In part 1 of this series I discussed what goes into my gaming club’s annual “capsule” campaign; a set of loosely connected narrative games. This past December we gathered to play a few one-on-one games as well as a four player 2v2 Zone Mortalis game leading into a gigantic 8v8 mega-battle in March!

This year’s was our second mega-battle and I applied some of the lessons learned about organizing from the previous year. There are a few important items to consider in your event planning, beyond the obvious stuff like setting a date that works for all your players. I usually do this about 6-8 weeks in advance for a group of this size. We split our mega-battles into 2 day events over the course of a weekend so plenty of warning is needed to make sure everyone can plan to be there. After that these are the key items I address:

Game Size, Scenario, and List Building
Painting Requirements
Narrative Theming and Table Dressing/Terrain
House Rules

I’m going to tackle each of the above individually but I should note that as the organizer these items are all interlinked to some degree. Knowing the armies your players will bring informs your narrative, and knowing how big their collections are informs the size of the game and likely your house rules. Be sure to consider everything about your mega-battle planning as a whole. We also use a private Facebook event to organize the game and to ask questions. Both teams also used private Facebook chats to plan their lists and strategies in advance. Planning for the game with your team can be a lot of fun in and of itself!

Game Size, Scenario, and List Building

Our ‘Heresy group has grown over the past year since our last mega-battle, both in terms of our collections and the addition of two new players. When planning the overall size of the game I had to consider both the collections involved and the size of the space available to play. Our club is lucky enough to have a permanent 5’x8’ table for larger games which works perfectly for oversized games like this. It would also allow us to use our two smaller 6’x4’ tables as staging platforms for each side’s armies, books, dice, etc.

With this in mind and considering what our players collections are like, I chose to set the game at 15,000 points per side. Our previous year’s mega-battle had been 12,000 points per side but I knew each of our veteran players could bring 4,000 points while our newer participants had armies around 3,000 points. This would allow everyone to bring the bulk of their favorite models while still having to make meaningful list building choices. As well, I felt that this many points would probably be the upper limit of what the table’s dimensions could accommodate.
When it comes to mega-battle scenarios, less is more. With so many players and models using an already complex rules set, it’s important to keep a game of this size simple. For a scenario I selected Take & Hold (The Siege of Cthonia, pg 137), using Deployment Map 3, Search & Destroy (The Siege of Cthonia, pg 151). I felt that this was a nice, simple mission with deployments that would encourage both sides to quickly get into the fray while allowing space to manoeuvre their large forces.

Having made those decisions I knew I could tell the players they could build their armies without any additional limitations, though I did ask for players to declare in advance whether they’d be bringing any primarchs or titans as a courtesy to their opponents.

Painting Requirements

This is something to consider when planning any event but not an issue for our club as we only play fully painted. With approximately two months of warning players had plenty of time to paint up anything they might like to add to their forces. I took the opportunity to finally paint a stack of tanks I’d been slowly accumulating so I could finally try out the Armored Spearhead rite of war!

Narrative Theming and Table Dressing/Terrain

I’d already crafted some narrative material for this event as part of the December campaign day so it was pretty straightforward to build upon it. This kind of narrative writing is really important. Without it, you’re just playing a game in a void, with it, your players have something to plan for and get excited about, the narrative stakes of the battle, if you will. Since our campaign/mega-battle is a pretty simple affair a few paragraphs suffice but there’s plenty of room to go wild with it if you want.

As well, one of our players, Ron, is a very talented terrain maker and had informed me he’d like to make a custom set of terrain for this game. I knew he was interested in building a ruined cityscape with areas of difficult or dangerous terrain, so that informed the narrative I wrote. Our mega-battle would represent the critical moments of a broader war for the planet of Ephesus, the deciding battle taking place in its wartorn capital city, Parrhae. The previous year I’d set our mega-battle and campaign on a world with a vaguely Hellenistic theme, so building on that was both easy and helped lend some additional world building immersion. Taking this approach lays some groundwork I can build on in the future, making these worlds feel like an Ancient Greek-inspired planetary system with some of our own home-made Heresy history accreting around it.

Knowing that there would be a ton of vehicles on the board (I alone would be bringing thirteen!) I also took the opportunity to make a couple of dozen smoke markers out of electric flickering votive candles and polyfill to mark wrecked tanks and help build some immersion into the battlefield.

House Rules

The Horus Heresy is a big, complex game and in order to keep things running smoothly in a game of this size everyone playing needs to be on the same page. Our group has few permanent house rules but the game as published doesn’t accommodate mega-battles so I make a few additions to keep things running smoothly.

Simultaneous turns for team members
In order to not make the game last dozens of hours, players take their turns together, phase by phase, declaring unanimously that they have completed their actions for that phase (or reactions) and then moving onto the next phase.

Reactions
Each player may make 1 Reaction per phase (and any bonus reactions granted by equipment such as free Interceptor reactions from Augury Scanners and the like). Each player’s reactions may only be applied to units from their own detachment. If a Warlord grants you an additional reaction in a certain phase each player may take this as well, but it may only be used on units from his detachment.
Finally, I also like to make a post pointing out the scenarios victory conditions, secondary objectives and other ways to gain victory points so that all players can make informed choices both before and during the game.
With that all settled in advance when the day finally came I showed up an hour early to help Ron dress the table, stock our minifridge with snacks, sodas, and beers, and get ready to play!

With four game turns split across 2 days we finished our megabattle in roughly 10 hours. The two day split lets everyone focus on the game without feeling overwhelmed or exhausted and offers a great opportunity for a mid-game dinner full of planning, plotting, and friendly smack talking! Our club space is in downtown Seattle, so at the halfway point we headed to our favorite Mexican restaurant for cervezas and a little light heresy.

We returned the next day at noon and finished the game. Without anyone taking notes and just focused on playing this won’t be a proper battle report, but we took tons of pics to share and I am proud to announce that the Battle of Parrhae City saw a hard fought victory for the forces of the Warmaster (10 VPs to 7 VPs) despite the Loyalists being supported by a warhound titan and the primarch Leman Russ himself!

The game was full of great moments, sudden reversals, surprise deployments, and a tremendous amount of carnage! I estimate there were over 500 models on the board at the height of the battle and the spectacle was amazing to behold.

What follows here is the organizational info I shared with our group in advance as an example of how you may want to organize your own mega-battles followed by a photo dump from the event. If you’re planning a mega-battle of your own we want to hear about it for the Galaxy in Flames podcast!

The Fate of Ephesus – The Battle of Parrhae City

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The fighting for the moons of Ephesus had seen the loyalist forces manage to establish a tenuous beachhead in preparation for the final invasion of the planet below. The massive orbital platform called Plesius had fallen into the hands of the Loyalists after vicious fighting that saw the total eradication of the station’s Thousand Sons and significant losses incurred by the other defenders including the Deathguard. Despite inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders the traitors were annihilated and the station’s barely understood ancient teleportarium was the loyalist’s prize. Nearby, on Ephesus’ true moon, the battle raged over control of the planetary umbilicus, and despite a narrow victory by the Sons of Horus over the invading Iron Hands, the fate of the planet was unknown until only a few days prior to the invasion of the planet itself.
What followed was a rapid planetary landing by the loyalist forces against the entrenched traitors of the IV, XIV, XVI legions. When the bombardments ceased and the loyalists began to land they found the traitors well prepared for them and weeks of open warfare followed. The planet’s capital city, Parrhae, changed hands several times due to the desperate need by both sides to control the planet’s umbilicus transportation elevator. A fleet could be quickly replenished and resupplied by this critical apparatus and neither side was as yet willing to deny it to the enemy.
The invading loyalists massed for a final push to control what remained of Parrhae City while the traitors planned a final counter attack to break the back of the enemy once and for all. Two great forces met for a final time in the ruins to determine the fate of this critical stop on the traitors’ final march to Terra.
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Okay, folks, March 9th and our annual mega-battle is almost here! Back in December the Loyalists were victorious in their Zone Mortalis game granting them the ability to give a single unit of their choice Deep Strike in the mega-battle. Meanwhile, Marky and I played a game I very narrowly won 7-6. Matt and Ron will be playing their game soon which will determine which side gains the other bonus (the ability to redeploy one unit at the mega-battle). I will update everyone on the victor when they’ve played their game in a couple of weeks.

For March 9th, we will be playing one of the new Core Missions, Take & Hold (Siege of Cthonia, pg 137), using Deployment Map 3, Search & Destroy (Siege of Cthonia, pg 151). This is a 4 round mission and we will play 2 rounds on Saturday, March 9th then reconvene the next day, Sunday, March 10th to finish the game.

We’ll be playing this game on the 5×8 table using a set of terrain that Hobby Master Ron is making especially for this game! Expect the ruins of a city around a central plaza featuring, ruined buildings, rubble, and large parts of the table being difficult to traverse. Ron will even be making a pair of objectives for use in the scenario. Thanks, Ron, I am sure this is gonna be one of our best looking club games ever.

Each player may bring up to 4,000 points. Max and Buford will each be bringing 3,000 points, so we will have 15k per side. That’s right folks, this is a Warhammer 30,000 point game in total!
We’re gonna have a LOT of wild stuff on the table this year so please take some time to carefully read over all of your units and special rules. Better yet get some advance games in if you have the time to get to grips with your stuff.

Primarchs, titans, and super heavies are all allowed. If you are bringing a primarch or titan (or porphyrion…) as a courtesy, please let your opponents known somewhat in advance. However, the only restriction in list building is that named characters may not be duplicated.

Finish painting anything you need in the next few weeks and we’ll see you all soon for what’s swiftly becoming one of my favorite club traditions!

Loyalists
Buford – Space Wolves
Lars – Raven Guard
Mark – Iron Hands
Matt – Ultramarines

Traitors
Chris – Iron Warriors
Max – Deathguard
Ron– Emperor’s Children
Simon – Sons of Horus