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I’ve maybe played a couple in all my years of 40k. Some seem like they could be giving unfair advantages.

Numerous, and yes sometimes they can. Sometimes that's desired, sometimes it isn't. If a player can't handle being the underpowered side in a narrative battle and likely losing, they shouldn't play that force.

Narrative missions are the best way to play any tabletop game and they are really where the hobby comes into full effect and creates memorable Moments, even when they turn out to be onesided. I can't say I remember a single eternal war mission from any Edition and I would say these are more for testing an edition's rules. Once you get a feeling for the edition you should move on to write your own narrative missions or at least put some kind of twist or Battlezone rules into an eternal war mission.

They range from sucking outright to being rather well made

Which ones are you most interested in?

There are 18 in the core book, 24 in Beyond the Veil and there are more on the way with Charadon Mission Pack.

I actually haven't played any yet, but I'm likely to be blitzing all the Combat Patrol sized missions soon. My Kill Teams haven't grown to Combat Patrol size yet.

Really looking forward to the Beyond the Veil stuff because I think the Investigation rules are awesome.

Open war deck is all the narrative you need, it basically writes itself.

I'm sure I have.
I just couldn't tell you wich. And since I don't know (or don't remember) wich games were wich I couldn't tell you how they went. Not unless there was some noteworthy moment involved. But I'd remember the game, not the specific mission.

See, we have a tendency to make a big #d list of all the missions (with page #s & source book), just roll a random mission & play that. It coming from the narrative section, or Crusade, or matched play etc makes no difference.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I’ve maybe played a couple in all my years of 40k. Some seem like they could be giving unfair advantages.

Ten years ago? Tournaments.

These days? Very much lean towards narrative.

They scratch a different itch to 'list building for advantage' and symmetric mission design.

Some could give unfair advantage? Sure, which is why game building is such an important aspect.

And it's not like the competitive game or other 'not-narrative' approaches doesn't give advantages to some builds and not to others either. I've seen every edition of 40k and every other game I've played favour some builds over others.

If you mean 'narrative missions written by gw' I don't typically bother because they don't significantly change the landscape or make things more interesting. Narrative missions I've made myself, all the time.

The purpose of a good narrative mission should be to allow both players to field the types of armies they want to field, and the mission should be structured to allow both players to have a good time in the game to as reasonable a standard as you can possibly achieve.

A couple examples:

1) a friend of mine in 8th ed wanted to play an army that was almost entirely IG vehicles, and I wanted to play the new ork speed freek models. by the core rules, the result of this game would predictably be that the orks would speed across the table, slam into the tanks, and remain locked with them the entire battle preventing them from doing anything except fall back and fire overwatch.

So our narrative mission was a mad max setup. We decided it would be a high speed hit and run scenario taking place in a desert sandstorm where a convoy of imperial vehicles was trying to protect armored but unarmed vehicles carrying weapons that the orks wanted to steal.

We removed overwatch and applied a blanket -1 to hit with ranged attacks over 6" away, allowed vehicles to fall back and still shoot, and added a bonus rule where any vehicle that charged another vehicle got to 'ram' and autohit with their attacks. That resulted in a wickedly fun and close game because it meant the IG tanks weren't just sitting back and shooting and the ork buggies weren't just locking the tanks in combat to prevent them from shooting but also weren't just going up like firecrackers.

2) I set up a game with a dude I'd never played before and his list was a mess of a Cadian list with basically every named special character, regular ogryns, units with mismatched special and heavy weaponry, etc - I don't own an army goofy enough to make a good game out of the core missions.

So we played a scenario where I played GSC and my goal was to break through the side of the board, and my opponent's goal was to destroy units with bonus points if he killed my characters with his characters in melee. When my units were destroyed or left the board, they would come back on my table edge my next turn, and my opponent got several free fortifications he got to add to his list and set up in his DZ to help slow me down.

If you're going to spend 100 hours painting miniatures and 4 hours playing the game, taking 30min to talk to your opponent and write up a cool fun scenario seems like the least amount of effort you can put in.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Open war deck is all the narrative you need, it basically writes itself.

I've seen that comment before. I'm actually going to pick up a set based on recommendations I've seen here. Another tool in the toolbox. I'll be using them with Crusade, but I still think there's value in being able to separate table set up from objective from complications; Crusade missions as written give you all of those things, which means fewer combinations.

Curious about this month's WD and it's Maelstrom of war reboot. Combining all of the different options seems to yield the highest possible creative potential.

I came close the 3-400 open war deck games during 8th & every single one was fun, narrative and most importantly of all...random stuff happening during.

If my Salamanders were playing Templars...it is a training exercise.

And so on and so on

I rather like narrative missions even though most people I play with dislike them with a passion. They are often too focused on "balanced" match play games and forget that the point of narrative games is to tell a story. If you have a mission where as the defender you have less points or have a terrible deployment surrounded by the enemy or they get respawning units.... the point becomes to see how well you can do before you get overrun. That's where the fun comes in. Narrative games have their place alongside the match play format. You just have to look outside the box.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I’ve maybe played a couple in all my years of 40k. Some seem like they could be giving unfair advantages.

That depends.

I've played crusade. The mission pack was okay, some were kind of lopsided, and like after seeing most of them the "story structure" they offered became old.


In general, I don't really thing there should be "narrative play" missions and in a world centered around your dudes and science fiction awesome and all that, I really don't get the point of narrative play. All the best stories of heroic deeds, defiant stands, crushing assaults, etc. have arisen naturally and spontaneously out of events in regularly played games, not as a product of a script. And I don't see the point in playing a mission with a forgone conclusion.

And I come from a background of historical gaming, where every scenario is "narrative" and usually asymmetric. But in historical gaming, you're representing something, from the US 3rd Armor in the Normandy Bocage to the army of Alexander at Tyre and so on, and fidelity to that representation is important. In 40k, the game is about your dudes and the spontaneously evolving story that you write about them through your play on the tabletop.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I’ve maybe played a couple in all my years of 40k. Some seem like they could be giving unfair advantages.

That depends.

I've played crusade. The mission pack was okay, some were kind of lopsided, and like after seeing most of them the "story structure" they offered became old.


In general, I don't really thing there should be "narrative play" missions and in a world centered around your dudes and science fiction awesome and all that, I really don't get the point of narrative play. All the best stories of heroic deeds, defiant stands, crushing assaults, etc. have arisen naturally and spontaneously out of events in regularly played games, not as a product of a script. And I don't see the point in playing a mission with a forgone conclusion.

And I come from a background of historical gaming, where every scenario is "narrative" and usually asymmetric. But in historical gaming, you're representing something, from the US 3rd Armor in the Normandy Bocage to the army of Alexander at Tyre and so on, and fidelity to that representation is important. In 40k, the game is about your dudes and the spontaneously evolving story that you write about them through your play on the tabletop.

Agreed - with 40k I like emergent narrative as opposed to a “historical refight.” Narrative moments come out of the game when cool things happen, and over time my army has a history. Having said that, the Narrative Play missions give some good ideas to keep things fresh.

I played a few today and found them more fun in a way. As someone already said, they scratch a different itch.

Narrative missions are often intentionally unbalanced. If you are feeling "competitive", play a mission twice and swap armies with your opponent.

I personally prefer narrative missions. If I want a balanced game, I pick up a set of cards or the chess board, playing with toys is for "kids" and all about letting your imagination run wild.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I’ve maybe played a couple in all my years of 40k. Some seem like they could be giving unfair advantages.

Sometimes an unfair advantage is the whole point of the mission. Depends entirely on the mission.

When Vigilus came out, my store ran a Vigilus campaign, and we played only narrative missions. Sometimes they are a bit lop-sided, but if one mission hurts you, odds are another will favour you. Can really test your generalship in trying to pull ahead when there are factors which hinder you.

Would I recommend Narrative games as a one off? No, but as part of a league or campaign? almost certainly.

When Vigilus came out, my store ran a Vigilus campaign, and we played only narrative missions. Sometimes they are a bit lop-sided, but if one mission hurts you, odds are another will favour you. Can really test your generalship in trying to pull ahead when there are factors which hinder you.

I love the Vigilus campaign. When the first book came out I started running it for my local club. Three or four rounds in all the competitive players started to refuse to play because the narrative missions weren't "fair". Even though I pointed out that they didn't have to play those specifically, they wouldn't have it and the whole thing fell apart. I'm hoping to try again with select players, updating a few things to 9th, when we can reconvene the club again.

I'm not sure I understand, do you mean a specific set of narrative missions OP? Because if it is just narrative missions in general, I've played loads and they are some of my most fondly remembered games. And yeah, they are often unbalanced, because unbalanced forces can make for a better narrative. You've just gotta go into it with the attitude that if you sell your dudes lives dearly, that was the point.

I've not played any of the narrative missions in the 9th ed book but played some in 8th. I found them aweful, they were generally trying to set up a scenario that you could play with any armies but several armies had core mechanics that would just shortcut the missions, my Drukhari in particular seemed really badly suited to the narrative missions as just having easy access to a load of fast vehicles that fly undercut a lot of narrative elements.

If what you want is a scenario to play out between any 2 armies then the only real way to do it is decide what armies you're playing, how they play and build around that.

 BlackLobster wrote:

When Vigilus came out, my store ran a Vigilus campaign, and we played only narrative missions. Sometimes they are a bit lop-sided, but if one mission hurts you, odds are another will favour you. Can really test your generalship in trying to pull ahead when there are factors which hinder you.

I love the Vigilus campaign. When the first book came out I started running it for my local club. Three or four rounds in all the competitive players started to refuse to play because the narrative missions weren't "fair". Even though I pointed out that they didn't have to play those specifically, they wouldn't have it and the whole thing fell apart. I'm hoping to try again with select players, updating a few things to 9th, when we can reconvene the club again.

I'm hoping to do the same when our club can meet up again. Our group has all the factions in the narrative, so it'd be easy to organize.

 Imateria wrote:
I've not played any of the narrative missions in the 9th ed book but played some in 8th. I found them aweful, they were generally trying to set up a scenario that you could play with any armies but several armies had core mechanics that would just shortcut the missions, my Drukhari in particular seemed really badly suited to the narrative missions as just having easy access to a load of fast vehicles that fly undercut a lot of narrative elements.

If what you want is a scenario to play out between any 2 armies then the only real way to do it is decide what armies you're playing, how they play and build around that.

I find with narrative games, you should know the mission ahead of building your army, it's not well suited for pick-up games.

The way I typically do it is build our armies, compare with my opponent and discuss the kind of encounter we want to play, and then build a mission based on that.

Typically it'll be pretty clear based on the lists what kind of a battle is being played - as well as all the ways the battle might normally not be fun for one or both players.

If a melee player is going to have to be charging headlong into a wall of guns, either add in elements were the gun-having player needs to move and maneuver, or give the melee player a way to offset casualties and turn it into a fun 'meat grinder' scenario.

If one player has a lot of units that are vulnerable to being tied up and the other has a ton of super mobile melee units, make sure the melee player has a reason to want to stay midboard or give the other player a way to slip the net.

If both armies are huge crazy alpha strike forces that will obliterate each other in two turns, introduce elements to split up the armies into multiple detachments that come onto the board gradually.

The main tools in my toolbox tend to be:

-A battlefield-wide effect (such as a storm, darkness, low atmosphere, etc)
-Neutral special terrain features (neutral fortifications that are held like objectives and are controlled by whoever is currently holding them, special features that grant bonus abilities, etc)
-Objective markers, placement, and scoring mechanisms
-special rules, often in the form of special stratagems, which naturally limits them to make them more difficult to abuse

Start from a point of "What kind of a game DO I and my opponent want to play, and what kind of a game DON'T we want to play" and go from there.

Racerguy180 wrote:
If my Salamanders were playing Templars...it is a training exercise.

I suspect that the tabletop sees about 100x more Chapter vs Chapter training exercises than the lore sees.

the_scotsman wrote:

If you're going to spend 100 hours painting miniatures and 4 hours playing the game, taking 30min to talk to your opponent and write up a cool fun scenario seems like the least amount of effort you can put in.

What kind of asinine logic is that? With the amount of money people are putting into the models and rules to begin with, you shouldn't HAVE to further modify the rules. All that does is give GW justification not to bother trying.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

If you're going to spend 100 hours painting miniatures and 4 hours playing the game, taking 30min to talk to your opponent and write up a cool fun scenario seems like the least amount of effort you can put in.

What kind of asinine logic is that? With the amount of money people are putting into the models and rules to begin with, you shouldn't HAVE to further modify the rules. All that does is give GW justification not to bother trying.

So Slayer, I think you're correct in saying players shouldn't have to build/ discuss missions in depth prior to playing. But one of the things I would say is that many of us who do this on a regular basis think it's one of the cool features of the game. It is not a chore to build a unique and thematic mission- it's a way that the game empowers us to exhibit our creativity.

Like I said, I can see your point: since playing pick up games in stores is actually the only choice some people have, and because there may actually be people who prefer it that way, there SHOULD be a quick play option, since consensus-based mission building on the spot with a total stranger is unlikely to work.

But thinking of mission building as a chore is an alien concept to me and many of the folks I play with- it's one of the things we like most about the game.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

If you're going to spend 100 hours painting miniatures and 4 hours playing the game, taking 30min to talk to your opponent and write up a cool fun scenario seems like the least amount of effort you can put in.

What kind of asinine logic is that? With the amount of money people are putting into the models and rules to begin with, you shouldn't HAVE to further modify the rules. All that does is give GW justification not to bother trying.

If I purchased Dungeons and Dragons 5e rulebooks and tried to play it as a skirmish scale miniature wargame, it would be the stupidest, least interesting, least balanced, most expensive skirmish scale miniature wargame I could possibly pick, with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of options and monsters and abilities to keep track of and remember but a ridiculously simplistic terrain system, no missions, no deployment maps, and a ton of incredibly vague weird rules that I have no way to resolve out of the box. Id' be buying 40-50$ books just to get at tiny sections full of rules that add to my miniature game experience, and just an absolute ton of weird meaningless descriptions of some setting and art.

I'd probably be pretty pissed off that I didn't just buy the frostgrave rulebook or something - but it'd be a weird decision on the face of it. It's obvious at least to most people that DnD isn't ever going to be a balanced experience - there's just way to fething much of it, and a bunch of the options don't translate at all to a tactical miniatures type situation. You can adapt it into something like that, like they do with Baldur's Gate 3, but step 1 of many is to just hack off 70% of the game's content right out of the gate and heavily modify what you do keep to make it vastly more constrained.

Because that's what you're paying for: you're paying for the quantity. You're paying for the sprawling nature of the game, and you're giving up tight balance in exchange for, theoretically, everyone's character and campaign getting to be completely unique and theirs.