I am Heresy, and so can you!

[Mackenzie]

“I would play but no one plays near me” “The game is dead here” “8ed killed it” “No one is interested”

 

Sound familiar? I read it all the time on the internet. It may be the truth for a lot of places, but it doesn’t have to be. I moved from the bustling 30k scene in New England to Columbus Ohio, where admittedly it looked very dead. But with some work I had a group up in running in a few months, and now we play every month with an average of 10-14 Players waging war.

 

In this thread I am going to attempt to share with you all my process for getting a Heresy Group off the ground. I cannot take all the credit for this, I used a lot of the formula from the New England Heresy crew who I think got it from New Jersey, who probably took it from the UK or Australia. Any ways here we go.

 

To start you will need:

 

​Facebook. Yes really. You pretty much have to use this if you want to be successful with this. If you don’t have Facebook just make a handle specifically for playing Warhammer. I would do this but I already friended my grandma.

 

​An army. One is usually good, I guarantee you there is at least one other person near you that has a Heresy army that they have been waiting to break out. However having a second army is always a great way to get things going.

 

​A venue. FLGS is the best, if you don’t have a spot you play at regularly this may take some scouting and have a few growing pains but you absolutely need a space you can lock down. We play on Sundays (Saturdays are for 40k) once a month as long as there is no major MTG releases there are only a few folks around playing board games so the store lets us use most of the space.

 

​Lastly you need a plan. It doesn’t have to be some bullet proof laser precise thing, but a solid frame work. On to that then.

 

Step 1. Create a Facebook (private) Group for you area, in my case I went state wide and Created Ohio 30k – Horus Heresy. Go in and add a cool picture, quick mission statement, a few rules if you feel them necessary etc. Then we start THE PLAN.

 

Step 2. Plan your events. I HIGHLY recommend you play a campaign, there is far more buy in if you do this route then if you just say X day we hang out and just play. People like plans and structure. So then you have to ask yourself what kind of campaign should it be? Map? Ladder? Narrative? Personally I think Narrative is best, it is how I do it and everyone seems to really enjoy it. In any case in the beginning you should start with a small points threshold and bump it up throughout the year. For the first year I also recommend keeping the campaign relatively simple, but you can get as wild as you want from managing resources to leveling up squads and getting benefits or using custom characters. If you have a lot of new folks tho that might be just too much information to manage. Onward!

 

Step 3. Schedule your events and do 2-3 Meet and Greets/Ramp ups before the actual campaign kicks off. When scheduling your events make sure to take Holidays into account. So what does this look like? This is what I did and how it has worked thus far:

 

​August 2019 – Meet and Greet 500-1250 ZM/Centurion (4 people)

​September 2019 – Meet and Greet 500-1250 ZM/Centurion (6 People)

​October 2019 – Meet and Greet 500-1250 ZM/Centurion (6 People)

​November 2019 – Campaign Prologue Game 500-1250 ZM/Centurion (8 People)

​December 2019 – Winter Break

​January 2020 – 1st Campaign Game 1250-1500 ZM/Centurion (14 People)

​February 2020 – 2nd Campaign Game All ZM (10 People)

​March 2020 – 3rd Game 2K Frontline I have about 13 People slated

​April 2020 – 4th Game 2250K

​May 2020 – 5th Game 2500k

​June 2020 – Break

​July 2020 – ZM/Frontline 2500

​August 2020 – 3k Frontline

​September – Break

​October – 3500 Frontline

​November – End of Year Apocalypse Game

 

Step 4. RECRUIT! Join every Warhammer Facebook Group in your area and Share your Group, its Plan, and advertise your first Meet and Greet. Go to all of the Forums and post it there too. You will be shocked how many people come out of the wood work.

 

Step 5. Execute! Go to your events, meet people, have fun! Try to keep any negative feelings or opinions you have under your hat. The idea is to grow your group and show new comers that it is all about telling a story, having an adventure, getting better at painting and making friends.

 

A note on campaign writing: It doesn’t need to be brilliant, or perfect, and players really do appreciate the efforts you put forward. That being said I lean heavily on the missions and frameworks Alan Bligh created, the black books are the best resource for unique missions. Typically I will do a mash up of 2 or 3 missions, the Objectives from one, deployment from another, random table from a 3rd. Another good resource is 7e supplements if you have them around, like the Planetary Onslaught book. I don’t use it verbatim but I pulled a lot of things from it that seemed like they would be fun to play with.

 

Lastly when you are trying to put together a story, look to history. There are thousands of historical battles to pull ideas from. I tend to watch a lot of war documentaries which spark ideas, which I tend to blend up with lore from Black Library or the black books themselves. All in all it has worked well, been very fun and I cannot wait to keep the Heresy Train going. Thanks for reading. Cheers!

[Hannibal]

Good Thread here!

 

In addition to what has been said, I want to add:

 

Regarding Demo–Lists/armies:

- Avoid spam at all costs!

- Make sure that every weapon in one army offers a solution for a certain thread in the other army (and vice versa). For example: If there is a Dreadnought in one army, make sure the other army has tools to handle it in melee (otherwise the game can be one sided)

 

Regarding new players:

Play multiple player scenarios, ie 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3. That way (1) new gamers with smaller armies can play the game from the very first beginning, (2) unexperienced gamers can learn the game with more experienced gamers in the same team and (3) multi-player-games are usually far away from any kind of competetiveness, which normally leads to relaxed games.