http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3631

The PCs crash land on a mining world called Hervara (after being shot down by what looks suspiciously like an Ork Fighta-Bommer), a world in open secession from the Imperium of Man. Separated from their regiment, they must survive with little more than their wits and their faith. A dark secret lurks beneath Hervara's crust; an ancient Ordinatus. The PCs must secure this asset at all costs!

It's neat to see our first glimpse of OW supplements. FFG has been somewhat all over the board with their adventure quality, but I trust them to do this well. Ordinatus devices are a cool shout-out to a rarely-plumbed section of canon. Secessionists are some of my favorite enemies in 40k; while we know little about the Severan Dominate, I hope they exist as something other than a mob of mindless cultists and deformed mutants. The art quality looks nice, and I'm curious to see what else is hiding inside this treat.

(Side note: they promised us OW corebook previews in the coming weeks!)

Looks interesting.

indeed, looks really intresting! Not to mention all those tlaks about the Gaurd having access to no fancy toys like the Marines or Acolytes or Rogue Traders were simply fears based on nothing. The guard's toys are so big it requires a number of tech-adepts and guardsmen

Stranded behind enemy lines? That stuff is the bread and butter of a hundred B Movie War films What really happens when soldiers get trapped behind enemy lines is they get captured by the enemy/angry mobs, shot in the back of the head and dumped unceremoniously in a shallow grave. Though I suppose the Ordinatus will be a nice twist. I think I'd rather try and portray a larger campaign for my players, make them realise they're just a cog in the Imperial war machine rather than the decisive war winning 'special snowflakes'. I want them to take part in the kind of battles that their characters can say "I was there", battles like Kursk, Stalingrad, Waterloo and Trafalgar. I hope we get those sorts of campaigns too.

In my opinion these guys are just cogs, in fact, less than cogs, they're the grease. I'd personally want to save SASesque missions for the twilight of their careers.

DW

DarkWinds said:

I'm looking forward to both types of campaigns, honestly. I do agree that Only War is ideal for playing average, front line guardsmen who are more witnesses to massive campaigns than they are the ones who make or break those campaigns.

At the same time, the nature of RPGs is to be the heroes, so it's also nice to have campaigns like this where you're in exceptional circumstances. And there are certainly a lot of stories throughout history of individual soldiers or groups of soldiers being stranded and fighting their way back to base.

Also, I'd be surprised if a lot of the adventures for Only War don't capitalize on famous war movie plot lines in some way.

after a couple of sessions these guys are anything but average. we are at around 7000 exp and every single one of those IGs is a beast.

DarkWinds said:

I don't know about, during operation Barbarossa on the Russian in WW2 they cut off and captured hundreds of thousands of Russian troops but thousands were caught behind enemy lines and made it back to their own newly established front lines. I guess simply when the lines are thousands of miles long you can't expect to be able to spot small groups of men all the time.

You know, I had to double take to see if that was a Raven Guard/Raptor Scout or an Imperial Guard Sniper.