A small taste of the terrain that will be used in the fight for Arthys IV.

Earlier this year, I acquired a copy of Urban Conquest: City-Fighting Campaigns in the 41st Millennium, a campaign expansion for Warhammer 40K, and thus began my journey into the realm of organized and properly structured narrative campaigns.

I’ve always wanted to get my hands on a copy of the old Planetary Empires expansion, but I could not get myself to organize a crew to play it. So, I abandoned the idea. Now, it appears, there are more players willing to play, although actually find time to play on a regular basis remains a challenge (damned real-life obligations).

Anyway, as to the contents of the expansions set, if you haven’t yet seen it, I really do recommend checking out some “unboxing” videos on YouTube to get a grasp of how amazing the contents really are. There is a great and “fluffy” book with lots of cool rules to structure a campaign, sheets to keep track of your progress, and lots and lots of event and location cards and even some incredible city terrain pieces.

In an Urban Conquest campaign, you generate a “map” of a city using Location Cards.

For me, Urban Conquest is a marvelous opportunity to start a proper campaign in the Burning Frontier. The obvious starting point for my Vorpal Swords Space Marine Chapter (and their Mograin Crusade) will be the Arthys System—specifically the planet known as Arthys IV. My crew and I are looking to play two games (one campaign round) each Saturday through the coming months to determine the fate of Arthys IV.

This war effort will be covered in future battle reports and narrative posts.

The struggle of the mighty Vorpal Swords (played by my humble self) will begin with an epic confrontation in the ruins of the city of Magna Arthoria, with Waaagh! Gorefist hordes (played by my buddy Michal). The ruined and Ork-infested planet  presents a grand opportunity for the gothic ruins terrain that we’ve bought and assembled—and some Kill Team sprues and third-party terrain we’ve collected.

A series of cards also are used during a campaign to add uncertainty to your battles. They provide for random events, strategic resources, and objectives that will influence your strategic decisions.

We intent to play battles using scenarios from all the available 40K expansions (although focusing mostly on Urban Conquest scenarios), plus a few scenarios created for their narrative value.

We’ll also flesh out our main characters with rules in Chapter Approved that allow for creating campaign leaders.

The details of this work will be covered in our first battle reports, since it appears that Gorefist himself is not on Arthys IV, for reasons that I will not share so as not to spoil future narrative surprises. But you can be assured that the army of orks is lead by a quite colorful character.

So, definitely stay tuned for more and expect, well . . . anything, as the armies of the Burning Frontier stand ready for action. We’ve laid the groundwork for this campaign in previous articles, but the final result of the Mograin Crusade is yet to be decided.—Jakub

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.