In this flexible narrative campaign, your Kill Team will investigate the crash of the Imperial Void-Hauler The Emperor’s Bounty. Your campaign begins by exploring the moon of Oxiden IV to search for the escape capsule jettisoned from the hauler. Your Kill Team will continue onto the surface of Austal II and eventually into the wreckage of The Emperor’s Bounty itself in search of valuable information, artifacts, or supplies. On your journey you may even discover the answer to the mystery surrounding the crash of The Emperor’s Bounty.
There will be four stages or “Chapters” in this campaign, with four missions per chapter. It will be up to you on how many missions you complete in each chapter, but you can only get the experience and bonuses if you complete the missions. Each chapter will be revealed at the start of a new month. You will need to schedule an opponent for each mission, if you need help finding an opponent, reach out to me (Rob Macleod/Highlander) and I’ll find someone for you play.
Your opponent does not need to be playing in the narrative campaign for you to complete the mission, however playing other members of the narrative campaign is encouraged. You can replay a mission if you have completed it already, if someone in the campaign needs an opponent, however you cannot gain extra XP, requisition points, or further your SpecOp, but you will also not have to roll for battle scars.
The first chapter will be played on Octarius terrain, the second chapter is designed for Nacmund terrain, and the third and fourth will be played on Into the Dark boards. If you are unable to use the specific terrain, proxies can be used, but may be challenging to match.
Remember, a narrative campaign is not the same as competitive tournament play. You are strongly encouraged to play “heavy on the fluff” instead of sweaty. Have fun and develop your teams quirks over maxing out your teams power.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO PLAY?
- Your legal kill team. Not a roster, a locked in starting team.
- Tools of the trade. Dice, measurement tools, engage/conceal tokens, barricades… etc.
- A cool and nice attitude. IYKYK
- A COMPLETED NARRATIVE DATASLATE FOR YOUR TEAM AND DATA CARDS FOR YOUR OPERATIVES-including any Requisition points or SpecOps. (These can be found at the end of the packet).
- Kill Team Core Rule Book is highly recommended. Full narrative rules can be found in there.
- Rules for your team.
Fun options:
- TeamMate: Kill Team Spec Ops app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/teammatekill-team-spec-ops/id1659094406 A lovely tool and quality of life improvement for narrative players everywhere. If you don’t want to use pen and paper, you can use this for your dataslate and datacards as well as tracking operatives progress and leveling up. Like I said, lovely stuff. Thanks Dave.
- Display boards/IRL base of operations are not required, but they will earn the respect, admiration and jealousy of your peers. You might even win something if yours is cooler than everyone else’s.
- A detailed backstory of your team, imaginary bonus points if you make all of your “tactical” descions following your teams quirks.
- Don’t be a jerk. That’s a fun option that’s mandatory
SpecOps, Requisition and Experience Points
You may (should) pick a SpecOp to complete in this campaign, in this accelerated version the 1st Operation (1st condition of completing your SpecOp) is reduced from 5 to 2.
For Example: in the SpecOp 1.0 ELIMINATION the first Operation condition would be “Complete two (instead of 5) games in which you scored victory points from the ‘Mark Target’, ‘Execution’ and/or ‘Rob and Ransack’ Tac Op.”
Kill Teams will start the campaign with all operatives at 0 XP, and 4 RP to spend before the first mission. Teams can use RP to buy Assets, abilities, equipment for their stash (only equipment added to your stash can be equipped in a mission) or a variety of other options. You are encouraged to save at least one RP for after the battle. You gain 1RP after each mission, but you can never have more than 5RP.
Operatives can gain XP by incapacitating an enemy operative, scoring a Mission Victory Point (Primaries), performing a mission action (excluding Operate Hatch), and/or scoring a TacOp Victory Point (Secondaries). An individual operative can only score 1XP for incapacitating any number of enemies, or performing any number of mission actions, or any number of Mission Victory Points (Primaries), but can score as many XP for TacOps as they participated in.
For example:
- If you use the TacOp Rout, each operative that performed the action that scored a point can earn an XP. If the same operative scored you both the first and second VP from Rout, then they can earn 2 XP.
- If the TacOp doesn’t specify a specific action, like Secure Center Line, then pick any one operative that contributed to gain the XP.
- For TacOps like Implant, where the second condition requires two more Implants, then you can select one of the operatives that participated to earn the XP.
Only one Operative can gain an XP for each VP scored in a TacOp.
In total, each Operative can earn XP in the following ways in each mission:
- A max of 1 for incapacitating an enemy operative
- A max of 1 for scoring a Mission Victory Point (Primaries)
- A max of 1 for performing a Mission Action (excluding Operate Hatch)
- 0-6 for scoring or contributing to a TacOp condition (Secondaries)
Emperors Bounty Campaign XP Bonus:
In addition to scoring XP for individual Operatives, each player can gain bonus XP on each mission by completing the campaign bonus:
For each mission, after selecting your TacOps, you can select one of your Faction TacOps that you did not select for the mission. This “Bonus” TacOp will not score you any additional VPs, but if you are able to complete the condition—or conditions—that would score you at least 1 VP from that TacOp, at the end of the battle, you are can add 1 additional XP to up to one-quarter of the Operatives that participated in the mission (rounding up). You do not gain additional XP for scoring the second VP from the TacOp
For example, A Veteran Guard player chooses Secure Center Line, Central Control, and Glory in Death (Faction TacOp 3) for their TacOps for the mission. Additionally they select “Faction TacOp 1 – Boots on the Ground” as their Bonus TacOp. The will not earn any Victory Points for completing this TacOp, but if they complete any of the conditions (“At the end of that Turning Point, if there are more friendly operatives than enemy operatives within 6 inches [Red Pentagon] of your drop zone, and there more friendly operatives than enemy operatives within 6 inches [Red Pentagon] of your opponent’s drop zone, you score 1VP.”) then they can give an extra XP to up to a quarter of their operative at the end of the battle; in this case, four guardsmen can be given an additional XP.
If you chose to attempt the Bonus XP TacOp, place that Faction TacOp card face down, separate from your Mission TacOps and reveal it when instructed to in the description. If you do not have cards then let your opponent know and make a note of it somewhere on the table or on paper.
If your faction does not have Faction TacOps (compendium teams) then use a Faction TacOp from an allied faction (Death Guard could use Legionaries, Craftworld could use Corsairs, etc.), or select a Faction TacOp that matches the theme of your faction.
Leveling up and Battle Honors
Once an operative achieves a new rank, you can choose a Battle Honor to increase that operatives abilities. These stay with your operatives throughout the campaign.
When determining battle honors you should roll two dice, re-rolling one if they are duplicates. Then determine which corresponding number is the battle honor you want the operative to gain. If both of the honors do not fit with the operative—or if you already received those battle honor—re-roll the dice. (For Example: the Battle Honor Runner gives the operative a free dash if they do not fight or shoot, but would be useless for corsairs or genestealers as they already get a free dash, or Bladework allows you to re-roll one dice in combat, but is useless on a model with relentless)
The goal is to create interesting operatives in your campaign, not just to min-max your stats. Even if both dice correspond to honors that are not what you hoped, please pick from those options (if applicable) and work it into the story of your campaign. A campaign is about the story, not just creating super-operatives.
Remember, you must select a Specialism available to your operative on their data card before your first Battle Honor, and gain honors only from that specialism (the Kommando Burna boy has access to the “Staunch” and “Marksman” specialism, but not “Combat” or“Scout”). You may, however, choose from your faction specific honors instead of your chosen specialism. In other words you could select the Staunch Specialism for a Kommando Burna Boy, and roll the “Resilient” Battle Honor, then roll for a Kommando specific honor when the operative gains the next rank, but you may not gain an honor from a different specialism.
Tac Op Changes:
We will use the new Critical Operations packs for this campaign; this includes the changes to CP, deployment of operatives, and scouting changes.
In narrative play you are not locked into you required archetype for Tac Op selection. We will be using the new Tac Ops from the Critical Operations pack. In some cases the conditions for scoring a SpecOp may require you to use an outdated Tac Op. In those cases you can either use the prior TacOp for those missions or proxy a new Tac Op to replace the old one, using the table below as a guide.
Narrative Dataslate and Datacards:
Table Top Highlander 