th this month, meaning I have three missions left to write/rewrite and test, alongside the Nemesis system, which is an idea nakedly lifted from Shadow of Mordor: it will let you procedurally generate Ork characters, who can get more potent after each encounter with you. It’s a fun extra feature I’d like to add in, since it didn’t suit the Tyranids so much, and injects more personality into your enemy.
While I think the development itself is going fine, there’s a problem: I’m getting a fraction of the feedback I received for Fury of the Swarm. While the traffic has been significant, at least for the release post, it’s not clear to me how many people are playing it since people aren’t filling out battle report forms or emailing contact@goonhammer.com.
There’s a few factors that could be at play; lots of people were sitting on surplus Tyranids at the outset of 10th edition, and cooperative play offered an obvious outlet for that. It’s also possible that people who collect Orks are more interested in playing as them than against them, although that’s not been a hurdle for either myself our my group’s other resident Ork player. It could also be that people dislike the rules, but no-one’s said so. It could also be that people are playing it, not finding any real issues, and therefore not feeling the need to get in touch. It could be that I am squawking into the void to no avail. In the absence of any feedback, I can only push ahead with the project as designed and trust to my instincts.
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