Welcome to Fury of da Beast, the unofficial 40K cooperative play supplement where you and your friends battle against invading Ork hordes. The open beta running on this very site since January is over and the project is now complete, much like its Tyranid-themed predecessor Fury of the Swarm.
Today, I am a happy nerd.
An Explainer for the Uninitiated: What is Fury of da Beast?
If this is your first time reading a Fury of da Beast post, the summary is this: with the help of Goonhammer patrons and gamers who submitted feedback, we’ve developed a cooperative play supplement for Warhammer 40,000 in which you battle alongside your friends against Orks following behavioural rules. You’ll still need all the normal official products to play, such as the core rules and codexes. You’ll also need a collection of orks, obviously! If you don’t have this, but would like to use this as an excuse to start collecting one of 40K’s most glorious factions, this post has some advice on where to start.
The supplement has campaign rules built in, enabling you to fight out an Ork invasion from start to finish. You’ll be assaulting Ork forts, escorting supply convoys, sneaking behind enemy lines, and assassinating your least favourite Ork Warboss before he levels up too far. If all goes well, you’ll be fighting extermination missions to finish the Orks off, but if not, you’ll end up fighting evacuation missions in a desperate attempt to escape the encroaching horde.
If you’re so inclined, this game mode has also been written to enable solo play for Warhammer 40K, since here at Goonhammer we understand that different folks like different strokes.
New Additions
The Hunt for Red Orktober is Back On!
In my last post I was lamenting that one of the missions, The Hunt for Red Orktober, wasn’t working well enough. The mission needed to be about cagey positioning with a small force engaging a Stompa, and whilst the premise was fun, the end result was too easy and didn’t generate interesting gameplay.
It turns out what I was missing is something 40K left behind years ago: vulnerable rear armour. This forces you to lure the Stompa in different directions to trick it into revealing its weakest point. This immediately proved more interesting, and hopefully the mission now delivers on its potential. With just one miniature on the Ork side, it’s probably the fastest mission to play, and feels very different to the more conventional missions in the supplement.
The Nemesis System
With the new (and optional) nemesis system, Ork Warbosses in Fury of da Beast can level up, and can develop vendettas against your units. This is very much something I’ve been looking forward to, and will I hope enrich the emergent stories created by playing this game mode.
I didn’t want to add it until after the open beta as I needed to ensure some consistency in the way the missions are being played, and some of the upgrades nemeses can get are pretty spicy.
The nemesis rules include a name generator, taken from the extremely serious Warboss generator I made a few years ago, the BOSS-O-MATIC 9000. That generator was purely for flavour rather than rules, and generates everything from a Warboss’ runt names to his favourite pastimes.
Accessing the Rules
You can download a PDF of the rules here, or alternatively by clicking on the choppa below.
Note that the PDF is fully bookmarked, so if you download it (as opposed to viewing it in your browser) and ensure you’ve toggled bookmarks on, you’ll be able to click on the different titles to navigate easily around the document.
If for some reason you prefer to view the rules in Google Docs, you can do so here. Just bear in mind if you’re viewing the Google Doc on a phone you’ll want to switch to print layout to avoid janky visuals.
Future Co-op Plans
Just because I have completed both Beast and Swarm doesn’t mean I’m done with making co-op rules. If I receive feedback highlighting errata or points of confusion I will absolutely amend these rules accordingly, and beyond that I’d like to add a few new missions. In particular I’d like to have a go at doing more bespoke Boarding Action missions for both Tyranids and Orks.
There’s also been talk of maybe finding ways to integrate the co-op rules into Administratum to help people run games or even co-op events. Certainly the campaign rules as written would scale up into larger events with no trouble, assuming one could find enough painted Orks. That’s more at the ‘interesting potential concept’ stage, but I’m sure could be brought forwards if people are asking for it.
That said, right now I intend to have a break. Developing these things takes a huge amount of time (1-3 days a week for the last six months), which eats into my personal hobby and my ability to write other content.
What about doing supplements for new factions?
I do think that Tyranids and Orks are the two 40K factions that suit it best, and I don’t currently have plans to produce a whole new co-op supplement. It’s possible one of the other goons will give it a go, and I know there were some people asking for a Necron version. It’s probably doable, and the main challenge will be making those factions behave in a thematic way on the tabletop. I’m happy that with the rules we’ve got here, the Orks and Tyranids both play quite differently to each other, and behave thematically on the tabletop, but both factions have a directness to them. But as with most other factions, Necron leaders have a lot of personal agency and intelligence.
You could always take the early Necron lore as an approach, with them behaving more like undead minions, but I think the strength of Beast and Swarm is that they both lean into the feel of those factions, and I’d want any future Fury of… to lean just as hard into the things which make that faction unique.
Gratitude
As with Fury of the Swarm, I’m immensely grateful to those of you who’ve been in touch via contact@goonhammer.com, the battle report form, and/or DMing me on Instagram (@CharlieBrassley). If you’d like to chat with myself or other people playing Beast, Goonhammer patrons have access to the Fury of da Beast channel in Goonhammer’s Discord server. Whatever your preferred medium, it’s always a delight to hear from you.
Getting external feedback was just so valuable; it gave me the encouragement and motivation to give players the best possible experience. I’m also very grateful that Rob Jones and the rest of the Goonhammer crew once again let me go ahead and create this thing (Rob, thanks also for contributing an illustration!).
Finally, there’s one man I must thank above all others: my good friend Harvey. His assistance with playtesting has been incredible. His experience testing Swarm was a force multiplier, and without his enthusiasm and intelligence you’d be looking at a very different end product. In fact, given all the real life things I’ve been assailed with (sick and dying relatives, close friends going through big life events) it’s honestly hard to say if I would have been able to finish it without his help. What a bloody champion.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! Now go and paint some Orks, gather your friends, and make ready to battle the green tide.
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