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I'm a returning player, I dabbled with 40k back in the 80s (I was there at the Games Day in London when they released it) but never really got heavily into it. However I've now got some teenage relations and children of friends who are getting into it, so I've dipped my toe back into the water and picked up Dark Imperium.

What I've discovered is that the game doesn't come with any any starter scenarios to help people break into the game.

So what I'm wondering is there any way that I can get a hold of the missions from the First Strike starter set? I know that I won't have all the minis but I can put something together that's pretty close and then use the objectives and layout as a way to start covering the various parts of the game.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

That's disturbing. Surely they'd have something?

Anyhoo, a quick google didn't reveal much other than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXUqjdQcFtc

From what i've seen so far it seems to go through at least the first mission. Not quite what you're looking for, but short of someone giving you pdfs of the rules itself, hopefully it'll be of some use.

edit: there are links to mission 2 and 3. I don't know how many missions there are in total, but i suspect that's it. If you watch the whole series, you should at least have an idea of how it plays.

No, nothing, no tutorials at all. I think that the other to boxes (First Strike and Know no Fear) are aimed more at beginners while Dark Imperium is aimed at people who know that they're doing. It's just not very friendly...

I might well go through the videos to give me some ideas of how to break the young players into the game. So thanks for that.

I would highly recommend the Open War card deck for your needs. I really like it.

And welcome back to the hobby.

Edit. I misread your post a bit about looking for tutorial missions.

Still have a look at the Open War cards anyway though.

Cheers

Thanks for the suggestion, they do sound interesting and would help to get across that the games can be about more than just lining up and shooting each other.

For similar reasons I also need to digest the related sections in the rule book. Do the cards repeat what's in there or are they completely new content?

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't the simplest starter scenario just 'kill the other blokes'?

In any case, they did this thing in my local shop called 'marine paintball' to get people used to the mechanics.
Basically you have 5 red and 5 blue marines. They all move independently and have bolters.
Every time you kill a marine you get a new one of your colour, first one with 10 marines wins!

 Kroem wrote:
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't the simplest starter scenario just 'kill the other blokes'?

First Strike seems to break things in a phased fashion. First they cover movement and basic shooting where only one side has guns (the other side just wants to escape). Then they go into close combat with the next mission. The 3rd mission is the first one where both sides get firearms but there's only a small set of the models in use. Finally I think they throw in everything in the box, scenery pops up in either mission 3 or 4. The setups seems to be fixed and the players are given clear objectives.

Compare that to sitting down with over fifty miniatures on the table of many different types, with many different weapons and many different abilities and no clear idea of what you're meant to be doing.

I might be playing a game or two with a friend first who goes back to Rogue Trader in '87 with me and we might just get whatever I've glued together onto the table and bash it out. But we're "experienced" (don't say "old") gamers. We know roughly what's going on and know what to look for in how the game plays to begin to make judgement calls on it. It's when it comes to introducing younger friends and family that I'd like something with a bit of a nicer learning curve to hook them into the hobby. I don't want to scare the poor blighters off.

 Kroem wrote:
In any case, they did this thing in my local shop called 'marine paintball' to get people used to the mechanics.
Basically you have 5 red and 5 blue marines. They all move independently and have bolters. Every time you kill a marine you get a new one of your colour, first one with 10 marines wins!

Now that does sound like a good idea, which I might well borrow

My son has the First Strike set. The "missions" are really just very basic tutorials that introduce the phases one at a time and build on that. I know they're called misssions in the First Strike book, but that's kind of a stretch as they're more of a tutorial with a tacked on goal.

They should be pretty easy to replicate though, without having to get the books.

The first mission is just 6 poxwalkers using move and advance (with "advance" being an optional rule for first time players) The marines use move and shoot. The poxwalkers have to get x number of models off of the edge of the mat to win.

The second mission adds a fight phase, and so on.

If you really want to use those, there are people selling the First Strike "Read This First" book, which contains the training missions, on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/W40k-First-Strike-Read-This-First-/282672939205?hash=item41d09ec0c5:g:ACEAAOSw3pFZzSQG

You'll have plenty of models from Dark Imperium to use with that book if you buy it, and it's pretty cheap for the most part when bought from an ebay seller. You'd just need to come up with your own play mat, or at least set the same boundaries on your table.