Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Game Tonight - Rogue Trader


'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the hous(es), many creatures were stirring, as Orks had overrun the planet.  In the heavy fighting, the Imperial Warhound class titan Revenge of Rudolphus, known affentionately as "The Red Nose", was destroyed by Ork Stompa mobs.  It seems, however, that the crew survived, bailing out from the crew compartment while the Titan went down, and now they are hiding in some ruins at the edge of an urban sector.  The crew sent a single distress signal on the way out, hoping Imperial forces would detect it, and then went silent, for fear of attracting too much Ork attention.

The Ork Warlord, Snagrod the Arch-Arsonist, is furious - meaning, more furious than he usually is. The victory is not complete without the heads of the titan's crew.  Snagrod rolls out personally with his lads to find these suriving humies and get them for his "collection", ready to finish the job the over-sized mek toys could not.  It's the holidays, after all, and the heads of the Titan crew would make great decorations.

Meanwhile, from the Imperial perspective, Titan crews are precious assets - way more important than any other ground-troop types. That means other, less important, lives, such as those of the ground troops, are to be risked in order to save them!

Will the Imperial forces find and resecue the Titan Crew in time for Christmas (where the crew will be ruthlessly interrogated to find out how it was they could have lost their precious machine)?  Or will the Ork Warlord get another set of "decorations" for his, er, "tree"?  We'll find out tonight!

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Tonight we will ring in the holidays with a game of Warhammer 40k, using the classic "Rogue Trader" rules.  Of course, I guess they won't be completely "classic", in that we will play with some amendments, including:

  • Vehicle rules - we will use the vehicles rules of the current edition of 40k for the vehicles, with combat speed, crew shaken etc.  So no worrying about the turn radius, acceleration etc.  Although we'll still have a little twist to keep the power fields around!
  • Infantry armour - we'll up the armour a little bit, so power armour saves on a 3+ instead of a 4+, and flak armour saves on a 5+ instead of a 6+, etc.  Not to worry - lots of saving throw modifiers abound, so everything will be killed at a rapid pace, I'm sure.
  • Templates - we will use the templates from the current edition, as common sense dictates, as opposed to worrying about a half-inch blast radius for this weapon, a one-and-a-half inch for that one, etc. etc.
  • Deviation/Area Fire - we will use the updated rules from pg. 89 of the 40k Compendium, where deviation of area fire weapons is related to the model's ballistic skill, and not the size of the template.
  • Terrain - we'll be sure to have "true line of sight".....NOT.
So come on out tonight to Dallas' place and hearken back to the time when Warhammer 40k was a fun skirmish game!

2 comments:

Dallas said...

This will be awesome. Hope we can throw Da Red Barun in for some aerial wreck-onaissance ;-)

Colonel Kane said...

Christmas Rogue Trader Battle Reports for the win :-) Check out ours' here http://talesfromthemaelstrom.blogspot.com/2011/12/xmas-battle-report-fair-exchange-is-no.html