Another narrative event will take place, at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Pendelton OR, USA, on the 27-28th of April 2024, right around the corner!

This narrative event will already be the 3rd annual narrative event of the Pendleton Wargaming Group, and takes players deep into Andtor featuring unique Command traits & Artefacts to equip your general and heroes, themed terrain, as well as narrative “Side Quests” that can involve in-game achievements, themed army painting, lore presentation or even cosplay!
There’s a trailer!

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“Arcanus… A city of secrets…“
Deep within the repositories of Azyrheim, the Amber college has found texts with mention of an ancient city in the heart of Andtor. It was lost to the age of chaos, and frozen in both ice, and in time. This city, once a jewel in the crown of the Collegiate Arcane, now thaws, and opportunity is presented for the arcane reconcilers. To reclaim tomes of knowledge and arcane artifacts from the age of myth would, perhaps, change the fate of the Dawnbringer Crusades. So too does our Blessed Order of Azyr take interest in the revelation of such a city, and the secrets that lie in its ruined remains. The arcane power to be found in such a place could as easily see the Great Wheel of progress halted by the machinations of those who would see us undone. The macabre undead, the primal beasts of Ghur, the scheming of daemonic cults and the hosts of Chaos.

And so, at the behest of the Azyrite Order, we move now with haste to Andtor, to find the city of Arcanus, and whatever secrets await us there…”

Haskell Hexbane


We chatted with the lead NEO for the event, Ethan Mellville (@Clint_BigWood) about what players can expect from it. 

Q: Please summarize the event for us, and what players can expect.
A: This will be our 3rd Annual AoS Narrative in Eastern Oregon, and is our first time bringing players together for 2 consecutive days of narrative storytelling through epic matches. In the past, we held narrative campaigns locally, and those would last between 3 to 4 months, but this year we decided to make the switch to a 2 day event, so that we can invite players from across the Pacific Northwest to join us!
Players can expect to have a totally unique event experience, as the set of battleplans they participate in may be vastly different than other players, to represent a chaotic and varied battle amongst the four Grand Alliances for control of the ancient and ruined city of Arcanus, a city founded in the Age of Myth to study magics, and the properties of Amberbone. 


Q: This is already your 3rd narrative event organized for your group. Tell us a bit how the scene grew and how they got hooked into this kind of elaborate narrative.
A:  Prior to 2020, our scene in Eastern Oregon grew around a small narrative campaign hosted by an employee of our local Hobby Store in La Grande, Oregon. Members of our University’s game club participated, and that helped spark that interest in seeing the game as a vehicle with which to tell fun stories together.
By the time the pandemic had subsided enough for players to begin playing again, many of our local players were excited for the opportunity to take part in a campaign with escalating scale and consequences, and so in 2022, 16 of us from Eastern Oregon marched into Thondia, and fought to control the Thunderscorn Peaks. This culminated in an epic 2v2 siege battle that has since become a staple of the events that we organize! 

2023 was a watershed moment for our community. For this campaign, we made an effort to bring together players from 5 different cities across our area. To help facilitate this, we worked closely with hobby stores from each city to host game nights, and in that way, everyone was able to travel to connect with players and from there we were able to develop a strong connection as a community, despite many of us being up to 2 hours away from each other.
We’ve told some pretty awesome stories together through our games over the years, and I think the thing that I am most proud of from hosting these events is seeing the friendships that have been made, and seeing the excitement from the community when the time comes each year to announce the next event!


Q: For this event, you are motivating players to bring their own original characters as Generals, by awarding them a BONUS Campaign Command Trait and Artefacts if they are not Unique warscrolls, on top of the usual enhancements. Explain us a bit more about your design process.
A: Campaign Artifacts have been a staple of our events since the beginning. Borrowing from the Malign Portents book, we introduced artifacts that grew in power as our campaigns escalated. This year, we made the decision to increase the choices for players for the campaign artifacts. In the past, there would be 4-5 artifacts available for any hero to choose. We created a set of 4 categories that a hero falls under: Wizard, Priest, Behemoth, and Marshall. So now hero choice matters a bit more, as your choice of general will determine the campaign boons you will receive.

And then, to up the power scale even higher this year, we decided to do a similar structure for a set of 12 campaign traits that a general can access IN ADDITION to their normal command traits from the battletomes. So we’ll have some pretty strong heroes leading their troops into the fight to control the ruins of Arcanus!


Q: You included a number of secondary achievements to award players, called Side Quests. These are very narrative and really put folks in the right mindset, what was your design process for them?
A: This idea is a first for us. In previous years, we chose to introduce things like Grand Strategies and Battle Tactics slowly to the battleplans over the course of a campaign, to assist new players with learning the game. By tackling those mechanics one at a time, we felt that would keep our events beginner friendly. One of the things I had been hearing late last year as we began planning for The War In Arcanus, was that some folks, secondaries had grown a bit stale as the latest season of the game carried on. 

Additionally, there is often a disparity between different battletomes for how interactive those secondaries are. Before I started writing the set of unique battleplans for the event, I realized that many of the standard secondaries might detract from the story being told on the tabletop. And so the thought occurred to me to have players share the narrative for their armies, and use that to help craft bespoke sets of secondary goals and objectives for them to achieve throughout the event! 

In our event server on discord, players shared their background, motivations, and goals for the coming battle, and using that, along with info about an army’s key heroes or units, I wrote a set of 5 “Bounties” for each player. If I crafted these correctly, the players will feel that these bounties help them express that narrative on the tabletop, where the standard secondaries might not have matched up with that story they wanted to tell through their gameplay. 

As an example of what a Bounty might look like: I received permission from a Stormcast player to write up a story of the life of his Knight Vexillor, who lived in the city before his death and reforging. His army is motivated to seek out places that help return some of the memories of their lives from before. So his bounty will involve searching out and finding memory tokens placed on the battlefield, in order to unlock those memories. As he retrieves those tokens, I’ll be able to hand him a slip of paper with that memory that he’s unlocked. Now, in addition to scoring an extra secondary point from finding all of those during the event, that player will be motivated to achieve that secondary objective to have this unique, character driven story revealed to him throughout the weekend! 

Some of the feedback I’m most excited to hear from players after the event is their thoughts on these secondary objectives!


Q: You mentioned to us your venue for your previous events was the basement under a rodeo arena! That must be such a cool space to play. Tell us a bit how your club arranged the space, as NEOs are always interested in knowing more about organizing better and bigger events.
A: Yes, this one was interesting! We hosted the 2v2 finale to last year’s campaign, along with a 24 player RTT for Warhammer 40K in the world famous “Let Er’ Buck” Room at the Pendleton Round Up Grounds. The room features memorabilia from over 100 years of rodeos at this historic location in Pendleton, Oregon, as well as, according to their website, one of the worlds longest bars! We provided free snacks and non-alcoholic beverages throughout the event, and it was very fun to bring that many players for both game systems together in one place. Now, I have to admit the venue wasn’t without a few drawbacks. The lighting in several different parts of the venue isn’t ideal, and the bathrooms in an old cowboy bar are, to put it nicely, not the best. 

These were the two biggest pieces of feedback we received from players after the event. But overall people loved the idea of having Pendleton Oregon’s first warhammer event hosted at a venue that is an iconic and historic part of the city.  My recommendation for other NEOs out there looking for their next venue is to think a bit outside the box, and see if those unique or otherwise noteworthy locations in your hometown can facilitate your event! If they have the space, the tables, and the facilities to host you there, that can go a long way towards helping with advertising, as you now have a unique venue to promote as part of your experience! 

The other advice I would give is to check with those venues that you might initially assume are out of your price range, and coordinate with other event organizers for other game systems. Where we will be hosting Arcanus this year is the event center of a large resort. Through hosting our AoS narratives alongside a more standard 40,000 tournament, this year we will be able to use a bigger, and much nicer space, while bringing the entire Warhammer community together, and selling enough tickets to cover the cost of a convention style space, with all the accommodations to provide for a great experience!


Q: What would you like to say to players out there, to motivate them to come to War in Arcanus and future events from the Pendleton Wargaming group?
A: While I am very happy to say that we have around 14 or so returning players for this year’s event, and am excited to see how the stories of their armies continues to develop through the years, I am even more excited to see all the players who are joining us for the first time this year. For many of those new folks, this is their first experience with a narrative event, and then there are a few for which this will be their first Warhammer event ever. We even have a group of new players coming from over 8 hours away to join us, which just blows my mind! 

At Pendleton Wargaming, we are dedicated to hosting events that cater to players of all skill and experience levels. In the Pacific Northwest, we are very lucky to have a wide number of skilled and dedicated tournament organizers for matched play AoS, who host Grand Tournaments regularly throughout the year. In Eastern Oregon, we will continue to work hard to develop our narratives, to provide the community with more opportunities to participate in events that are mechanically unique, story driven, and welcoming to players of any experience level. That way, we can say that when it comes to Warhammer: Age of Sigmar in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve got it all! 

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Thank you, Ethan!

We will be following the event online, so please post lots of pictures on social media!

You can find the Event Rules page here for more details and tickets.

There are still tickets available, grab yours before it’s too late!!!
And if they happen to be all taken, sign up for the waitlist: there are always dropouts! (true story)
What do you think about this event?
Do you have any questions for the NEO, and how to grow these games with cool special rules, in your local community?
Leave your comments below!

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