So I'll run the conclusion of A Stony Sleep, the underwater city, on Sunday. The KT consists of an Assault Marine (Black Templar), Librarian (Blood Angel), Apothecary (Storm Warden) and a Tactical Marine with heavy weaponry (Ultramarine). The map is bordering on the useless, that much I know, so I'll make my own, but is there anything you used to spice the scene up? Any advice?

Put on Ministry and make it into a classic crypt crawl with a 40K twist. Including having to sneak around to not waken up the living dead machines.

I haven't run it yet myself but that's what I intend to do. Bring in fantasy undead dungeon elements and make them into 40K. There's few more terrifying things than those sleeping machines!

Alex

Bring in some of the lower-level Necrons from the rear. I'm talking unlimited scarab swarms mostly. Force the KT to press forward or get eaten.

I just finished this tonight. A couple of things I did to add tension:

1. As the mission within the Alien City progressed, I had lighting pulse throughout the city. It originated from the main crystal and terminated at the sarcophagi. As time passed, the frequency and brightness increased.

2. I increased the rate and occurances off trembling through the structure.

3. I made sure that members of the Alpha Legion escaped from the encounter they had.

Any other observations? What worked well regarding that mission and what didn't?

Alex

I just finished it yesterday, so here are my experiences:

-The whole dungeon creep feeling was a success. My players instantly recognised the sleeping metal warriors, and while the characters remained blissfully ignorant to the galaxy-consuming level of danger, the situation instantly became tense. I used periodic tremors, humming noises and described the waking monolith field in detail to add a sense of urgency.

-While meeting the Guardian of the Tomb, I sent the scarabs behind them, as Kshatriya suggested. Boy, those faces.

-The base requisition is extremely high, and some of it gets spent on unusual items. It's worth to track what toys they have at hand and devise some way to use a few exotic ones. For example, I sent a few Spectral Harbingers in with the scarabs to add some more tension and also to let them use their fancy cluster mines on the corridor walls.

-The Alpha Legion encounter didn't work well for me - I pitted 6 Traitors against my 4-strong KT to provide some challenge, and it took very long. The threat level was more or less all right (although next time I will send twice as much Elite as the number of the KT), but to track 10 individual character through rounds and rounds took forever, and the players didn't enjoy it that much, so towards the end the combat devolved to simple number-crunching. I think some variety is needed - a powerful lieutenant, or a heavy weapon team, perhaps?

Did your players have mostly bolters? Because with plasma and melta, krak missiles, they should be able to make short work of the traitor scum.

Alex

The group is quite imbalanced - in a team of 4, 3 Marines are melee-orientated, even the Apothecary. Bloody Storm Wardens and their unhealthy obsession with duels. And on top of this, the heavy weapon support is a Tactical Marine, so bonuses apply only to a heavy bolter (using Bolter Mastery), not other heavy weapons. He'll retcon himself to Devastator, and I'll allow it, but I'll still have to both cater to and challenge the choppy characters.

To be honest, the flop of the Alpha Legion scenario was probably due to a miscalculation on my part. What I hoped for was epic combat and some limelight for all of the sword-wielders by giving them more or less equal opponents, but it didn't work out as expected. Any ideas where did I make the mistake?