Our fledgling Ork horde mode Fury of da Beast returns today to expand on the initial mission we shared last time. This week I’m sharing three so that there’s now one mission for each of the campaign phases. You can play any of these in isolation, but crucially, you can now play a three game micro-campaign from bracing start to bloody finish.
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.
How Campaigns Work
This is fully covered in the rules, of course, but to give you a rough idea: you decide at the outset of the campaign how many games you’d like to play, ideally at least one game in each of the three phases in an Ork invasion:
- Rokfall, where the Orks try to smash your orbital defences and land their Roks* planetside. Losing the majority of the Rokfall games you play can trigger additional challenges during the main phase of the campaign, known as the Fulcrum.
- The Fulcrum, where winning the majority of battles in this phase determines the fate of your world.
- Extermination/Evacuation. This is the epilogue, where you either burn out the remaining Orks, or flee the planet if you lost the Fulcrum.
A mini campaign, then, is when you fight one game in each phase. So for example, you could start by playing the smallish battle ‘Big Guns Mustn’t Tire’ as you defend an orbital defence weapon, then for your second game, fight ‘Breach Containment’ with extra difficulty if you lost Big Guns. This is more of a pitched battle, where you’re trying to prevent the Orks exploiting a breach in your lines. If you succeed there, you can go on the offensive, ending with a full on assault on an Ork Rok* to silence its AA guns, paving the way for a huge wave of your bombers to flatten it from the air. But if you lost at Breach Containment, you will instead be playing the ‘Evacuation’ mission, where your last few surviving soldiers make a run for the last shuttle off-world.
*Explainer: What is a Rok?
Just as the armies of antiquity built siege engines, Orks build Roks. When Orks intend to conquer a world, they are sometimes known to start hollowing out asteroids upon arrival in-system, covering them in guns, engines, guns, force fields, and more guns. These Roks then approach the planet, often enduring a huge amount of firepower, before landing planetside and disgorging vast numbers of troops and heavy armour, thereafter serving as instant fortresses.
The Three 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.
Rokfall: Big Guns Mustn’t Tire
This mission has been adjusted from Fury of the Swarm to work with Orks. As the Orks enter low orbit to deploy troops, the Players’ small garrison force is tasked with guarding an orbital defence weapon so that as many Orks as possible can be slain before making planetfall. Unfortunately for the Players, there are three Ork Warbands converging on your position from three different directions…
In the coolest and goodest of all worlds, you’d have a giant bespoke piece of terrain to represent the orbital defence gun, but most people (including yours truly) don’t have that, so a certain amount of creative terrain usage is expected! I tend to use the landing pad from the Fronteris terrain kit to represent a missile silo.
Evacuation: The Last Shuttle
Another returning mission from Swarm, this is all about a bedraggled gang of survivors making a dash for the one remaining spaceworthy shuttle as the Orks, smelling good loot, descend on said shuttle with naked avarice. It’s a skirmish mission, with the combined strength of the Players’ forces locked at 750 points, and with custom rules to have all your units be pre-damaged, since you’re playing as the battered survivors.
You’ll have to prep the shuttle for takeoff, and get a refuelling drone to fill the tanks, all while fending off Ork looters. You win so long as the shuttle takes off with at least some of your troops on board.
If, like me, you’ve been eyeing up the new plastic Arvus Lighter that just came out, this hopefully gives you the excuse you didn’t need.
Extermination: Silence the Flak
It’s the end of a successful campaign, and it’s time to crush the Orks’ last stronghold. There’s just one problem: it’s bristling with anti-air guns, and you’ll have to destroy those before the bombers can go in and flatten the place from the air.
Like last week’s Breach Containment, this mission is one of a number of missions written specifically for Fury of da Beast. It’s suspiciously generous in that the Orks merely have the same points as the Players, but that’s because their fort is teeming with Orks who’ve retreated from the preceding battles, so every unit you kill goes into reserve as more Orks come surging towards the gatehouse. The trick is, you’ll have to breach the gatehouse to clear out two of the AA guns. In theory you could hit those AA guns from the air, and Players are welcome to try, but those AA guns kick out a preposterous amount of dakka.
Of course, if you don’t have any AA guns for the Orks to use, it’s fine to use objective markers or any semi-appropriate mini (such as Mek Gunz).
While Silence the Flak is primarily written as an Extermination mission, and serves as a fun final battle, there’s nothing to stop you playing the mission during the Fulcrum to represent any situation where the Orks are on the defensive, or even as a madcap assault on a Rok right after it’s landed during Rokfall.
Rule Changes in this Version
None yet! It’s just as it was in version 0.1.
The Roadmap
March 4th: More Missions
Repel Boarders; Resupply Run; one new mission
March 18th: More Missions
The Straggler; one new mission
April 1st: Design Commentary
How it’s going, and how to write army lists for FotB
April 15th: More Missions
Hold the Line; one new mission
April 29th: Version One Complete
Nemesis system, PDF of the rules. Version One complete.
Fury of da Beast So Far: Your Pics Here?
As I write this, Beast has garnered a gratifying amount of Internet Number, in line with Swarm, but not much in the way of actual games being reported back to me. That’s fairly similar to how Swarm went early on, before people really got going. If you’re reading this and deciding when to start playing some games, early is good. The later I get feedback, the harder it becomes to make big changes.
The games we’ve played in my own group have gone well, so I am at least encouraged that we’re making something fun. What I won’t know until we get decent external feedback is how digestible and enjoyable you find the rules yourself.
In terms of how organised and on time everything is, so far so good, largely thanks to my decision to do more work in advance. My headstart is eroding quickly thanks to lots of other obligations clamouring for attention! The three missions slated to go out on 4th March have all been written, laid out, and tested within my game group. One could always do more testing, but then again, that’s the point of an open beta – we can’t hope to rival the impact of numerous other people giving it a go.
Finally, before I sign off, allow me to throw down a gauntlet. If you’re painting up some Orks for Fury of da Beast or are playing some games with fully painted minis and terrain, we’d love to see photos! If we get any corkers, particularly alongside a fun summary of your game (max. 150 words) I might share them at the end of each Beast post. I’ll be stunned if anyone actually does this, but what if they did? Email us with your Orks, your thoughts, or anything else at contact@goonhammer.com. It’s been fun hearing from a few of you already.
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