Coalescence Malign Portents - an Age of Sigmar Narrative Event

I ran a Narrative Event at our local gaming club, Alpha Omega Hobby just outside Boston, MA, last March.
It was a 3-game event, created and coordinated internationally by the NEON group, that local organizers adapted to their specific group.
Featuring story-based linked battles, Skirmish battles, Veteran ability progression and the new special rules of Malign Portents.

Hello all, and apologies for the belated content release. Boy has my job sucked me down a hole!!

These past months I have been focused on Age of Sigmar, and establishing a group of Warhammer players at my local game shop. And thanks to organized Narrative Play becoming increasingly popular in the past 2 years, I joined the NEON (Narrative Event Organizers Network) to run an event.

Malign Portents is an expansion released for Age of Sigmar a couple of months ago, and Games Workshop collaborated with the NEON for them to prepare and event that would use the new rules.

Malign Portents introduces special Prophecy Points, that Heroes in the army can use to trigger magical effects, which take the shape of visions and nasty omens that come to happen at that moment. There are 6 Portents that an army can pick, each with 6 Signs (ie. supernatural effects) that can be triggered.

In addition, each Grand Alliance has a special "Prophet" Hero called a Harbinger, that has a dedicated Portent they can draw on, in addition to one of the regular ones.

Finally, there are Time of War rules for fighting in the Realm of Death, where each unit destroyed feeds magical environmental effects across the table. Very unpredictable, very deadly.

Each NEO (Narrative Event Organizer) that signs up to run a NEON event is given a standard rules package, crafted by the main NEON team. It includes scenarios, general progression abilities, and a scorecard to track player achievements. Games Workshop also picked it up and distributed it on their Community page!

Each NEO is free to adapt the package to their gaming group's ongoing narrative or style of play. This can include even making all of the scenarios Skirmish games, or use a few different scenarios. As long as which Grand Alliance wins can be reported to the NEON main team, the event can be very flexible.

The story of Malign Portents follows the various armies entering the Realm of Death, Shyish, in search of the source of the curses and supernatural blights that plague the Realms. It is suspected it is Nagash's doing, who has been collecting the highly magical Gravesand to build inverted glass pyramids... but what these are meant for is unknown...

Malign Portents has its own website, where special rules were released on a weekly basis as amries fought the undead, and their decisions affected the fate of the Realms.

The specific narrative of the Coalescence Malign Portents event follows several armies who have arrived in Shyish in the hopes of opening the Helfire Gate, a realmgates that connects to the Realm of Fire and is close to Nagash's main fortress.

Lucky for me, at our local store we have been playing a map campaign on the Realm of Fire, so I decided to include this connection in our rules package. The winning Grand Alliance would get to keep that map region: the Lake of Shackled Spirits.

I modified the rules package quite a bit, to introduce alternative scenarios depending on who won each battle. Players fought over a Fortress of Souls (yes, with siege ladders!), guarding a shadeglass pyramid, and over the Haunted Coast to secure passage on a ghostly ship. All these battles took place under the Balemoon, that enhanced Prophecy points for every invading army to interpret Portents.

In the next battle, a squad of each army undertook a mission, either to collect souls from the Soul Well within the Fortress, to follow the skeleton work train to the Helfire Gate, or to scour the Shyishan town for relics for the final battle. 

The final battle saw four armies converging on the Helfire Gate, while the remaining two armies fled to the Realm of Fire, to regroup and take the gate from the other side.

It was a huge messy slaughter, to control the pylons that kept the gate closed.

The winners, securing the gate on both ends, were the forces of Chaos.

However, the international Coalescence results, from all events around the world, turned up Death as the final winner.

But the real win in our event was the narrative gaming: players really liked the story-like underpinnings or the linked battles, and especially the fact that their Prophet Hero kept gaining abilities after each battle, and collecting magical relics.

Our prizes were symbolic for now, but hopefully with more traction we can make a bigger event and our store will contribute some more meaty prizes :)

Keep on the lookout for more NEON events.
The Coalescence main narrative Event (Desolation of Eristrat) is going to take place June 23rd, so find a local gaming venue near you!! Join a Narrative Event or run one! :)

There is also the Grand Narrative Event at Nova Open, which will feature skyships!!

The Narrative Community is growing folks! Find one near you, or grow your own! :)