+ inload: The Armageddon Prime campaign +

+ Ashes of Armageddon... Prime? +

+ Background to the project +

The Battle for Armageddon boardgame focussed mostly on the main continent, Armageddon Secundus, but Armageddon Prime was mentioned from the very start. It fell very quickly (as a result of the Governor's incompetence), and so wouldn't have made as close a game as the war for Secundus.

Simon Shepherd's original map, from the Battle for Armageddon rulebook – note Armagddon Prime in the north (left of the map).

A later expansion, Chaos Attack, which detailed the First War for Armageddon (Angron and his army coming to take names), also had a really fun set of additional counters that allowed you to play out various scenarios, such as 'what if the Marines had gone to Armageddon Prime, and the Squats had been in Armageddon Secundus?', 'what if different ork tribes spearheaded the Secundus campaign?' and so forth. A lot of fun, but all reliant on the original gameboard. 

A patchwork Armageddon Secundus, released by GW's Fanatic Games back in the bohemian days when they shared old games files like this for free.

I've found the past few years of hobbying have focussed more and more on the Armageddon region and that time period (with occasional other projects!), and it struck me – in that way that whims do – that it'd be fun to create a board of Armageddon Prime. I did a load of research and gathered up some maps of the region. Some date from the Third War global campaign GW ran in the early 2000s, other were fan-made...

... and it was at about this point that I suddenly realised what a giant job this would be – this wasn't just making a gameboard, it was working out regions, and what rules changes would be necessary and playtesting and all sorts... 

It was then, serendipitously, I stumbled over Board Game Geek, where a (talented and generous) user called killerkatanas had basically done all the hard work! He and his group had drawn up a rough map and created the rules tweaks to play the Armageddon Prime campaign. Back in May I got in touch, and he gave his blessing for me to work up the map and rules, giving them a polish. You can check out his excellent work through think inload link: [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] – check out the Files section at the bottom.

This project wouldn't have been possible without him, so all credit to killerkatanas for doing the heavy lifting. I hope I'm able to do justice to the facelift I'm giving the rules.

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+ Starting work +

Here's the map that killerkatanas' worked up as a playtesting draft. He had even got in contact with Simon Shepherd to see if he wanted to paint a professional version to match the original, but was sadly turned down.

Nice and clear and straightforward; it just needs a bit of polish. The first stage was to measure my original gameboard and make sure that everything was scaled correctly, ready for people to print and glue onto a backing (or use one of the various boardgame prototyping services to do a professional job). After all, if the turn counter doesn't fit properly on the square, or stacks don't fit, it won't function properly.

I then began redrawing the Imperial supply icon, revising all the tables and reference bits (like turn number, build points etc.) and generally bringing it up to match the original board – it was fun doing some design archaeology and finding freely available fonts to work with. I was very keen not to copy any of the material directly from GW's stuff – 'freeware' or not, I don't want to use any original material, out of respect to the original artist and designers.

I redrew this unusual Aquilla variant used in the game in Illustrator.

Here's how it's currently looking. You'll note that I've iterated a little on killerkatana's original (itself carefully constructed from various slightly varying maps down the years), mainly in turning the straight territory lines to something more akin to the Secundus board – and occasionally slightly tweaking the size to allow counter stacks to fit neatly.

I've put a neutral yellow background down to give a sense of space, but the plan is to paint and photograph a full-size version that can be overlaid with the text and icons shown below. I would quite like to give it a go myself, but if anyone knows a map artist who might be able to better emulate the original piece, I'm all ears.

The version above looks a bit abstract, so here's a version with some quickly scribbled in seas and rivers. I hope you'll agree that the 'feel' of the thing is working; and I'll run it by killerkatanas for his feedback before tightening things up.

Other than that, any creativity has been limited to artistic consistency between the two boards; adding jagged borders to the mountains, for example, and – as all the rivers in Secundus has their own names – it seemed a shame not to give them names here, too. As with Secundus, I took inspiration for the names from mythological rivers and related terms, so that they feel consistent with the original board. 

This process threw up a couple of oddities, but nothing major. Mountain ranges are just listed with their name on the original – just 'Diablo', rather than 'Diablo Mountains', for example. I made this consistent, then realised it ended up with Volcanus Hive and the Volcanus Mountains looking identical (see below), as both hives and mountains are yellow text on black bars. I've cludged this a bit by changing the mountains to the 'Volcanus Chain' – a justifiable inconsistency with the other isolated mountains, I think, as there's also the 'Volcanus Ridge'.

And here's a version with the original draft underneath, so you can see the changes. There's a few bits and bobs still to add and tidy up, including some special two-way arrows and paths only certain units can cross, but I need some feedback from killerkatana to make sure I'm putting them in correctly.

Anyway, something a bit different from the usual – hope you enjoy, and perhaps one day we'll get to refight both campaigns!

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