Rogue Trader in the New World 2014

Hello everyone,

I ran the Rogue Trader Demo game at Oldhammer in the New World last weekend at Dropzone Games at the old GW USA headquarters. First let me say that I could not have met up with a better group of people. It was nice to finally meet everyone I've been talking to here on the forum and on the facebook group. If you follow Blake's blog and you've seen the stack of rulebooks he posted on his report, those are mine. (if you haven't read it here is the link: http://oldhammerinthenewworld.blogspot.com/2014/11/if-you-build-itoldhammer-usa-weekend.html ). Everyone on this forum knows how much things go for on ebay and everyone felt very comfortable leaving their belongings laying out. I think that says alot about our community. I have been to modern 40k events and people are afraid to leave things laying around because they know someone there would walk off with their models. No such thing at our event. Great group of guys!

Thank you to Blake for organizing everything, and to everyone else who put events together so that it ouldn;t be a day of us just sitting around talking about old models. Rusty made a fantastic board for warbands and 3rd ed games, and the illustrious Mister Hale put together a massive siege game. truly an epic sight. I won't go into too much detail as Blake and Blue did a great job covering those games. I will go over the planning, preparation, and execution of my event and do a quick wrap up at the end.

I. Planning the demo.

When I decided to put on a demo game, the first thing I had to decide was the scope of the demo. How many models would I put on the table? How many players could I accommodate? How much time would it take? I have played every edition of 40k except for 2nd ed, but the last time I played a game of Rogue Trader I think I was eleven or twelve years old so I would have to get familiar with the rules again (fortunately I already owned all the books). When I decided to run the demo, I had only just begun collecting a Genestealer cult and I also know I had a rough collection of RT humans, so the scenario was going to be dictated by my collection. I decided the forces would be a Genestealer Cult and an Imperial task force whipped together by an Inquisitor. I also decided I wanted to have a nice scenic table. So my to-do list looked something like this:

1. Collect and paint all the models I need
2. Build a scenic table and terrain
3. Establish a scenario and playtest it
4. Create quick reference sheets for the players

Collecting and paint models is pretty much what I do, so that was not a problem. I knew I wouldn't have enough time to build the table, so I asked a friend of mine of he would do it and he happily accepted my offer. I would not have been able to pull it off without him, so hats off to my friend James for making that happen. If you want more information on how the board was made, please check out his thread on Lead Adventure here:
http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=68088.0

The scenario was pretty much dictated by the models I had available. Because the Genestealer Cult strengths lie in hand to hand combat and the Imperials had better firepower, I decided the general idea was that the Inquisitor wanted to capture some genestealer specimens for examination and the Genestealers had to implant as many enemies as possible. This way the Imperial player could not just sit back and blast away and the Genestealer could not just slaughter everyone. The Imperial PLayer would get one victory point per Genestealer captured and the Genestealer player would get a point per each enemy implanted.

So lets go on to the forces I used.



The Genestealer Cult was based on the army list in Compilation. Because this was a scenario game I decided I would choose psychic powers and assign psi-points instead of rolling for them. I did this because I wanted to add character to the army lists and give the players a chance to use some of the more exotic powers in the rulebook, like change allegiance and temporal distortion. I did the same for wargear. I equipped one of the hybrids with a missile launcher and gave him hallucinogen, toxin, frag, and crack missiles. The cultists do not have the option to take special and heavy weapons, but I chose to give one a heavy bolter, one got a flamer, and one got a mutation (bulging eyes which grant him infra-vision). The limo was converted from a diecast car I found in a model train store. Originally I equipped it with two multi-lasers, but that was insanely powerful so I dropped it to one. This list has alot of psykers and the Magus was the potential to be a devastating in the psychic phase. I kept him in check by not allowing him to store points in his force rod and not giving him familiars. All the hybrids were level 1 psykers, and the rogue psyker was a level 1 psyker.





The Imperial force consisted of an Inquisitor, a squad of Imperial Guard, a squad of local planetary defense, and an Imperial scout. hey were also accompanied by a mercenary company led by the infamous Worldburner, the notorious bounty hunter Venko Fett, an underhive scumbag known only as The Despoiler, a small group of hired guns, and a robot "The Crushinator". I equipped the characters with an array of knock out grenades, stasis grenades, and needlers so they would be able to capture the genestealers. Venko Fett was equipped with a jump pack, stasis grenades, knock out grenades, a needler, and a digital flamer. Most of the characters were minor of major heros. Some of the statlines were based on stat lines found Chapter Approved. The Imperial Giard squad had a lascannon and a grenade launcher with frag, crack, and virus grenades (YEAH!). Despoiler was equipped with a Meltagun, toxin, virus, and rad grenades (to despoil stuff with). The idea was that most of the Imperial grunts would get mowed down but the characters would do most of the heavy lifting. The robot was given a simple take and hold program, two power gloves and a meltagun. Instead of writing a program, it pretty much boiled down to, nominate an objective, must move towards objective, and must engage closest enemy.

I got a chance to playtest three ties before making it to the event, which is when I decided that I would limit following fire to three rounds of shooing. One funny thing that happened in EVERY GAME was that telekinesis 2 got used in the greatest way possible. Telekinesis 2 allows the psyker to move vehicles, so one of the rhinos I converted into a mining vehicle ended up getting used as a projectile.

Instead of detailing each game, i'll just post pictures of the event with captions.


Hybrids and Magus take the high ground.


The Mercenaries advance on the mining settlement


Cultists emerge from the hab domes


The Genestealer Patriach get set on fire, virus grenaded, and irradiated as an irritated Ambull emerges from the ground


Venko Fett taking cover behind the Rhino


The Inquisitor and local troops endure a barrage of toxin missiles, only to get pined by wind blast attacks from the psychic hybrids

Overall the game went well and everyone said they had a great time, there were lots of jokes about fart grenades, genestealer gangbangs (so many inappropriate genestealer jokes), and abuse of the psychic phase. I had to take the rhino out of the second scenario because it was alittle too powerful and vehicle rules in RT are very clunky. Originally the Imperials could get points for capturing hybrids or purestrains, but I changed it to purestrains only only as it gave the genestealer player too much flexibility to sacrifice models. Quick reference sheet are absolutely essential when running a scenario. These should include unit stats, equipment descriptions, psychic power descriptions. This way your players can focus on the models while you focus on the rules.

I really enjoyed running the game and I am thinking about running it again at other events to try and infect more people with the Olhammer bug. I will probably post the scenario and the quick reference sheets I made for other to use.

Thanks for reading!
 
I* echo what is said above. Im really jealous I cant play! Boo hoo! It looks all so cool and exactly recreates the old feeling from the RT book, but with really nicely finished paint jobs. The yellow rusty rhino is so cool, I love the "bannana and chocolate" paint scheme and have done plenty of my own vehicles in that syle. Its fun to do and looks really stunning.
 

ogryn

Member
Great stuff. Love the minis and the terrain. I wish I was there.
Got some questions from someone who might want to try intro games like this in my area.
1. Roughly how many points where the armies.
2. How long did the games take.
3. Did the players have any experience
If not, how did they handle the amount of rules and gear?
4. Can you post the reference sheets somewhere?
5.Any advice or things you would change the next time you run something like this?
Thanks
ogryn
 
Thanks for your questions.

1. I did not use point values to attempt to balance the game. I more less balanced the game through playtesting.
2. The games ran around two hours on average, but they played very casually. I'm sure you could get a RT game done in about an hour if you were aggressive enough of a GM. I think that depends on the kind of game you are looking to run.
3. The players all had varying levels of experience. You should assume that at least one player will be familiar with modern 40k rules and you need to take care to remind them that while at the core of it this game is still warhammer, there are important differences.
4. Yes, I will post reference sheets as an example, but half of my sheets were just scanned out of the rulebook.
5. Be flexible. RT rules will let you do a lot as the GM. Do not feel as if you are bound by the letter of the law. If something makes sense, then go ahead and do it. Also be ready to modify vehicle rules. The vehicle rules in the core book do not work very well with infantry models and a small board. TRR can be confusing the first time you look at it. If it doesn't make sense or if it becomes burdensome, then replace it with something that makes more sense. Vehicles present a challenge for the GM in Rogue Trader.
 
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