Hi all,
Today I am pleased to share the short interview I did with Tony who runs the Crucible of War narrative event in the UK. Tony also hosts a narrative gaming podcast and youtube channel related to narrative content so check out his stuff! In today’s article we will mainly discuss how Tony runs his events and any his rationale behind these decisions.
LP: Tell me a bit about you and the other organizers, what armies do you play? How long have you been playing and what are some past events you have organized?
Tony: Well I’ve been playing Warhammer 40,000, and other Games Workshop games for over 20 years now, and these days I am a big advocate of narrative play. I host the Narrative Wargamer Podcast, and with the help of many wonderful co-hosts we like to showcase the fun and narrative play side of the hobby.
My main army of choice is my Deathskull Orks as I’ve always loved the lore of the Orks, the often misunderstood green menace of the 40k universe, and I enjoy the way they play on the tabletop. I also embrace the looting nature of the Deathskulls and take any opportunity to include looted and converted vehicles in my army.
Earlier this year I took the leap into running my first ever 40k event, and now I have two successful events under my belt and at least two more lined up for 2023! The Crucible of War is the kind of narrative play event I would have loved to attend a couple of years ago here in the UK, but unfortunately nothing quite like it existed anywhere, so I decided I’d make my own. Now, with the help of an amazing venue at Tabletop Events that is exactly what I have done!
LP: How do you structure your events? How do you try to involve players in the story?
Tony: The Crucible of War is a one day narrative play event where players play 3 games of 40k across the day using 80 Power Level army lists. Every table at the event has a unique mission, theatre of war, and thematic terrain setup designed to create a particular narrative scenario. Every mission is different and they are all sourced from Crusade mission packs, White Dwarfs, War Zone supplements, and other official Games Workshop publications. The same is true for each theatre of war, a series of special rules that represent the different battlefields and environments players’ armies will be battling across.Every round players are assigned to a new table they haven’t played on previously, resulting in every player having a different experience and playing through a unique combination of missions only they encounter.
I had the idea of putting a twist on the classic event experience a group of friends might have when attending a 40k tournament together. When catching up between rounds, instead of discussing how each of their games went and how they played that round’s mission, each friend would instead have a different story about a totally different mission they had just played to the rest of their friends. The goal at the end of the day is not to send one player home with a trophy, but instead to send every player home with three great stories about three great games of Warhammer 40,000 that they played.
LP: How do you develop your ideas for these events? Do you have the stories build on a past event or start fresh every year? What is the latest narrative hook?
Tony: While there are no specific stories connecting the games across the event the goal is to create cinematic matches that pitch the armies of the Warhammer 40,000 universe against each other in the kinds of conflicts you might expect to read about in the lore. As a narrative play event there is less focus on the outcome of the individual games and it is more about the players telling an exciting story with their armies and the scenario being played. As such player pairings are not based on win/loss results from previous rounds, but instead are pre-planned by myself ahead of time, allowing me to create interesting, thematic games between well matched armies.
One of the advantages of this approach is it allows for every game played across the day to be a lore friendly match up within the Warhammer 40,000 setting. So there are no mirror matches, such as Tyranids vs Tyranids, and no poorly explained-away matches such as Blood Angels vs Imperial Fists. While this limits the chances of an Imperial vs Imperial game, it still allows for games such as World Eaters vs Emperors Children, or Aeldari vs Drukhari games where certain factions are prone to infighting.
LP: Are you planning to use any of the crusade elements in your campaigns? Why or why not? Are there any story concerns about how some armies take over/consume/ integrate planets as part of their rules?
Tony: The main element taken from the Crusade ruleset is a number of the missions drawn from the range of Crusade mission packs. These are great missions that are a ton of fun to play and which tell a narrative with the mission objectives. While the wider Crusade rules are also great fun, especially the faction specific rules, they don’t lend themselves well to a single day event with only three games. However, I absolutely have plans to run a longer, two day Crusade event next year that will use more of the Crusade system and army advancement mechanics.
LP: Do you allow legends units? Are there any ways you try to balance armies or units?
Tony: In order to make our narrative event as accessible as possible to all players we use army list construction and core gameplay rules based on the latest matched play frameworks so players are as familiar with the format as possible. Therefore, while we do not allow Legends units, we do allow Forgeworld units and Armies of Renown. To help balance armies and units we use battle-forged army list rules, such as the rule of three, the 0-2 limit on aircraft units, and the latest balance data-slate updates.
The main difference is we use Power Level for army building instead of points, which allows players to bring some of the fun wargear and weapons they might not otherwise be able to fit in army lists built with points. One of the really helpful balancing tools we use though is the fact the match ups are hand picked, meaning we can pair players with similarly powerful lists and avoid un-interactive or unbalanced match ups.
LP: When is your next event? Any interesting wrinkles our readers should know about?
Tony: The next Crucible of War event is taking place on March 11th 2023, at Tabletop Events in Derbyshire, tickets are available here: https://www.tabletopevents.co.uk/tickets/p/crucible-of-war-iii
Anyone interested in attending should have a read of the event pack to get an idea of what they will be in for as there are a few example missions included in there. Or they can check out our battle reports over on the Narrative Wargamer YouTube channel where we play some of the missions from the Crucible of War format!
Conclusion:
Thanks Tony! It’s always interesting to get such an experienced organizer on to share their thoughts and experiences. If you are in the UK in March I highly recommend going to this event!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
