Very cool homemade rules for the Nova Open narrative

[andalucien]

Some very good fixes for CSM also:

- Nerfed the heldrake (reversing that stupid faq)
- Made chaos space marines good.  75 points for 5 CSM out of the book is a total ripoff.  Give those guys e.g. toughness 5 and Fearless for free, and they are pretty good.

[andalucien]

GW should hire these guys...

[Benjamin]

Oh, I imagine a narrative primer event could happen between now and late August.

[bradpowers]

I have to say that the Narrative was *by far* my favorite part of the NOVA.  Some of the guys were there for the wrong reasons, but by and large, people were there to have a good time.

These rules are freaking *SWEEET* and I think I'll be bringing an all DC Blood Angels list (despite how freaking terrible it'll be) to the Narrative.

Also, I would totally do an event like this.  I think that a narrative event in general, structured like the NOVA narrative (aka, it's kind of a tournament, but the focus is the narrative) would be SWEET. 

[Tharcil]

Brad, how does the narrative portion of this actually work with the games?  I didn't see anything much beyond the rules, which I agree are awesome.

[Sir_Prometheus]

I'm intending to play this year, but I didn't last year (did trios instead) so I'm wondering where I can learn about this "virtue" business. 

[bradpowers]

Basically, there are two factions to the narrative, Humanity and the Virtue.  Humanity is fairly self explanatory.  The virtue are an alien race of some description, with superior technology (that humanity repeatedly steals) and all that jazz.  Furthermore, the narrative is set in Washington DC, with some of the most awesome terrain *EVER*.  I'll have to dig around for my pictures, but imagine a Blood Angels Libby Dread fighting a Tyranid Prime on the roof of the Capitol building....  soooo awesome.

There is a long, pretty nice story that has evolved from year to year about the conflict between the Virtue and Humanity which can be found here:  http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2014/01/cataclysm-and-descension-nova-open.html

In addition, there are a bunch of fun rules and missions *on top* of what you see in the codex supplements that are faction specific.  For example, one mission had humanity attempting to escort dignitaries across the board without them dying, which was secret until any dignitary crossed mid-board (or something).  Another example was trying to hunt down and kill a Virtue drone of some sort, who was secret, and generally totally badass.  I remember my opponent used Fateweaver as his drone.  On some turn where Fateweaver was in danger, he activated his Drone ability, which made him EVEN HARDER to kill, but also revealed his identity (and the secret mission).  Well now, I'm blabbing the enemy secret mission to all of the humanity team, alerting them to the existence of the drones, and the game is afoot.  Craaaaazy fun stuff like that. 

I have to say, of all of the games I have played, I think I have two that were more fun than the Narrative games I played.



TL;DR:  Read http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2014/01/cataclysm-and-descension-nova-open.html

[bradpowers]

I'm going to go a step further.  You know how campaigns always seem like an awesome idea, and an opportunity to get out of the rut of the same damn 1850 point game OVER AND OVER AND OVER, but they end up being too much paperwork, too much bickering about rules, etc?  The Narrative is like the coolest set of campaign rules you've ever thought of or seen, minus the bullshit, plus even more awesome, plus *ridiculously cool* Washington DC terrain.  It's far and away better than any campaign I've played in, including those I've helped write.  I would *LOVE* to find a like minded group of folks and run through previous narratives for, say, the next few Thursday 40ks.  Lemme know if you want to give that a try.  I may make a separate thread for that.

[andalucien]

I actually played in the Nova Narrative 2 years ago.  It wasn't as polished as it probably was this year, but it was still awesome as Brad describes.   

[bradpowers]

Yeah, they're definitely upping the quality (and to some extent, the complexity, like the army specific rules) each year.

[the_trooper]

So, I don't want to be a Negative Nancy here but this whole home brew rules thing / GW being lazy shits / "We are a model company that happens to make rules" comments...

I wonder if this is an effort for them, in the long run, to get out of making rules all together and only make kits.

[Benjamin]

It happened to Blood Bowl. Except then they claimed the rules the community made and sold them at a profit. If you like working for free for a company that doesn't care, here's your chance!

[andalucien]

So, I don't want to be a Negative Nancy here but this whole home brew rules thing / GW being lazy shits / "We are a model company that happens to make rules" comments...

I wonder if this is an effort for them, in the long run, to get out of making rules all together and only make kits.

If that's what they want to do, why don't they just issue an announcement, "We're no longer going to be producing rules.  If you guys want to play games with our models, we encourage you to make one."

[Chase]

No PR dept?