Welcome back to Fury of da Beast, the 40K cooperative play supplement where you and your friends battle against invading Ork hordes. This is the penultimate post on the road to Version 1; in two weeks’ time, the project will be a complete, self-contained supplement.
But it wouldn’t be right to precede the finale without some mild drama, and so today’s post is–as far as I recall–the first time in either this or the previous supplement Fury of the Swarm that I have had to diverge from the roadmap. Today’s post was meant to herald the arrival of two new missions, but instead, only one has made it into the rules today. I’ll explain more later in this post.
Accessing the Rules
You can access the updated 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 Roadmap: So Close I Can Smell It
29th April
Nemesis system, PDF of the rules. Version One complete.
Future Plans
Following the release of V1 I will be taking a break from working on this for a few months, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the line. If I continue to get feedback post-release I’ll fix errata and issue any necessary updates in the live rules doc, and if possible, in the PDF too. Further down the line, the occasional new mission could also be added, but I don’t have an exact timescale for that, and to an extent, it may be determined by the extent to which people express an interest in Goonhammer producing more content like this.
Explainer: What is Fury of da Beast and where do I sign up for the open beta?
If you’ve not been following along with the previous posts, Fury of da Beast is an unofficial supplement for Warhammer 40,000 that enables you and your friends to fight co-op battles against your Ork army, which will be following preset protocols across a range of bespoke missions. This enables you to fight out a single mission or, better yet, a whole campaign charting an Ork invasion from brutal start to bloody finish.
The missions are designed to be winnable but challenging, and will hopefully give you the excuse you didn’t need to collect and paint more Orks. They’ve got an awesome range of minis, so if their playstyle isn’t for you, this is a great way to get a lot of use out of an army without having to play as them.
There are links both at the end of this article and in the first page of the rules themselves encouraging you to get in touch and/or send feedback. As we near the release of the first complete version, there’s relatively little time left for me to implement any feedback I receive – essentially, we’re into the final week before I have to lock down the rules.
The Hunt for Red Orktober Isn’t Good Enough
Last time I mentioned some unfortunate real life events had made things tricky, but that “I do not currently anticipate delays in the release of future posts. It’s just used up all of my wiggle room.”
Well the post’s here, but Hunt for Red Orktober is conspicuously missing from the updated rules.
It’s easily the most ambitious mission from a design perspective; the concept is that a tiny force (5-600 points) take on a Stompa in incredibly dense terrain. When the battle begins, the Stompa starts flattening the battlefield as it pursues its tormentors, a bit like a cross between King Kong and Pacific Rim, but with a weaponised dustbin. You get extra tools like haywire mines, rappelling gear to jump off collapsing buildings… you get the idea. Ambitious as hell, possibly unworkably stupid, but potentially amusing. There’s just one problem: it’s proving tough to balance, and it needs more time.
It might be that it’s just not a concept that’s workable in 40K, but I’d like to take a few more swings at it before I give up since the idea charms me. Hopefully, if all goes well, it will feature in the Version 1 release even though that means it won’t get any testing from you lovely people during this open beta.
But right now, there’s no point handing it over to test – you’d only be telling me things I already know, which makes it a poor use of your time.
New Mission: Hold the Line
In happier news, Hold the Line is now in the rules. It is comfortably the least subtle mission in the whole supplement: set up your toy soldiers and defend your base against giant waves of greenskins. You can’t make a co-op supplement about fighting hordes of Orks without giving players a battle-sized base defence mission.
However, this being Fury of da Beast, it does need to be an intimidating challenge. That’s why you’ll be surrounded on three sides, and the better you do in your first two turns, the harder the Orks punch back in their second turn. I’m pretty happy with this mechanic, since it will scale the difficulty somewhat according to how powerful your army is.
In my last playtest of it, Harvey and I had an incredibly efficient turn 2, which resulted in a reinforcement wave so huge that over the course of the battle we ended up taking on over 4,500 points’ worth of Orks with 2,000 points of our own forces. In the final battle round they were well inside our walls, and we’d taken significant casualties, but just about managed to hold on. ‘Victorious, but only just’ is very much where I’d like every mission to land, so this was good news indeed. I’ll be curious to hear how other people find it!
One More to Go
I’m eager to see if I can get Red Orktober to work, and to get Version 1 out there with the Nemesis system. Once that’s done I won’t be able to implement feedback very easily at all, so if you’ve found problems with the rules, then practically speaking we have until 21st April 2025.
I really appreciate those of you who have gotten in touch, in various ways, and have tried out this nonsense. It absolutely validates the effort, and keeps me motivated to produce something worthy of your time.
As ever, the best way to get in touch is to reach me by emailing contact@goonhammer.com. The best thing you can do to help the project is to play games, and then submit a battle report form. You can also DM me on Instagram (@CharlieBrassley) or if you’re a Goonhammer patron, by tagging me (Charlie B) in the Fury of da Beast channel in Goonhammer’s Discord server.
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