Missions - Narrative Play

After Apocalypse, which I shall come to at a later date, Narrative Play is oddly, one of my least favourite gaming formats. I really like the missions but not how they are supposed to be played. Unlike Match Play, Narrative missions aren't designed for equal play. One army is quite often put into a much more difficult position than the opponent rather than both being set up fairly and then getting on with the game. What this means is, that unlike regular missions both players usually have to plan for these games rather than just turn up to a club on an evening and playing as with more standard missions.

Part of the reason for this is the added complexity. Narrative games use additional rules to represent elements of the battlefield from hidden deployment to artillery fire from off table support. For a game which isn't overly complex by itself, I find that these can bog the game down a little, stretch out the length of the game and add to the one-sidedness.


Historical wargames are more what I think of when I consider narrative games. The games played are often recreations of actual historical battles which are normally also one sided and the players try to test their ability to alter the flow of events and see how they could have done given the situation. The following video is a good example of this.

Unfortunately Warhammer 40K cannot do this very well. Partly it is because of the scale. Warhammer is 28mm which makes it perfect for skirmish games but not larger engagements. True historical games are more like 6mm (what we once had as Epic 40K - space marine and adeptus titanicus) which means you can cover a lot more of the actual conflict. At 28mm Warhammer 40K is all about those few minutes (probably less) in a certain spot where the final outcome was decided. The rest of the battle is taking place off the side of the table out of sight.

For myself I would much prefer to play the Narrative missions as regular Eternal War missions. Drop the Narrative mission rules additions and just play. They are good fun if you are having a mate over for a sunday afternoon's gaming and you've both put a lot of effort into fine tuning your lists but not so good for pick up games.