The exciting new Dominatus deck lets you run a whole Warhammer 40,000 campaign as easily as a pick-up game in your garage, and today we’re going to look at how it works.
This handy deck is a completely new way to run Warhammer campaigns, tying your games together in an exciting narrative while keeping the bookkeeping to a minimum. You get a copy in the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon launch box, and it’ll also be available separately, alongside the Core Rules and Combat Patrol Companion books and the Chapter Approved Mission deck.
The basics
At its core, the deck is themed around the conflict on Armageddon, but it can represent all kinds of campaigns involving any of the factions you want to play, so don’t worry if the only green on your xenos antagonists comes from a gauss flayer. Players are split up into two or three alliances – Liberators, Oppressors and optionally Raiders – who fight several games across three campaign phases, hoping to bolster their chances of victory in a final climactic battle.
Dominating the battlefield and seizing control of key territory in each phase will put you on the road to victory, but it’s not the only thing to fight for. Each player will have their own Agenda to complete during their games, and the number of times each alliance achieves these goals will have a big impact on the narrative conclusion.
Step 1: Start the campaign
Once you’ve got your players together and arranged them into roughly equal alliances, you’re ready to launch right into Phase 1 by rolling a D6 to find out which of the phase’s three locations you’ll be fighting over. Each location has a bonus that applies to whoever controls it – more on that later – as well as a set of war zone rules that affect all battles fought that phase.
Then, you’ll have your players read their assigned alliance’s Briefing card. There’s one of these for each phase, and it sets out the narrative situation for your forces and determines which Agenda players will tackle based on their and their opponent’s Force Dispositions.
Step 2: Play the first mission
A standard Dominatus campaign will have all players using 2,000-point Strike Force armies and creating games using the Chapter Approved Mission deck – with one major difference. Each player will have the option of following an Agenda instead of a normal Primary Mission, replacing their objectives with a thematic task unique to their alliance.
Succeeding at the conditions on the card grants an Agenda Achieved card, and these will be tallied up at the end of the campaign phase. Otherwise, games play out as normal, keeping in mind the special war zone rules from the Location card.
Whoever wins the battle will get to draw a Battle Honour card, while the other player gets a Battle Skill card instead. Both give your army a useful boost to bestow on a chosen unit for the rest of the campaign, such as more OC, weapon abilities or redeployment tricks, so those who succumb to the will of the dice gods in the first phase don’t need to worry about falling behind.
Once the first game is over, it’s on to the next, with a new opponent and new Agendas to complete. A typical Dominatus campaign will have two battles in Phases 1 and 2, plus a single decisive battle in Phase 3, giving you plenty of time to fit it into a two-day weekend or weekday event.
Step 3: End the phase
Once everyone has finished their second game, the pounding of guns ceases (momentarily) and everyone gathers to find out which alliance claimed victory. This is where the cards earned after each game come in – whichever alliance obtained the most Battle Honour cards takes control of the location and gains its location bonus for the rest of the campaign. Then, whichever alliance holds the most Agenda Achieved cards is in ascendancy, and gets one of their alliance’s powerful Relic cards.
By turning over the Briefing card, you can now find out the narrative impact of your efforts. There are three levels of success on each card, and an alliance gets one point for either controlling the phase’s location or being in ascendency.* Do well, and your side will sweep the sands of Armageddon like the wrath of the God-Emperor/Gork/Mork. Do poorly, and a lot of Grots and Guardsmen aren’t making it back.
Step 4: Again!
When all players have reflected on the ramifications of their actions, the next phase begins in the same way as before. New location, new Briefing card, new Agendas. By the time you get to the single epic battle that makes up Phase 3, you’ll have a bunch of unit upgrades under your belt. The best part is, you won’t even have to track anything on a sheet or app – it’s all in the cards you pick up after each game.
And that’s it! Your forces have saved/ravaged/pillaged Armageddon, and the campaign is over. Mix up the armies, factions and alliances, and you can run through another campaign with entirely different locations and Agendas to tackle, or expand it out with more players and games per phase.
You can have your first shot at a Dominatus campaign with the deck included in the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon launch box, alongside the Core Rules book and Chapter Approved deck you’ll need to play. It’s a great package bundle to get started in the new edition, and that’s even before we get to the awesome Ork and Space Marine miniatures that headline the box.
* If you get both, good for you! You’ve got big shoes to fill in the next phase.
