“But the prisoners,” I pressed him again. “What have you done with them?” “I have discovered a new use for the servitor apparatus,” the Adept said, smiling at me with bone-white teeth.
He was only too happy to demonstrate his machine to me. He threw the switch, and I recoiled in horror as the Chaos Marine—whom I had just slain—rose from his slab. But there was no recognition in his milky gaze; only a deep and cruel indifference.
“I remove most of the brain, you see,” the Adept continued. “But by programming rudimentary behaviors for their bodies, I give them a simple kind of intelligence. Predictable, yes, but quite relentless en masse. You will see…”
All around me, bodies began to stir under their sheets. The dead Traitor took a step toward me. I saw now the chainsword in his hand.
Emperor forgive me—I fled. But I swore to return with an army of my own, to burn the Adept atop the bodies of his abominable creatures…
Let’s face it: it can be hard to find an opponent for Warhammer 40K. But now you can play by yourself, using simple rules to automate the deployment and behavior of your enemy’s army.
Heresy? No. It’s not quite the same as playing against a human partner, but it’s useful if you’re still learning the game, want to practice with an unfamiliar army, or simply want to have fun playing 40K on your own. You can also use these rules to play cooperatively with your friends against the “A.I.”
Rules for automating units have appeared in the Warhammer world before (see the Epic 40K rules for Imperial Robots and Ork “Natural Instincts,” or the Legio Cybernetica in “White Dwarf” #104), but I have attempted to simplify these ideas to make them easy to remember and implement, using nothing more than the 7th Edition rules and the scatter die required for a regular game of 40K.
Enjoy!
Read more about The Solo Heresy here!
Download the Tabletop Simulator Starter Kit here!