Gen Con 2009 Special Event

As you’ve seen during the last few months, the DDM Guild has been pushing the game in new directions. The last few months has seen the release of new item cards, with more to be released each year. (Some very soon.) If you’ve played in our online league, you’ve seen the testing of new constructed formats, including warbands built around keywords instead of factions. We are taking this to the next level at Gen Con, where players will play module D3: Drow Insurrection.

If you’ve been following the scenarios, you know that a drow isn’t a drow isn’t a drow. Sure, they’re all nasty, but they’re all proud, and they don’t necessarily like each other. Each house has its own foibles. I suppose one could say that a drow house has many skeletons in its closet and have it be truthful on numerous levels.

The insurrection in D3 is actually the clash of two houses: House P’Ortia and House Scy’Todes. House Scy’Todes has been raiding while masquerading as House P’Ortia for several months, aggravating the neighboring races and clans. This in turn has led to violent reprisals against the drow house.

As House P’ortia raced to determine what was happening, House Scy’Todes launched a vicious attack directly against them. However, it just failed to catch them by surprise. Thus began a fight to the death; drow tradition demands that when one house attacks another, it must eliminate it with no trace, or face persecution itself. Will Scy’Todes destroy P’Ortia before it can mobilize its scattered resources? You will decide with the first sneak peak at Gen Con.

Players should bring two 200-point warbands for the event; one for each side. (You'll be assigned to a side after registration.) Each house's warband will be built using the rules on their particular Campaign Card. Faction restrictions don't apply. However, you may include only creatures with the listed keywords in your warband. Read each Campaign Card carefully to determine the special rules for building warbands for each house.

In addition, you may notice that each house grants bonuses to the basic stats of creatures in that house and may give special powers to some or all of the creatures in your warband. This will probably influence your warband-building choices.

Gen Con will be a great testbed for these Campaign Cards, which offer great possibilities for future scenario play and perhaps even for organized play using keywords. There's even a concept for team play. As you can see, we think the format has real potential.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts at Gen Con, or, if you can’t make it, leave them below!