Welcome back to our ongoing preview series about the Vadinax campaign. Last time around we talked about some of the Mechanics from the campaign, including Planetary Conquest. Today we’re covering more of the mechanics, and looking at some of the faction-specific mechanics you’ll be playing with.
Warleaders
Every army has a some kind of head honcho leading the charge into battle. In Vadinax, this is a character you’ll designate as your Warleader. The Warleader is your army’s absolute Warlord, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in-game, it has certain implications for things like The Great Game (see below) and how narratives might play out. When you create your Order of Battle, you pick one character to be your Warleader. When that unit is included in a game, they have to be your Warlord.
Fated Hours
Heroism and great deeds are only made by the risk they incur; if there’s nothing at stake, then the deeds are merely pedestrian. In Vadinax sometimes the stakes are higher – in these games and events, which have the Fated Hour tag, you’ll find there are massive gains to be had, but also major risks. If your characters die in one of these games and fail an Out of Action test, they may die permanently. That said, it’s not as massive a hit as it sounds – your characters can pass on their relics to another unit, and some of their hard-earned XP.
Fated Hour games and events won’t be common, but when they occur it’ll likely mean the fate of an entire planet or system is at stake!
Kill Team
The current iteration of Kill Team is one of the best games to come out of GW in quite some time. Including it in the campaign is tricky, but we wanted to go ahead and do it anyways. We’re adding a game type for Kill Team into Administratum for the campaign. Simply play games of Kill Team using a team that shares a faction keyword with your order of battle and report that as a game with no units. Kill Team games don’t generate a ton of rewards but you can get RP and Fate points and shift planet control a little with them, and they may have larger narrative impacts.
The Great Game
If you’re a Chaos Player in Vadinax, you’ll likely be a participant in the Great Game, the ongoing battle between the Chaos Gods for supremacy. You’ll have access to special Agendas that can be used to exalt a specific Chaos God, and every time your army wins battles in the name of a particular god, you’ll help shift the balance of power in the sector. While your god is on top you’ll receive passive benefits for all of your daemons and marked units. And while the legions of Chaos certainly have a common enemy in the Imperium and Xenos hordes, there’s a benefit to fighting other Chaos armies if it means improving your god’s standing.
Hunting the Neverborn
The Grey Knights are, conceptually, some of the coolest Space Marines Games Workshop has made. Too bad then that their Crusade rules suck! We’ve fixed this by giving their rules a bit of a 5th-edition inspired rewrite. Now you can designate someone else’s unit in an Order of Battle as your Daemonic Nemesis, and when you hunt down daemons, you may find them possessing your opponent’s units, giving them improved strength, speed, and flight. You may also pick up a few daemon weapons along the way, which you can either use against the forces of Chaos or attempt to destroy if they’re too powerful to risk keeping.
Building Your Fleet
Likewise, the Space Marines rules for Crusade are just generally boring. We’ve spiced them up a little bit by adding rules for building out your own fleet, gaining benefits for having different types of Company Masters in your forces. Add a Master of Ordnance for example and you can upgrade the targeting on your Orbital Bombardments. There’s a reason to have every single Honourific in your army as you build out your fleet presence to support your ground campaigns across the sector.
Awaken the Sleeping Dynasty
The Gotep Dynasty has laid dormant for millions of years, and now it’s time for them to rise. As Necron players scour the sector they’ll discover which planets house ancient tomb worlds and awaken their forces, potentially adding these powerful units of renown to their rosters. Explore deep enough and they may even find the secrets the dynasty most wanted to remain secret.
Alternate Plague Creation
Look, the Death Guard rules for creating your own plague kind of stink. We’ve created new rules that work by giving your army a custom contagion similar to what the plague companies get. Now you can create an effect using your Virulence points that you’ll actually want to use.
Something to Build with Scrap
Likewise, the rules for Scrap with Orks kind of stink. So we added a few cool new things to do with Scrap and built some rules for looting guns off vehicles and adding them to your own. It’s not a full rewrite, but you’ll have a lot more to do when you’re running around the sector attempting to loot everything for its best gubbinz.
T’au, Genestealer Cults, and Tyranids
Each of these factions have their own planetary conquest mechanics already built. And while we could spend a ton of time giving them a full rewrite, they’re fairly solid in implementation so we’re leaving them as-is… mostly. We’ve given each planet in Vadinax the appropriate keywords for these armies to work with, and “conquering” them with Crusade mechanics won’t actually flip them, but will give you a bonus and signify that you’ve established a foothold on a key world.
Next Time: The Player Packs
That wraps up our look at most of the mechanics, but check back in a day or two when we’ll have the general player pack available for download! In the meantime if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
