Last year I put out the unofficial Warhammer 40,000 cooperative play supplement for Tyranid slaughtering, Fury of the Swarm. I was pleasantly surprised both by its reception, and by the immediate clamouring for a follow up with other armies. Orks were comfortably the most requested. It makes sense; they’re Warhammer 40,000’s original horde, so it’s only right they should have a horde mode.
Two weeks from now, the open beta will begin. Today’s post is a behind the scenes preview to (hopefully) whet the appetite. Let the kimono parting begin!
Explainer: What’s Cooperative Gaming?
This is where the players combine their Warhammer armies and team up against an automated opposing army following preset protocols. It can be played by veterans and beginners alike, and is particularly useful if you have regular opponents with wildly different skill levels, since you can join forces against a common enemy.
Early access for Goonhammer patrons
If you’re an Official Patron on Goonhammer’s Patreon, then as a thank you for enabling us to spend time on ambitious things like this, you will get early access to V0.1 as of now. There’s a dedicated channel in the Goonhammer discord: fury-of-da-beast, under 40K discussion.
Why It’s Taken So Long
Work began on Beast in February, but it ended up taking even longer than Swarm for several reasons. First among those reasons was the moment upon finishing Fury of the Swarm that my wife commented, “It’s nice to have my husband back.”
Ooops.
So this time I’ve done as much prep as possible ahead of the launch, to give myself a less manic time of it. There are a lot of tasks when making a game supplement: designing, testing, writing, editing… those all take some work, but to make sure it took even longer, I made the powerfully sensible decision to create illustrations as well. For Swarm I did the graphic design and cover, but this time I’ve taken it a step further, creating art assets to sprinkle through the rules.
The second thing that took time was a brick of Real Life to the face. This year, from April onwards, my family and social circle erupted in a series of funerals, divorces, and other assorted triumphs. Oh, and I got a new job. Apparently some things are more important than Warhammer? Most concerning. The point is: I was fine, but loads of people I knew were (and still are) not fine. This meant that work was effectively paused from April until August, at which point I resumed playtesting, designing new missions, and producing artwork.
Graphic Design and Illustration
With Swarm I waited until the end of playtesting, then gussied up the rules with some basic layout. This time I’ve included a nice (I hope) layout right from the get go. Some little graphic design elements from Swarm have been ported over to Beast (e.g. I’ve used the same page texture I made, but shifted the colour to neutral), but for the most part I’ve started from the ground up.
Normally layout and illustration is something you’d do right at the end of a project, since the length of certain sections will change. But my reasoning is this: it’s amazing how much more digestible people find a ruleset when it’s well presented. The better the presentation, the more people we have trying this thing out. The more people try it out, the more feedback I get. The more feedback I get, the better the finished result will be.
Happily, with the graphic elements in place from the start, there won’t be a big gap at the end while I tart it up; I’ll tart as I go.
The two priorities from a visual perspective were a cover illustration, so that every Goonhammer post would share a consistent banner image, and a template for making mission maps.
Making the Cover Illustration
This thing intimidated me enough that I procrastinated on it a bunch. The cover for Swarm was made by painting directly over a collage of several photographs, but to me it never really stopped looking like a miniature. For Beast I wanted an illustration in the traditional sense.
The problem? I normally just do graphics like faction icons – heraldry and such. Not fully rendered art. I would spend many hours with this thing in the ugly stage, working on something that looked like trash with no way of knowing if I would end up with a reasonable finish, or was even willing to show other people.
My idea for the cover was an Ork face filling the whole page, echoing the cover of Leviathan with those closeups of a Tyranid Warrior’s face and the Terminator helmet. For the Ork, I took inspiration from an illustration by Goonhammer’s own Rob:
Since this’d fill a whole page, and since it’s such an important image for the project, I did my best with the details. There’s some bits I like more than others, but overall I’m proud of the end result. Lighting and shadows were half the battle, but as time went on, my confidence grew that the end result might not be a dumpster fire, and that fuelled my ability to push on and finish it. Right up to the end major details were changing, such as the nose, and there’s still things I can see that I would improve, but there comes a time when one must move on if one is to get everything else done. You’ve already seen a bit of it in the banner above, but here’s how the finished thing turned out:
Making the Mission Maps
I had a perfectly okay template for Swarm, but for Beast I wanted to make it that much easier for players to use. To that end, I created a 60×44 grid, with groups of 6 squares in a checker board, so that the whole map is completely to scale, and it’s easy to see how far apart things are even when I haven’t added arrows (which, in general, I have). The symbology is consistent with official Games Workshop mission maps, just using art assets I’ve drawn myself.
Making the Other Illustrations
I tried to be quicker and less detailed with the internal art, and for the most part stuck to single objects or symbols, which still adds visual interest but is much quicker to do than anything with perspective. This choppa’s a good example:
That said, I did want one or two more ambitious pieces in there. To avoid having to do complex backdrops I painted a deffkopta firing a rokkit, which meant I could avoid bothering with either ground or sky, and a kroozer approaching a planet, since space is easy. Planets and ships, of course, are actually fairly hard, so that was in some ways a terrible idea and I’m not very happy with the finished result. There’s every chance I’ll rework or replace that piece as the project goes on, but I have to remember that it’s not a high priority.
I may well end up making more illustrations, since it’s fun, but only if time permits. The main thing that will be added going forwards is missions, and at least those all have a map, which is somewhat more interesting to look at than a wall of text.
The Roadmap
For version 0.1, there’s been a bunch of internal testing done within my gaming group. Now it’s time to pass it on to the wider gaming community for other people to try. The idea is to spend a few weeks with the first mission, Breach Containment, which sees the Players counterattacking against the Orks.
More missions will then be added every few weeks, about half of which will be adapted from Swarm, and the rest being specific to Beast. Here’s a list of the posts I have planned, currently slated for one post every other Tuesday:
This post: the Preview
Announcement, making of, roadmap, early access to v0.1 for patrons.
4th February: the Open Beta Begins
Public open beta launch (v0.1), with one mission: Breach Containment.
18th February: 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
4th March
More missions: Repel Boarders, Resupply Run, one new mission
18th March
More missions: The Straggler, one new mission
1st April
Design commentary: how it’s going, and how to write army lists for FotB
15th April
More missions: Hold the Line, one new mission
29th April: 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.
At the point where Version One is done, I will pause there and let it breathe for a bit, particularly to give people a chance to try the Nemesis system, which will be all about particular Ork characters becoming more powerful and unique if they survive their battles with the Players.
That might be the end of the current roadmap, but it isn’t the end of the road. Unlike Swarm, I intend to produce content that will build on V1. Specifically, I’d like to add even more new missions; the list of Orky mission concepts is too long to be practical for V1 but can absolutely be added later. Secondly, I’d like to look into the feasibility of a campaign world generator to help out those players who’d like a few extra creative prompts when coming up with the setting for their campaigns. That’s the kind of thing that takes up time and space, but just isn’t vitally necessary for V1, which is why it’s a stretch goal.
Prepare Your Ladz for Waaagh!
The rules let you use whatever Ork stuff you own.
There will be some guidance on building suitable Ork armies both in the rules and in a future post here on Goonhammer, but rest assured the rules do not assume you own any particular combination of Ork units. If you’re not sure what to build, you can’t ever go far wrong with Ork Boyz. Just make sure you’ve got some units that are good for smashing up vehicles.
How many ladz are needed?
The first mission to release for Fury of da Beast will want a good-sized Ork army to run well; it works fine if you’ve got 1,500 points of Orks, and runs happily if you’ve got up to 3,000 points’ worth of Orks. Rest assured that some future missions won’t need you to own quite so many greenskins, but I think it’s important to test the system at scale for the first public outing. After all, Orks are happiest when there’s a proper battle to be had.
How differently do Orks behave in Fury of da Beast?
Ork armies in Beast get split up into multiple groups called Warbands, just like Ork armies in the setting tend to be made up of many disparate groups united by the call of the Waaagh! Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you need to own lots of leader units – any unit containing at least one Nob can lead a Warband if need be.
Warbands move as a loose formation on the table, following their Boss into battle, but attacking the closest appropriate enemies. Players are encouraged to theme those Warbands for maximum immersion, and there’s even rules for Warbands composed entirely of ‘dakka ladz’ who prefer to pummel the Players from afar.
Speaking of dakka, as a balancing mechanic, the Orks have some significant buffs to their shooting output, taking them from negligible to vaguely relevant. While Ork armies in 10th edition are very good at putting pressure on their enemies, they’re not actually that amazing at killing stuff, particularly at range, and that can make for fairly unchallenging co-op gameplay. This means that if you happen to own shooty units that haven’t seen the table in ages, it’s time to dust them off!
A relevant Ork shooting phase might be seen as rank heresy by some people, but Ork firepower has waxed and waned over the years just like everything else in 40K. My personal view is that Ork shooting should be only mildly worse than the 40K average, to make up for Orks generally being better than average in the Fight phase.
Get painting!
The Ork range is a fantastically varied one, so if you’re an Ork player who wants an excuse to add a few more units to your collection, or someone who never liked the Ork playstyle but wants a reason to paint some, I’ve hopefully given you a good excuse. And for you Ork players out there who never get to use your Imperial armies because you’re the one person in your group who collects something other than Space Marines, then good news: you can now put even more of your toy soldiers on the table at once.
Excited about the possibilities? Have questions or concerns? Email us at 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). I’d say the Discord server is a particularly good option for patrons, as you can chat to other people trying this new mode out – particularly during the two weeks of early access!
