In the nightmare future of the 41st millennium, armies battle one another to annihilation amid the shattered ruins of vast cities. Warriors engage in bitter close-quarters battle whilst mighty battle tanks smash through crumbling buildings, grinding bricks and enemy both beneath their treads.The Cities of Death expansion is a book from back around 4th edition of Warhammer 40K (just before the release of 5th ed.) introducing the rules for playing battles in packed urban environments.
The rules have changed a decent amount since then, and many of the rules for covering terrain, ruins, rubble, tank traps, and occupying buildings can be found in the regular rules book in 7th edition. However, you can still add in a lot of variety and spice into your games by taking a look through this old supplement, which you should be able to find second hand for relatively cheap. I have found that Cities of Death is a cool thing to play with and create campaigns or novelty games for yourself. If you're interested in either where two forces are fighting over a ruined city, or simply want to make a change in the monotony of the standard missions from the rulebook every once in a while, Cities of Death could be a great way to explore those options. In this article I'll be taking a look at the contents of the book and making a case for why you might want to give it a try for yourself. Even if you aren't interested in the campaign building and storytelling parts of the gaming experience, there are still some really interesting mechanistic aspects to Cities of Death that can provide you with a new angle on your competition.To begin, you roll off to determine which of the you will fight with, which show how densely packed your city becomes and the size of your gaming area. This changes things like maneuverability, line of sight, etc.
And can potentially make things like and flamer weapons more useful to provide some variety to your listbuilding. In addition to the regular dangerous terrain and ruins rules in the main rulebook, it also introduces specific rules for 'Dangerous City Ruins' which have even more deadly effects and can make things challenging even more situations where dangerous terrain wouldn't normally be an issue. You may actually be interested in fielding fewer vehicles, because the dangerous terrain can be particularly hazardous for them, and can actually destroy vehicles rather than simply immobilizing them. You can also destroy normal ruins, elevating them to this 'super dangerous' status, and even further reduce them to rubble, blocking line of sight and altering the battlefield as play proceeds, increasing your options and providing some level of uncertainty into the game. You will be able to hid units inside of ruins and get the cover save they provide, but your opponent can attempt to bring the building down on their heads, smashing them with falling debris and pinning them in place. In these ways, as well as some others, the rules and setup of the missions can force you to, and give you a breath of fresh air when you face an opponent with a list built differently than the standard 'netlist' power build for his or her force. The expansion book also has unique deployment rules: units set up in order depending on their force org position (and can be modified by deployment stratagems, which I will cover later).
The book contains many strange missions and rules tweaks to mix up your gaming, providing an interesting twist on how you play the games that can break the monotony of the same 6 main rulebook missions. Overall, there will be some places where you may need adjustments to fit with 7th ed rules - only certain unit types count as scoring, for example. It up to you which method you use, so long as you and your opponent can figure things out in a cordial manner beforehand. If you think you can handle that, let's dive into the aspects of Cities of Death that make it so compelling as an alternative method of playing. StratagemsOne of the features of Cities of Death that I have found to be most interesting are the stratagems.
Depending on the size of your battle, you can select between one and three of them, and they come in different categories. These are available to allow for some customization of your force's specialties and provide additional tactical options for your force as they fight within the city. It also helps to create and really cinematic and engaging experience if you're playing from a narrative perspective, as your specialist forces take advantage of their unique skills to optimize their ability to fight within this dense environment. The first stratagem type are the Key Building Stratagems, which can apply to any building within the field of play and can benefit your army, as many ruined structures continue to serve a specific function which your force can capitalize on. These contain stratagems like an ammunition store, allowing rerolls on shooting for a turn, a medicae center, giving feel no pain to the models within it, or a fuel dump, which allows you to add 1 to the strength of a template weapon among other possible benefits.
There also are Dirty Tricks Stratagems, which help represent the grizzled city fighting veteran status of your forces and demonstrate their experience using the environment to their advantage. This set of stratagems includes fun tools like booby traps to rig buildings with explosives, master snipers stratagem which allows your sniping units to be more effective, or the plunging fire stratagem that gives advantages to units in high floors of building shooting down upon their enemies from above.
Another stratagem category are the Armoury Stratagems that have gems like combat engineers to nullify enemy fortifications or scan for booby traps, among other benefits. You could include rappelling lines to assault directly down onto enemies hiding high atop a building from a skimmer passing overhead, or add siege shells to your tanks' strength 10 weaponry for leveling buildings. Using the Obstacles Stratagems allow you to place razor wire, tank traps, or barricades to your advantage and provide cover for your forces while hampering the mobility of theirs. Finally, the Deployment Stratagems allow for the activation of infiltrators or deep striking which are normally not allowed in Cities of Death, or my personal favorite: 'Sewer Rats' which allow your forces to traverse across the battlefield through tunnels and other tight spaces and give you great mobility and visuals. Adding to the excitement of picking these stratagems and applying them to your battle plans is the fact that you and your opponent alternate selecting these stratagems, which allows you to pick ones specifically to counter theirs. If you opponent goes for booby traps, you might want combat engineers to nullify their effectiveness. If you select tank traps or razor wire, your opponent might pick a deployment stratagem to maneuver around them as a counter, or the Wrecker stratagem to destroy them.
This gives an extra layer of mental dueling before the dice rolling even begins, and can really heighten the intensity of the game. These stratagems also allow you to plan ahead for what kind of list you want to bring, and really select the stratagems that will enhance the effectiveness of your forces depending on. If you're a relatively defensive player, you can pick up obstacles and fortifying abilities, where a more aggressive player might want ones that allow for offensive ability or maneuverable forces. It all helps you play your way and have a great time doing it, which is really the end goal of any 40K game in general.MissionsThe book also comes packed with several missions, some of which are the 'standard' set, and others that fall into the 'Special Missions', which provide additional details, a deeper narrative experience, and unusual gaming challenges and situations. There are 11 missions in all, 5 standard and 6 special, which you can choose to use and provide new styles of play if you would rather not use general missions. Of course, you're always able to play general rulebook missions using city fighting rules and stratagems, so you can really tailor the experience to your gaming group's preferences.
That being said, if you choose to use the maelstrom missions from 7th edition in conjunction with the Cities of Death rules, you can have a ridiculously entertaining game as it forces you to move around the board in terrain setup and rules where it is difficult and dangerous to do so. The book also has two pages on how to design your own missions, so you can quite literally do anything with this expansion book that you see fit, and the only limitations are your imagination and your.The first standard mission, Firesweep, involves planting flags on captured buildings, and both players traverse the map attempting to capture buildings while taking away from the others. The mission High Ground is essentially king of the hill, where the first building placed on the table is the important one and both players fight to be the sole force occupying the building at the conclusion of the game. The Domination mission involves attempting to clear out the enemy units from ruins and hold them against counter attacks. This differs from the first mission in that you must maintain a troop presence in your dominated buildings, rather than simply planting a flag and moving on. Mission 4, Maximum Attrition, has both armies seeking total annihilation of their opponent's forces, gaining victory points per enemy unit destroyed.
The fifth mission is called Urban Assault, in which you attempt to get into your opponent's deployment zone and capture their defended building or ruin.The special missions are different in that you likely need to build your list a little different to suit the role you will be filling as either the attacker or the defender, rather than the normal pitched battle style seen in the standard missions. The first is The Gauntlet, in which the attackers must attempt to break through the defender's forces and escape the table.
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The Total Devastation mission in which the attacker must destroy as many buildings as they can, while the defender can better fortify them. In Relief Force, the attacker must secure a single building by the end of the game.
In Grand Assault, the attacker must place flags on all of the buildings in the defender's deployment zone. The Thunder Run mission involves battling along a road that run the length of the map, and the Assassination mission uses a special optional Force Org Chart, and the attacker attempts to destroy the defender's HQ unit before the game ends. The fluff in this book is pretty cool, and explains some battles from lore in short story format, which give you the ability to come up with short narratives to fit the battles you want to create and provide atmosphere and purpose to your gaming.
The book also contains tons of cool pictures both in art and photography depicting city battles in the 41st millennium. There are displays of armies built specifically with the city fighting aesthetic in mind, and are specially modeled to look as though they are in an urban combat environment. There are details about how to build your own markers to demonstrate different stratagems, such as an ammo stockpile for the ammo dump stratagem to make things more immersive. The great GW terrain kits are also on display, many of which were released in tandem with this book and it gives great detail about how to really make your force, your table, and your narrative your own. There even is a pretty cool section about how to make a setup for an Ork city and how it would differ from a general imperial city.OverallCities of death is a great expansion that details some new scenarios and unique ways to play them.They really don't change the way 40k plays. It does reward certain builds and penalizes others, and you may find it's easier to capture buildings with smaller squads rather than larger ones and that you will want to make sure your vehicles have some way of re-rolling dangerous terrain tests because they have to take a lot of them on Cities of Death maps (if you're brave enough to take vehicles at all!). Ultimately the game boils down to lots of fun, utilizing lots of infantry with emphasis on close range firefights and melee abilities.
The book also allows for you to really add another element to any campaigns you are playing by featuring battles within a city that require different tactics and strategies, and can make for quite a memorable experience. Even if you don't intend to use it to play games, it's a great book simply for the visuals and cool ideas alone, and I strongly recommend it.