The other week at PAGE we played a quick round of our Obscurus Descendent micro-campaign in progress. It was actually a great night—there were space conflicts at our usual venue, so instead all ten of us met at my house! Fortunately I was in the process of moving, so I had one house pretty much empty of furniture such that we could set up a whole bunch of gaming tables. It did involve several long nights though doing some simple construction to make free standing supports for my boards so that we would have enough tables!

Biggest issues on the campaign were:

• There was some confusion about army construction. We had put out two sets of army composition rules, and everybody was supposed to bring one for each. That worked reasonably enough, but several people assumed that those armies would be combined in the final round, rather than being free standing in their own right. Lesson: Campaign managers need to give their players a solid set of expectations, such that they can construct effective armies. The campaign writeup in turn should help the managers do that, i.e., tell them what to say.
• Boards are everything. The final round is sort of a micro-apocalypse, all-in team gaming pitting good versus evil. We used an excellently done Mordheim board a friend had constructed. It was very thematic, with a ruined manor front leading into a temple crypt behind, but much too clogged with terrain for 40k. The board was very small and had plentiful difficult terrain, so much so that many of the good guys simply could not get into the rule thick of the action. Lesson: There is such a thing as too much terrain, and boards made for one system may not work well for others.

That said, it was a fine time, and we all had a hoot crowding around one board. I think there were three really standout moments in the game:

• After the evil team deployed, it was like one of those goofy scenes from cheesy spy movies where they wish to show you how powerful the bad guy is by panning out on a wide open plateau of soldiers and such covering every available inch of it. In this case, we faced something like 50 guardsman covering the icon at the center of the crypt. They were literally wall-to-wall, loosely spread out in a grid in there.
• On the first turn, Kingbreakers Sternguard entered the board through the graveyard in front of the manor. Silently rushing through the trees, they vault over the low wall and drop to their knees in the road before the manor, taking careful but instantaneous aim through the many chinks and holes in its facade. Meanwhile, Librarian Rorschach lingers in the graveyard, fighting a desperate mental battle with the C’Tan lurking within the ruins, punching through its defenses precisely as the Sternguard let loose with a stupendous volley of fire. Its psychic armor negated and its body pierced by round after round of poisoned bolts, the Nightbringer howled in rage as his physical form came unbound all around him.
• Space Wolves Terminators leverage their hard-won knowledge of the dark leaders’ lair to infiltrate directly into the crypt. They slay corrupted guardsmen left and right, hacking their way through the wall of flesh toward the ruinous icon set in the half-light glow of the ritual pit. But just as they break through and their wolf priest braces to cleave it in two at the last possible moment, they realize the trap that has been laid! Dozens and dozens of guardsmen rush to the scene, pouring in volleys of fire as their officers and commissars bellow them onward, feeding their Warp tainted rage with boxes and boxes of extra ammunition placed in the crypt earlier with a mind to precisely such desperate times…

Long story short, the forces of good did not manage to stop the ritual in time. Intelligence is unclear given the lack of survivors reporting back from the climactic final moments, but all signs indicate that the rebellious undercurrents that had been sweeping the Obscurus Segmentum were indeed successful preparations for a dark menace to breach through from the Warp. Inquisitors dispatched to investigate are overdue to report back…