Reclamation Wars – Introducing a Narrative Event to a Matched Play community, with Kristoff Alejo

“Reclamation Wars” was a 1-day narrative event that took place in Pasig, Philippines, run by the Wartilyo gaming club, in October last year.

It featured a blend of familiar elements from Matched Play, but several narrative battleplans, veteran abilities and Outpost rules from Path to Glory, team scoring and players could even bring an Anvil of Apotheosis custom Hero!

It was the first experiment of more to come, from a gaming club regularly running a competitive matched play environment, and it was a resounding success. Players got very engaged with the narrative, and some wrote not only lore backstories, but also poetry!

We chatted with the lead NEO for the event, Graeme Kristoff Alejo, about the planning process and players’ reaction to the event.

Q: Please summarize the event for us, and what players experienced.
A: Reclamation Wars was a team tournament with a branching narrative based on Dawnbringers Book 1: Harbingers. We had two teams: The Dawnbringer Crusade who are trying to siphon a source of Aqua Ghyranis for riches and to cure the Shudderblight Plague, and the Verdant Sentinels who protect their home from the Crusade. 

Wartilyo has been helping build the competitive scene in our country, and I wanted to try out a narrative event because it’s something almost unheard of for many members of our community. I was surprised just how much people were into it and had a lot of fun too! Players writing poetry was a surprise, and everyone wrote great lore for their armies. It’s really amazing to see people just have a lot of fun!

Our team did our best to meld the narrative aspect into the gameplay, so it feels both immersive and fun for our players. All the battleplans were chosen with the narrative in mind, and even the mechanics of the event makes it feel like you’re in the middle of this humongous battle while fighting alongside your teammates. 

We wanted the narrative event to give off an entirely different experience from the Matched Play events that our community was used to, so we introduced things like Communication Tower abilities, Team mechanics, and even a branching path. 

Also since we don’t usually allow 3D-printed models in our tournaments to support our local LGS, they were allowed in this event because we wanted to focus on flavor over straight up winning, so we had some people print out models that were closer to their vision of their army and not have to spend thousands of pesos just for a one-time event.

Q: How was it introducing a community used to competitive play and tournaments to a narrative event?
A:  We wanted to run this narrative event as more of an experiment since it’s never been done before in the country and we wanted to try a format the community would like! Though being from an established group helped a lot to get people interested in narrative play, it was still a bit of a hurdle that we had to design the event from the ground up and had to teach our players to let go of the mentality from Match Play like needing battlelines, ally restrictions, etc. Yet despite that, it looked like a lot of people were G to join an event like this! 

Many of our players really wanted to try out their “for fun lists,” and something that they’ll normally not take in Matched Plays. So we had players who came in with three different Greater Daemons, or a procession of Nighthaunt with Ossiarch Bonereaper siege weapons! Even if a list was not optimal, this was an opportunity for them to try it and just have fun with something they’ve always wanted to try or something that could fit thematically with the story they had in mind.

The reason why I kept the storyline and mechanics relatively simple was because I wanted to hold an event that could be prepared quickly and understood easily by our players. I didn’t want to spend four months preparing a one-day event (well, I still had to prepare for this event 3 months in advance plus conceptualization ahaha). Because 1-day Matched Play RTT (Rogue Trader Tournaments) are really simple to hold and prepare for, and they’re also the most common format here in our community, I wanted to make a similar kind of event for narrative play. I want to create narrative events that are easy to run, prepare, unique enough to distinguish itself from Matched Play, and most importantly: fun. 

I really hope that this could mean that we’d have more narrative events in the future and 

Q: How was your process for introducing the narrative elements, given it was a new playing style event-wise for you?
A: The event really is way different from our usual Matched Play events. We had to write the story, introduce new unique mechanics, and make sure those mechanics also fit with both the theme and narrative of the event. But because members of our club had experience running conventions and events for Dungeons and Dragons (myself included,) it actually wasn’t that difficult writing both the story and envisioning how we wanted our players to react and get hyped on certain story beats.

The reason why I chose the Dawnbringer Crusade was to give focus on the current narrative that AoS was building. Because even after 5+ years, AoS lore still feels sandbox-ish, and we wanted to show that the official lore still had potential to be amazing, that it’s easy to build upon it too (reducing preparation and giving a lot of inspiration), and that your own narrative could exist within the current storyline. It made the event and our players’ narratives feel more relevant to the existing story.

Also, I really liked the idea that in Warhammer there was no clear “good guys,” and keeping that in mind (and also my country’s history with colonialism), we wanted to paint the idea that the Crusade was justified (healing their own people with Aqua Ghyranis) but at the expense of conquering and exploiting resources. So it wasn’t really that much of a surprise to see that the sign up for Verdant Sentinels was filled out immediately hahaha.

Though admittedly, because all narrative events I’ve seen had different mechanics, we still needed to do our research to make an event that’s fit for the vision that we had. We looked at Goonhammer articles and even the battlepacks on NEON for inspiration. We were on a look out for mechanics that felt immersive for the players and decided on the Communication Towers abilities so that teams weren’t just relevant in planning match-ups but also in the middle of a battle too. Even if a player lost, they could be a credit to their team by giving their team more Communication Tower abilities. 

We wanted our player’s narratives to matter, so we introduced Anvil of Apotheosis so that their army’s lore could be embodied by that hero. They weren’t game-breaking anyway, so we also made the hero free for anyone to take so no one had an excuse not to take one.

The flow of the battleplans were also branching because we wanted our player’s choices to matter, and shape the narrative with their victories. We used Battleplans that were from the Dawnbringer Harbingers book plus Narrative Battleplans from the Battletomes and old books (Duel of the Champions is just Fate of the Eightpoints from Soul Wars) that were reskinned to fit the narrative. 

Heck, even the prizes were immersive! We gave out patches with Hammerhal Ghyra’s coat of arms, Coin Malleus objective markers that were either given to members of the Crusade or taken from their corpses by the Sentinels, and potions of Aqua Ghyranis from the springs. 

Q: How was the players’ reaction to the narrative elements, like scoring as a team, creating custom Heroes, or the special rules like the Communication Towers and veteran abilities?
A: Overall they enjoyed it! Like I said we wanted to distinguish the narrative event from our usual Match Play tournaments, so we had to add more to the rules while also removing some restrictions. One of the things that our players appreciated was flexible army building. They could add whatever models they wanted with no restriction to battleline or allies, so whatever they felt was cool or fun, they’d take it! 

For the Anvil of Apotheosis heroes, I think some of them felt like it was a bit of an extra work having to either kitbash or convert a model, but since we allowed 3D printing models they could just easily print their own custom hero too. The availability of a hero whose whole lore and abilities you had control over I feel was appreciated, since them being on the battlefield and heading your army in this grand narrative felt like the player themselves had an impact on the story of Age of Sigmar. 

This was also the same for Communication Towers and Veteran Abilities; teammates felt that they had an impact on the story like on the first round when the entire Dawnbringers team chose the KO ability to deepstrike, so you have this visual of the entire Crusade flying down from the Metalith on KO ships into the forests of Ghyran! 

Because the experience was so different, I had to help players out every step of the way. I released FAQs, made the battlepack as clear and concise as I could, provided entire tables of info, the works haha. Answering questions was also part of the job, but honestly I was pretty happy doing it because it showed that the players were interested in learning and playing the game properly. 

As the event went on, when the tides of battles were shifting because even the losing side could get an advantage due to choosing their match-ups, it was nail-biting. In the course of the event, even though the Dawnbringers were on the back foot, they were still motivated because they had the chance for a comeback at the last game. Everyone was so invested in planning their match-ups that they gathered in groups to discuss their strategy. Then at the end, we had to give a narrative that although the Verdant Sentinels successfully defended their home, it still came at a price and we recognized both teams’ efforts and I feel like that was really important.

THE RECLAMATION WAR COMES TO A CLOSE, DESPITE THE BRAVE WARRIORS OF THE DAWNBRINGER CRUSADE, THE VERDANT SENTINELS HAVE FOUGHT SUCCESSFULLY TO KEEP THEIR LANDS FREE! THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR JOINING!

The Dawnbringer Crusade makes a valiant stand, their hearts full of Sigmar’s blessing as foe after foe falls to their strikes. But the Verdant Sentinels overwhelmed the defenders, and broke the Metalith’s chains to cause it to crash down! The Verdant Springs remain free from the clutches of Hammerhal’s crusades!

Overall, everyone loved the narrative focus of the event! People even made posts recapping their own army’s lore throughout the event, wrote short stories about their general, and someone even wrote a poem. 

Q: What would you like to say to players out there, to motivate them to try out Narrative Play for the first time in their own communities?

A: To me, wargaming is more than just pieces on a table that just dukes it out with dice. Everything has a story, from the sculpt of the model, the paint job, the terrain, and how the game plays out. Narrative Play puts that story on the forefront and makes it explicit that these are warriors with both a goal and a story. It gives a unique spin to the game you know and love, making you more invested in it even more and inspiring you to make art and play more games. Through it, you also find a community that’s into it for the story and for the fun of the game.

We set off to provide an entirely unique experience to our players with a narrative event, and I say we’ve accomplished it. 

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Thank you, Kristoff!

We will be following your club’s page online, so keep sharing details of future events!

You can find the Event Rules pack here for more details.

What do you think about this event?
Do you have any questions for the NEO, or opinions of how best to use the mix of matched play and narrative rules to create an easy-to-approach event?
Leave your comments below!