Scenario Review: Wrath of Shelse & A Terrifying Harvest
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Best Case Scenario is a new regular column written by Martin from Narrative Labs, reviewing narrative play scenarios, missions and battleplans for Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar and more. Check out Narrative Labs on Twitch, Twitter and Facebook for the latest streaming times, and for some fantastic interactive narrative gaming.
Across the huge numbers of publications for Warhammer 40,000 you’ll find a large number of narrative play scenarios. At Narrative Labs we love exploring these scenarios on our live shows. It’s fair to say that there are some real gems out there.
For this scenario review I’m looking at one of my favourite Warhammer 40,000 narrative missions - a classic mission from the ancient days of 6th and 7th editions of 40K. This mission first appeared in the Altar of War supplement for Codex: Tyranids as ‘A Terrifying Harvest’ and was then updated in the campaign supplement Shield of Baal: Leviathan as ‘The Wrath of Shelse’. Tyranids are my absolute favourite Warhammer 40,000 army, so maybe it’s no surprise I’ve picked this one to review - but I love this scenario for more than just that!
I’ve talked in a previous article about how I judge a narrative scenario, so I won’t go into too much detail about that here.
The concept behind the mission is a civilian evacuation. Imperial forces are trying to escort luckless citizens out of the danger zone before they’re caught and consumed by Tyranid invaders (not a pleasant fate - you can see why they’d be keen to avoid it!). It’s one of the rare scenarios where there are ‘non-combatants’ involved. I can only really think of one other (an Imperial Armour scenario where you have to evacuate a dignitary through hostile T’au territory), but you may know of more – let me know in the comments if you do.
In this mission three civilian markers are placed along the long centre line of the table. The goal for the defender is to move these civilian groups off the short table edge to save them. In the original version ‘A Terrifying Harvest’ either table edge is an escape route, but in the updated ‘Wrath of Shelse’ only one short table edge can be used. The attacking Tyranids are trying to harvest the civilians. In the original version they achieve this by pushing them off either of the long table edges. In the updated version the Tyranids harvest the marker if the closest model to a marker at the start of the Tyranid turn is a Tyranid unit (there was no range to this, which seems odd looking back, but it never really causes any issues). Each civilian population was worth 6 victory points to the Imperium if it was evacuated or 6 victory points to the Tyranids if it was harvested.
Wrath of Shelse
Having played both, I can tell you that the original version is next to impossible for the Tyranid player to win. The Imperium could easily get the two markers furthest from the centre off the nearest short table edges in 1 or 2 turns. Even if the Tyranids could prevent this, the effort required to move them 24” off the long table edges wasn’t achievable by the end of the game. The updated version resolved this and also introduced a kill points mechanic to help resolve ties with each side earning 1 victory point for each enemy unit destroyed.
I love the narrative of this scenario, partly because I love Tyranids and partly because it’s very different from any other scenario. Even other escort or escape missions usually involve escorting military forces, rather than civilians. In many cases, you can imagine the Imperium would be less concerned about civilians in a war zone, but in this instance, it’s about denying biomass to the Xenos horrors.
The victory conditions match the narrative of the mission perfectly, although the updated version does a far better job of it than the original. While I can see the Tyranids trying to chase the civilians off the table edge to be harvested, it’s far easier to harvest dead biomass later than trying to corral fresh biomass in the middle of a warzone, and the Tyranids have never come across as being fussy eaters (sorry genestealer cultists, but you most definitely are on the menu, there’s no point denying it!)
A Terrifying Harvest
While I think the kill points victory condition distracts from the core objective, it is an important mechanic to help resolve ties, which are fairly common with one civilian marker evacuated, one harvested and one still alive on the table by the end of the game. However, the points available for each civilian marker makes them the focus of the game, with the defender trying to block the Tyranids while they desperately try to get the civilians to safety.
The scenario introduces a unique mechanic for the narrative toolbox – the civilians needing to be evacuated. In both versions of the mission, the civilians are represented by large Blast Markers. If you’ve never played a game of Warhammer 40,000 prior to 8th edition this might be an alien concept. It’s a 5” round marker (usually made of plastic) with a small hole in the centre. This was used to determine how many models were hit by certain types of weapon - weapons that in 9th edition would usually instead have the ‘Blast’ special rule. It was often used with another archaic tool – the scatter die (although Necromunda players will tell you that both are still very much alive and well).
While you can probably obtain large blaster markers fairly easily, it’s probably easy to create a suitable substitute. I’ve never had the models to put real civilians on the board which would definitely add to the cinematic feel of the game, but at least I can still make suitable “nom nom nom” noises every time my Tyranids harvest a unit.
The markers each move 2D6” a turn towards the escape table edge. In the original the markers would move 2D6” depending on who was the closest unit – so they would often end up spread over the table in a more random fashion, perhaps a more realistic representation of how civilians might respond in such a horrifying situation, and this would be how the Tyranids chased the markers off the table. It would be interesting to see how this original version would work with the newer reduced table sizes for Warhammer 40,000, but maybe still with there being only one exit table edge. Something I should try maybe.
The updated version, ‘Wrath of Shelse’ also had a second mechanic, one which I’ve seen in a number of other scenarios since, in one form or another. Shelse (just in case you were wondering about the name) is a wave of water that travels from one short table edge to the other, destroying everything in its path, including the civilian markers. Any markers caught count as being harvested by the Tyranids, who are more than happy to drain the water to get to the bodies below.
I’ll be honest – I’ve never played the scenario with this wave mechanic as it didn’t suit the story I was trying to tell at the time. However, I can definitely see this being something that could be really useful in a lot of different stories and it really adds an extra time pressure to the game. I could see this being used in a mission to recover some valuable tech (or magical artefacts in Age of Sigmar) from a location that’s about to be flooded. There’s no reason the wave has to represent water either – it could be a Nurgle-spawned plague of flies, a dangerous wave of radiation, a vast firestorm or any number of other deadly natural or unnatural forces.
The scenario is quite specific - trying to save a bunch of civilians from rampaging Tyranids, which might make you think initially that there’s not much you can do to adapt it to other stories. However, I’ve found there are a few alternative narratives you can apply to this mission.
One version I’ve played is having the defender command a Chaos force, with the civilians being sacrifices in a dark ritual. The chaos forces are trying to move them into a specific location for the ritual, while the attacker is trying to rescue them (or at least deny them to the Chaos forces). I can also see you having Drukhari as the attacker instead of Tyranids, looking to capture slaves.
You could modify the scenario by having one or two ‘key civilians’ within the population markers that need to be found by the attacker (or maybe even by the defender – with the attacker wanting not to destroy them, but actually rescue them before the defender realises who they’re escorting). Maybe it could be a spy or they could be carrying an item of significance. At the start of the game, you could randomly roll to see where the target is located (maybe this is done in secret so only one player knows the result) and the game ends when the target is captured or escapes. Potentially you might want to move the markers closer towards the centre of the table for this, however, so they can’t escape quite as quickly if they happen to be on the marker closest to the escape edge.
This scenario is one of my all-time favourite Warhammer 40,000 scenarios – partly because it involves Tyranids (did I mention I love Tyranids) and partly because it’s quite unique in comparison to other scenarios. Writing this review has made me want to play it again with the updated 40K rules and find out if it’s still as enjoyable. I can see me crafting a new scenario for an upcoming campaign even as I write this!
Let me know if you’ve played this scenario before (either version) and if you’ve modified it or used it in different narrative settings? I’d love to hear your thoughts. And, if you have a favourite scenario that you’d like to see reviewed then let me know!
