What is Vernox Rising?

If you’ve been reading along up until this point, you’ll have seen loads of great narrative and story-setting, but not much in the way of explanation of the campaign! So let’s talk about that, shall we?

Vernox Rising is a campaign set up by two gamers, Brapscallion and Squid, who both wanted to start new armies whilst still playing a narrative campaign. Inspired by The Champion of Chaos campaign on the fantastic Deployment Zone website, Vernox Rising was started as a fun way to collect armies, whilst also scratching our creative itch to write passable fan fiction and generally just make cool scenarios for our heroes to clash.

The campaign is set in the Fontannus system, and notably the planet Vernox. Home to a disillusioned mining colony known as The Konstruct, the population has been slowly and carefully infiltrated by a sinister presence. The Cult of the Endless Deep have been meticulously planning their rise to prominence for years, and are almost set for a system-wide coup. The only factor that stands in the way of their clandestine goals are The Tetrarchy, a shining force of gold Custodian warriors  who have been warned of this menace by an old friend. Long before the Imperium becomes aware of any issues on Fontannus, the Tetrarchy have travelled to the system to cease the insurrection, restoring peace and prosperity to a tumultuous pocket of the waning Imperium.

So how are we going to go about it? It’s super simple. We’re both starting off with 500 point armies. Made up however we choose, but they must be battle-forged. Brapscallion is leading the uprising as Genestealer Cults, whilst Squid helms the Adeptus Custodes.

After each game, both players will roll off on a D6 to decide the next unit they can add to their force. We’ve adapted the Champion of Chaos model into the following:

D6 Result:

1: HQ

2: Troops

3: Elites

4: Fast Attack

5 or 6: Player’s choice of unit.

The first thing you should be noticing is the lack of Heavy Support on the list. For both our armies, Heavy Support isn’t a major component to their structure, and doesn’t have the greatest flexibility of choice (Unless Squid goes to Forgeworld or Brap starts getting a lot of Guard firepower). Before the campaign began we both decided that we’d dismiss this category, instead folding it into the player’s choice result, meaning we could still pick something if we desired.

We also decided to build in some flexibility. We want to play and enjoy the campaign, but at the same time we also wanted flexible and working armies by the end of it! Because of this, we initiated the ‘Chosen for the Task’ stratagem that we can play throughout the campaign. For 2CP (deducted from your next game), you automatically roll a 6 on the above table. With this ‘auto-choose’ redundancy in place, we’ll be able to have a great grasp on our armies, collect more rounded forces, and have better battles as a result.

As the campaign progresses and rolls are made, we’ll be adjusting and deciding upon balance and unit selection as appropriate. With GSC and Custodes, there’s obviously the potential for a big points imbalance between units. Some of Brap’s Elites choices can be single models for anywhere between 60-100 points, and Squid obviously will be able to get a lot more than that! In these instances we’ll be reviewing them as and when they come up, but it might be a simple fix of the Cult taking 2 smaller Elites choices as a whole pick, for example. We’re going to try and balance the sides as much as possible, so constant adjustments will be made as time goes on to ensure this and keep it fun!

In terms of the mission structure, this will also be of a fluid nature that will change and adapt to the forces themselves. The Genestealer cult suddenly gets reinforced with Atalan Jackal Bikes or a Ridgerunner? The next mission might be out in the Badlands of Aronnax. The Custodians are reinforced with more ground troops? The golden host may continue their search for information by investigating a congested Hive Slump or abandoned Power Plant. As the armies take shape, the missions and locations will reflect how the forces are evolving. Which will hopefully make it as dynamic to read as it will be to play!

Hopefully this will give anyone reading a bit more clarification and an idea of what we’re hoping to do with this campaign. It should be great fun, and a really good way to start a new army. We’ll be hopefully posting up batreps in the blog, as well as narrative we’ve written, thoughts on how to play our new armies and any hobby updates we can think of.  We think of this more as a fun diary of our progress that we’re keeping for ourselves. But if you’re reading this and enjoying it, then that’s brilliant too!