Mission Fabricator Cogitator – MFC.v0.5
Planet Ista V: Hive World
MAP: Search and Destroy
Mission: Drop Site
An escape pod hurtles through the atmosphere and will land in your vicinity. The crew hold vital intelligence which must be secured!
Navigation Beacons: The objectives shown on the map represent navigation beacons used to alter the course of the drop pod.
Escape Pod: Place a marker at the centre of the battlefield, this should be different from the navigation beacon objective markers. This represents the drop site location for the escape pod.
At the start of each battle round if the escape pod has not landed the players roll off, adding +1 to their roll for each navigation beacon objective they control. The winner must move the escape pod marker 2D6″ in a single direction, the marker cannot be moved within 6″ of any table edge or be placed on or within terrain. The loser then rolls a D6, adding 1 if it is battle round 1, 2 if it is battle round 2, and so on. On a 7+ the escape pod objective has landed. If the objective has not landed by the start of the fifth battle round, then the escape pod automatically lands. When the escape pod lands, remove all objective markers from the board, and replace the escape pod marker with an objective marker. Roll one D6 for each unit within 6″ of the escape pod objective, on a 4+ that unit suffers D6 mortal wounds.
End Game Objective
At the end of last battle round, the player controlling the escape pod objective scores 15VPs.
Environmental Hazard: Solar Blackout
The Immaterium engulfs the sky, plunging the battlefield into incomprehensible darkness.
- The maximum range of all psychic powers is limited to 18″.
- Subtract 1 from hit rolls made for ranged weapons if the target unit is over 18″ away.
At the start of the first battle round. Both players select one of their units to be equipped with Lumen Trackers, that unit can attempt the following action:
Light them up (Action): At the end of your Movement phase, one unit equipped with Lumen Trackers can start to perform this action. When the action is started, select one enemy unit visible to this unit. Until the action is completed, any friendly units which target the selected enemy unit and are over 18″ away they can can ignore the minus 1 to hit modifier caused by Solar Blackout. This action is completed at the end of the shooting phase.
COMBAT READINESS (OPTIONAL)
Should both players decide, you can use these optional rules to add more interesting narrative elements to your game. Each player will be given an army bonus or hindrance, this is to represent how well trained, equipped and supplied each army is before the battle. These provide very asymmetrical gameplay and are not intended to produce a balanced game. Both players may read through the generated rules before the Determine Attacker and Defender step of the game, giving the person who decides to be Attacker or Defender an extra decision to make. Alternatively, players are welcome to switch Combat Readiness abilities should it be more fitting for the narrative of their game.
ATTACKER
Combat Readiness: Aerial Superiority
Friendly fighters dominate the sky.
Friendly Aircraft gain +1 to their hit rolls during the Shooting Phase against enemy Aircraft or units with FLY.
DEFENDER
Combat Readiness: Opening Salvo
Artillery fire rains down on your position to weaken the enemy ahead of the coming battle.
At the start of the first battle round, roll one D6 for each enemy unit on the battlefield. Subtract 1 from the result if the unit being rolled for is a CHARACTER. On a 4+ the unit suffers D3 mortal wounds, but on on a 6 the unit suffers D6 mortal wounds instead. INFANTRY units may elect to Go to Ground, if they do they only suffer 1 mortal wound, but in their first turn they cannot make an Advance move, cast psychic powers, shoot, charge, perform actions, or fire overwatch.
How to use
The MFC expands upon the Open War/Crusade gameplay for Warhammer 40k. Allowing you to randomly generate a mission for you to play. Each time the page loads or refreshes you’ll get a new planet, deployment zone, mission, environmental hazard and a set of combat readiness abilities for both the Attacker and Defender.
Things to note
- I would class this as still in beta, and would love feedback to help improve the MFC.
- Designed for Strike Force sized missions, though could be tweaked for different scales.
- Not designed to work in conjunction with GT Mission Pack style secondaries for scoring, though some missions will certainly be compatible.
- Some mission have random objective placments, you might not always get a favourable combination of deployment zone and objective placement.
- You can use the Print function from your browser to phyically print off a mission or Save as PDF. This is currently the only way you can save a generated mission.
- This project is created by myself and is unofficial fan work.
Future Plans
In addition to adding more missions. I’d like to add three extra randomly generated elements:
- Warzones, which give you a suggested terrain / theme for the table.
- Battle Readiness, which are bonus rules for each army, these might be specific to Attacker/Defender for more asymmetrical missions. DONE
- Secondaries, like the classic first blood and slay the warlord.
Currently the planets are all bespoke, there’s around 12 so far. I might look at how to randomly generate the planet images too for infinite combinations.
Other ideas include faction specific missions, First Strike/Onslaught missions, ways to customise/save settings, and campaign features.
Feedback
I would love to know what you think, whether it’s feedback on the missions and special rules, or what direction you’d like to see going forwards, i.e more planet stats/narrative background or more mission and gameplay elements.
Please leave all feedback in the comments below.
Changelog
- A massive overhaul of the backend system.
- Some missions had custom objective placements, this is no longer the case so some missions have been updated to reflect this.
- Updated Drop Site mission so the winner of the game is less random.
- Added designer note to Cold-blooded Victory mission to help with balance.
- Updated Armoured Offensive to be compatible with the current edition.
- Added three new missions Slay the Warlords, Duel, and Decapitation Strike, all themed around killing enemy warlords.
v0.4.2 22/02/2023
- Created a print friendly version, just click print via your browser and you should be able to print it out (portrait mode is best) or save it as a PDF. Mostly it goes over two pages but I’ve tried my best to optimise the layout. Let me know your thoughts!
v0.4.1 27/11/2022
- Fixed a typo.
v0.4 15/08/2022
- Updated CSS to fix layout issues caused by WordPress Updates.
- 3 new Environmental Hazards: Null Zone, Radioactive Objectives and Fog of War.
- Added Combat Rediness as a new mechnanic including 23 options for both the Attacker and Defender.
v0.3 13/01/2022
- Adjusted victory points to Clandestine Operations mission.
- 3 new deployment zone layouts: Front-line Assault, Divided Lines, and Forward Rush.
- 2 new objective layouts.
- 1 new mission: Black Mass.
v0.2 21/12/2021
- Updated all planet graphics to new style
v0.1 24/11/2021
- Launch
Hey i love this system but im having a problem where when i refresh the page nothing is changing?
I’ve looked into it and managed to find the issue, a new caching plugin was causing the page to not update. That’s now fixed. However the plugin I use to generate the random content is out of date and no longer supported so I might have to disable this page at some point, which is a shame, unless I can find another workaround for it.
This is amazing, would love to be able to download it as a PDF beyond printing it!
Hey there,
Thanks for the feedback, I’ve spent a bit of time last night optimising the print styles. So you can click Print, then Save as PDF, and the layout of the mission is now a lot better. I’ll look into a plugin which will allow you to do this directly on the page via a button.
Great update! Might I suggest a randomized Victor Bonus as well?
This is really cool my friend. I spotted a small typo in the text for the Combat Readiness : Champion. “On the dawn >a< battle a hero has emerged to save the day.". Keep up the great work!
Thanks for spotting that, I’ve now fixed it. Glad you’re enjoying the missions.
Wow, this looks fun! I am kind of just getting back to 40k, and this is definitely the kind of thing that I like. Adding environmental hazards or terrain themes would be very cool.
Thanks for the feedback, I hope you enjoy your games using this!
Small typo for reversal of fortune:
“At the end of each player’s Command Phase, the player whose turn [it] is scores 5 victory points for each of the following conditions they satisfy (for a maximum of 15 victory points):”
Thanks for letting me know. I’ve now fixed that. 🙂
Also I don’t know how you have this thing coded but have you considered using url parameters for the random parts? That way you can save your place and share the link to others of your results. Thanks!
That’s something i’ve thought about doing and really want to implement. It’s a little tricky to code based on how the elements are randomly generated but it’s something I’ll look into adding soon.
Love what you are doing! In the text you call it “MFG” but the title is MFC. Keep up the good work!
Glad you’re enjoying it. Good spot on the typo, I’ll get that fixed right away, thanks!
Brilliant stuff, shall test some of these out at our shop with the customers, try and steer them away from all of that competititive nonsense
This looks amazing! I’ve bookmarked this and will be using it in our next campaign season. Looks ace!
Loving the system so far!! Think we chatted about it breifly in the past but did you ever look at some of the old campaign books/ HH game conditions for inspiration on the environmental hazards??
Glad you’re liking it! I’ve been through some of the more recent books such as Vigilus for ideas. I’ve yet to go through my FW collection but I’m sure I will at some point.