Warhammer 40,000 is, and always will be, a game primarily designed for players to compete against each other. But what if there was also the option to stand shoulder to shoulder with a friend while getting run over by a deff rolla? Welcome to Fury of da Beast, the Ork-themed cooperative play supplement for Warhammer 40,000. It’s the sequel to last year’s Tyranid supplement Fury of the Swarm.
As outlined in the preview/making of post, the trukk of creativity hit a few real life potholes to make it this far, but we’re here now, and I’m keen for the road ahead.
Today is the launch of the open beta, containing all the rules needed for teaming up with your mates to battle a horde of Orks following preset protocols. For these first two weeks of the open beta, I’ve included one mission: Breach Containment, in which your troops have been sent to plug a new gap in the front lines. The orks will have a 50% points advantage over you, and the objectives are demanding, but trust me when I say it’s winnable.
How This Open Beta Works
As with Fury of the Swarm, this supplement will be developed as an open beta, which means your feedback will help shape the final rules. After playing a game, you can fill out a feedback form. You can also email contact@goonhammer.com and, if you’re a Goonhammer patron, you can get after me on our Discord server (@Charlie B) where we have a dedicated channel for discussing the project. The rules and missions all get internal playtesting, but my gaming group don’t have every permutation of every 40K army. That’s where the wider community comes in.
Why Orks?
They were the most requested follow-up faction, and happily, I agree. See? Feedback matters. Orks are widely owned, the models kick ass, they’re a classic 40K faction, and they suit it from a lore perspective thanks to their ‘direct’ approach to combat, namely, howling straight towards the enemy.
A Google Doc? Seriously?
When it’s finished it’ll be a PDF, but during the open beta, I need to be able to chop and change rules extremely quickly.
If you’re viewing it on a smartphone, I suggest switching the doc to ‘print layout’ and viewing it in the light theme for premium visuals. It’ll still work fine in mobile mode, it just won’t look as pretty.
Sadly when you export Google Docs into a PDF, it doesn’t currently populate the bookmarks using the doc’s headers, so the conversion process is a bit more torturous: you have to export to Word, fix all the broken formatting, then export to PDF. I don’t fancy doing that every fortnight from now until March.
The Roadmap
February 4th: The Open Beta Begins
Public open beta launch (v0.1), with one mission: Breach Containment.
February 18th: Micro-Campaigns
Campaigns unlocked by adding a mission from each of the campaign phases:
- Rokfall mission: Big Guns Mustn’t Tire
- Extermination mission: Silence the Flak (new)
- Evacuation mission: The Last Shuttle
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.
Cautionary note: The editorial team may have to move things around if James Workshop does something that impacts Goonhammer’s content schedule.
Accessing the Rules
You can access the rules here, or by clicking on the choppa below.
Do I Need to Own Loads of Orks?
Everyone needs to own loads of Orks, because Orks are great. This first mission expects you to have a good chunk, because the rules need testing at scale. If you’ve only got a small Ork collection, one of the missions coming in two weeks’ time is a skirmish scenario that needs just 900 points, and further down the line, there will also be a Boarding Action mission. To get the most out of this mode, though, an Ork army of at least 1500 points should help you scrape through most of the missions.
The bigger your Ork collection, the more possibilities you’ll have. My favourite way to play Breach Containment is with 3,000 points of Orks, split into three 1,000 point Warbands. Fortunately my own gaming group is well supplied with Orks, and at this point we can put down at least 1,000 points from any of the six major Ork Clans.
What Kind of Armies Can I use, and Can the Difficulty Level be Tweaked?
This game mode is very much about using flavourful, balanced armies. If you’re a really experienced 40K player, the best way to up the difficulty is to take non-optimal units that would never see the table in Matched Play, and just go with the narrative. You can also increase the difficulty by adding more line of sight-blocking terrain in the midfield.
To a certain extent, each mission is a puzzle to be solved, but if you go out of your way to ‘break’ a mission with skew unit choices, you’ll probably win at the mission and lose at having fun!
I’m a little concerned that skew armies such as Custodes and Knights won’t work that well in this game mode, but Knights alongside a more numerous allied force helmed by a friend? That should be fine; certainly it was with Fury of the Swarm. I’ll be curious to hear from people who try that.
In short you can use any army you like, but think fluffy thoughts!
To Waaagh!
The best co-op battles, just like in PvP, are the close-fought ones. In the games my friends and I have played thus far, the best games are the ones where, circa turn 3, we’re absolutely convinced that we’re boned, only to pull out a pyrrhic win in the final round. I wish you the very same thing, or failing that, something vaguely enjoyable.
If you have questions, or want to talk about the project, I’m always happy to chat. Email contact@goonhammer.com, or drop a comment below. If you’re a Goonhammer patron, you can also message me in the Goonhammer Discord server (I’m Charlie B). We even have a dedicated channel for this very purpose!
