Cities of Death
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Cities of Death is an expansion for the Warhammer 40,000 table top battle game, produced by Games Workshop. The book's predecessor was Codex Battlezone: Cityfight.
Cities of Death introduces rules for fighting battles inside cities and using guerilla warfare. It introduces gaming devices known as stratagems, which give the player the ability to lay traps or enhance his forces, which add flavour to games. It also has sections on modelling city terrain, and examples of armies and army lists modelled around city-fighting. It uses the normal Warhammer 40,000 rules and adds extra parts on, instead of rewriting everything. The Medusa V campaign was launched around the same time as Cities of Death, and was used to promote the book.
Three buildings were released: a Manufactorum (an Adeptus Mechanicus factory), a Sanctum Imperialis (Imperial church), and a Basilica Administratium (Imperial office). In addition, two sets of counters were released alongside the book: one to represent various stratagems, the second for barricades and small terrain pieces.
Along with the buildings are stratagem markers, the basis of Cities of Death, they allow the sort of tactics that would usually be used in urban warfare.
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[edit] Buildings
There are three building sets that can be custom built to nearly any building shape. If you follow the picture on the box you'll end up with a few spare pieces you can use as rubble. The three building sets can also be mixed together to create bigger, more complex buildings for larger games.
[edit] Manufactorum
Manufactorums are sprawling factory complexes. The set can be used to give the battlefield an industrial theme, and opens up some interesting campaign narratives, like stopping the enemy stealing a new piece of technology or weapon.
[edit] Sanctum Imperialis
The walls of the Sanctums are adorned with many carvings of Imperial Saints. These buildings are places of worship and can be used as good "last stand" sort of places, where Imperial forces try to stop the followers of Chaos defiling them.
[edit] Basilica Administratum
The walls of these buildings are encrusted with skulls of particularly worthy scribes. A good mission would be to save a still living one from the ruins. The creepy design of this building makes a good "ancient haunted cathedral" type of place if mixed with Sanctum Imperialis sets.
[edit] Chaos and Ork Buildings
Though no official building sets exist for these two armies, its possible to convert the sets with Chaos glyphs or Orky graffiti if the world they're on is in their hands.
[edit] Stratagems
Cities of Death offers a wide variety of stratagems that players can factor into their army's style of play. Some stratagems suit one particular army than another, but they are useful to all. Stratagems are represented by counters or specially made models made by the players themselves.
[edit] Key Buildings
These stratagems are assigned to buildings. Friendly troops nearby or inside the key building get special bonuses. They are Ammunition Store, Command Centre, Fuel Dump, Medicae facility, Power Generator, Observation Point and Sacred ground.
[edit] Dirty Tricks
When you're fighting something like Chaos, Orks or Tyranids, all sense of honor goes out the window, if it hasn't already. Troops in urban warfare quickly learn a range of sneaky tricks like booby traps, ambushes and even go as far as to knock down unimportant buildings with the enemy inside them. They are Booby Traps, Demolition, Fortifications, Master Snipers, Plunging Fire and Preliminary Bombardment.
[edit] Armoury
If a force is going to be in a city fight for a long period of time, they'll equip themselves with some specialist gear to make things go a little smoother. They are Combat Engineers, Rappeling Lines, Siege Shells and Wrecker.
[edit] Obstacles
Anything to make things harder for the foe is welcome, and cities have a variety of options to keep things difficult for the enemy. They are Barricades, Razor Wire and Tank Traps.
[edit] Deployment
The urban environment allows clever commanders to hide their troops in the ruins. Some are conventional, used methods like Deep Strike and Infiltrate, but one is unique to Cities of Death; Sewer Rats, which let troops crawl through the sewers to emerge from manholes all over the city. While useful, this is a little odd in some places because, if you so wish, you can have something massive like a Carnifex pop out of a drainpipe.
[edit] Armies in Cities of Death
Any army can fight in a Cities of Death game, but most require the player to rethink their tactics and which units to take quite a bit. Armies like the Tau, which are mostly long range fire units, and the highly specialised Eldar are prone to being overwhelmed by stronger or more numerous enemies, and its worth considering taking more close combat orientated units. Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines and Ordos armies like Grey Knights and Battle Sisters fare well due to their well balanced lists of shooting and close combat. Short range armies like Tyranids and Orks can move quickly through the ruins and enter close combat more easily than other armies, though Ork vehicles may be pinned in by the thin streets. Necrons are a bit of a mixed bag. Units like Scarabs, Immortals and Pariahs can hold their own well, and Wraiths and the C'tan, with their ability to pass through walls unhindered make them deadly. However, normally strong Necron units like Destroyers and the Monolith are, most of the time, to large and bulky to fit down the narrow lanes, and their high rate of fire is hindered by the walls of the cities. Deep Striking a Monolith into a City Fight is just asking for trouble
