The Flaywilds Deck - Animosity VIII (part 3)

The Warhammer World meet-up for Animosity VIII is tomorrow, and I'm running a narrative Warcry campaign day there. 

I'm providing all the boards and scenery - the battleplans will be fixed for each board. 

I'll do my best to make sure everyone plays 3 games, on 3 different boards, against 3 different opponents.

Winning a game will earn 5 Varanite Tokens, a draw will earn 3, and a loss earns 1.

I've also stolen written a mini-game for everyone to play at the end of each Warcry battle.

It's heavily based on the Arcane Abilities mechanics from Moonstone, with an extra step.

Players will draw a hand of cards, and the active player must choose one to play, face-down, and declare what the colour and value of that card is... but they're allowed to lie and their opponent has to decide whether to accept it or call their bluff.

Should the resisting player accept it, both gain a small number of additional Varanite Tokens.

Should they call Bluff and the active player was lying - the card is not what they declared - the resisting player may replace the card with one from their hand. This increases the chance the active player will get a smaller, or no reward. If they play a Flaywilds card it will go very badly for the active player!

If the active player was not lying, and card played was the one declared, they not only get a larger reward, but they also may play a second card from their hand.

Varanite Tokens:

I've no idea how well this will work, but we'll see tomorrow, I suppose!

The Traveller - part 1: Tarot

An ancient void ship known as The Blasphemous Voyager has breached from warp space, sparking rumours of priceless artefacts and untold riches hidden within its perilous, ruined hull. Drawn by hope and ambition, travellers bound for the Cyclix Quadrant — a sweeping arc of strange and singular worlds — now find their journeys disrupted as the ship’s arrival throws the dark pathways between stars into chaos. Amid the whispers of fortune and death, a final rumour persists: a giant clad in ancient armour has appeared alongside the Voyager, raising the question of whether this is mere coincidence, or the deliberate hand of fate.

I've been invited to a "grimdark / 40k adjacent" gaming event in Manchester, in February, called The Traveller.

Sam (Cupboard_of_shame) is organising it and it looks like there are about 20 to 30 people going, some are even flying in from the US.

It's set across a handful of backwater-planets in a forgotten corner of the 40k universe, but it's going to be played using OPR Games Grimdark Future: Star Quest rules, with custom / homebrew factions, for a hybrid roleplaying and wargaming experience.

It's the closest I've come to having any interest in 40k, since 2nd edition Kill Team completely evaporated my last grimdark gaming avenue.

I already have my little warband built and painted so, at Sam's request, I'm making some tarot cards for it.

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The group of weirdos from which I'll draw my characters for The Traveller.

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Tragek Hierigos, techno-barbarian adventurer 

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Atrak Hexcowl, mystic and psionic witch

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Ar-Pask, machine-cult pilgrim

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Dekker-Fel, machine-cult pilgrim

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Hekle-Tov, machine-cult pilgrim

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Edit: 2026-02-17

I just completed an NPC for the event.

The Knight of Hob

The Traveller - Part 2: Dust, is here.

The Animosity Weekender 2024 - UK Meet-Up

I ran my first narrative Warcry event at Warhammer World for the UK Animosity Discord meet-Up event on Sunday (21st January 2024). And it was really enjoyable! I want to do it again.

It was for the Animosity Weekender 2024: Rolling Thunder which (by design) coincided with the Las Vegas Open - a huge convention, where Naro, who is also one of the Animosity GMs, ran the AoS narrative event.

The Animosity Weekender there consisted of a one-evening Warcry event, followed by a three-day AoS event. An entirely grander affair than mine! It was at a ticketed convention, with the AoS narrative run for 24 players, over 3 days, and included doubles games, one-against-one games, and a huge multi-player siege game finale.

My little event was just a one-day, 10-player, 3-game narrative. But still a much more structured thing than the previous Discord Meet-ups, or any other events I've hosted: They have always just been "lets get together and play a few games".

For the first time ever, I asked players to pre-submit rosters, I scheduled rounds, I recorded match-ups and results, and wrote an evolving subplot that was to be decided by the results of the games each round.

The Harrowmark Tarot - part 1

A Warhammer-themed tarot deck (and specifically a pirate Orruk-themed one) is a project I have wanted to do for a number of years, but I have always hesitated to start as I have never been sure about the "look" or of my ability to make it convincing. But this week something went ping in my head and I knew how I wanted them to look. I realised that making a deck that could have been created by someone who lives in the Harrowmark would unify the themes I use, as well as inspire the images on each card. They have to be drawn from the point of view of a Harrowmark orruk shaman.

The malignant forests of the Harrowmark, the death-centric culture of Shyish, and the orruk sky-pirates (that I have an obvious bias toward!) will all form the basis of the choice of imagery. There is also a secondary benefit: this theme adds a bit more depth to my home-brew setting!

Major Arcana:

0 - The Fool (Sigmar!)

I - The Magician (or maybe The Necromancer)

II - The High Priestess (possibly the Briar Queen?)

III - The Empress (Lady Olynder)

IV - The Emperor (Nagash himself!)

V - The Hierophant (maybe a Priest of Morr-Nagash?)

VI - The Lovers (The Court of Spades)

VII - The Black Coach

VIII - Strength (a wild boar)

IX - The Hermit (a Skull-Bird)

X - Wheel of Fortune (a "wheel" torture device)

XI - Justice (unbalanced scales, with a boney finger pressing one side down!)

XII - The Hanged Man

XIII - Death (a Knight of Shrouds)

XIV - Temperance (The Forest)

XV - The Daemon (a Bloodletter)

XVI - The Tower (Freebooter’s Tower)

XVII - The Star (the Azyr symbol on a twelve-pointed sun)

XVIII - The Moon (The Rotmoon / Bad Moon)

XIX - The Sun (The Ogre-sun)

XX - Judgement (Angels of Death with trumpets)

XXI - The World (The Mortal Realms)

Minor Arcana:

Clubs (clubs!), Skulls (diamonds), Scythes (spades), Time - hourglasses (hearts)

This is probably going to be a slow-burn project... there is a lot to do!