by Peter Atkinson

If you don’t think Map Campaigns are for you – READ ON – because you are precisely the target audience. Secrets of the Agloraxi is a global Matched Play event bringing all the best aspects of a map campaign to a competitive wargaming audience.

Three cultures each unite under a banner of necessity.  As ancient rivalries clash and alliances are tested, these diverse forces must fight for dominance in a world on the brink of chaos.

Secrets of the Agloraxi

Welcome to the Plastic Craic Global Campaign 2025!  What we’re launching here today is a Matched Play Map Campaign aimed at competitive and casually competitive players.  We’ve got multiple teams spread across five countries and three continents, logging their games against their own local opponents and gathering together between rounds to conquer the map.

The idea is that this map campaign will sit as an extra layer on top of whatever games and armies people are already running – so you can play 100% GHB Matched Play in its purest form, and still enjoy the emerging storyline of conquering The Flamescar Plateau and uncovering the lost technology of the Agloraxi Empire.

Who are the Agloraxi?

You can learn more about the Agloraxi Empire here but the short version is that they’re an ancient (and extinct) civilization from the Realm of Aqshy.  The Agloraxi were legendary for their mighty warmachines, including:

• The Prismatikon, an amplified sun-laser powerful enough to blast entire armies out of existence
• The Colossi, gigantic automata assembled at the Titanworks who could be harnessed for construction work of their own – or punishing brutality on the field of battle

The delicate balance of power in the Flamescar Plateau will be tipped into a rout by whichever army can discover the secrets of the Agloraxi, rebuild the Titanworks and crush their enemies beneath the heels of the Colossi.

Further Reading

We did also talk about the Agloraxi here on PC quite recently, as a faction we’d like to see in-game at some point:

Angry, Bearded Babies and Sun-Lazers that Could Drop a God: The Factions We’d Love to See in AOS

The Teams

Secrets of the Agloraxi was opened up to all of our Patrons and we’ve divided them up into three teams:

Free Ghur Corsairs

• P’tit Fut – Gloomspite
• QldThunder – Gloomspite
• Furythrow2 – Kruleboyz
• Catfish Billy – Kruleboyz
• Maximus – Kruleboyz

The Free Ghur Corsairs are a ruthless band of Orruk and Grot pirates who sail the treacherous seas of the Mortal Realms, plundering merchant ships and coastal settlements. Known for their savage raiding tactics and chaotic, unpredictable nature, they are fiercely united under their charismatic (and often mad) leaders, whose vision of freedom on the high seas keeps the crew loyal and bloodthirsty.

Cult of the Agloraxi

• ThomasX – Nighthaunt
• Xander – S2D
• Manic – S2D
• John Triplow – Nurgle

The Cult of the Agloraxi is a fanatical group of Chaos worshippers who believe their ancestors — the once-mighty rulers of a vast, ancient empire — have returned from the afterlife to guide them. Visited by spectral manifestations of their forebears, the cultists are driven by the vision of resurrecting their long-fallen civilization, now empowered by the dark blessings of the Chaos Gods. Obsessed with reclaiming the power and glory of the Agloraxi dynasty, they seek to plunge the world into chaos, believing that only through destruction and upheaval can the empire’s former greatness be restored.

Drakmire Lords in Exile

• Graal – Seraphon
• Farmhammer – Stormcast
• Will – Cities
• Bingus – Sons of Behemat

The Lords in Exile once ruled the prosperous city of Drakmire, until the arrival of a band of Ogors seeking refuge within the city’s walls. Initially welcomed as mercenaries and labourers, the Ogors cunningly ingratiated themselves into the city’s criminal underworld, gradually consolidating power. Over time, they transformed into a ruthless gangster-politician class, corrupting the city’s leadership and manipulating the system for their own gain. With the Ogors ultimately controlling the city’s politics, the Drakmire Lords were ousted, their noble bloodline shattered. Now exiled, they rely on cunning alliances, dark magic, and brutal mercenaries to one day return to their city and crush the Ogors who betrayed them.

How the map works

We’re using the map from the famous Firestorm campaign, but none of its campaign rules. Those AOS1 rules were fun but extremely narrative, with lopsided armies and thematic but whacky rules. That’s fine if you’re playing within your local group and everyone has bought in, but it’s not going to work when our players are spread out across multiple continents and just playing regular games against their own opponents. Plus, our community skews casually competitive, so a lot of people will want to practice 2000 point matched play armies and missions.

This campaign accomodates all of that by keeping the narrative to the map. It doesn’t intrude at all on the actual games everyone is playing – but then once we step away from the table, we’re conquering locations, earning resources, blasting each other’s cities with sun lasers and setting up group chats where we can plot our moves and insult the Order players behind their backs.

Campaign Rounds

The core rhythm of this campaign is two-week rounds.  In each round, players can earn Wins, Material and DPs for their team in a number of ways.  The aim is to reward people for playing, for winning and enjoying the hobby – while keeping it easy to cap out in each category. If you play one game every couple of weeks and generally get into it, you’ll easily earn max points for your team.

At the end of each two-week cycle, we’ll run through the Conquer Phase where teams conquer sections of the map, and earn and spend resources. Teams will be competing to earn two resources in Secrets of the Agloraxi:

1. Materiel.  This represents the resources harvested from the land under your control as well as booty taken from battle  It is an in-game currency that can be spent on actions within the campaign.
2. Domination Points.  This is the game’s main win condition.  Domination Points (DPs) are a record of enemies defeated, lands conquered and the glorious achievements of your civilization.  It’s basically VPs, but for the campaign.

Each map location offers a set number of Materiel (blue) and Domination Points (red) each round to the team that controls it.  In this example, the Scoured Forest offers 1 Material and 2 Domination Points:

There are also special map locations for Starting Locations, the Realmgate and several Shards of the Prismatikon. 

Earning and spending resources

Players can earn points for their teams in a lot of ways (playing and winning games, hobby and narrative – which can mean naming your characters or writing a few sentences on your army’s background and motivations. It’s very easy to cap out in every round – we’re not just dishing out homework for the sake of it. There are also “Once per Campaign” bonus DPs for contributing the best and most exciting key moments or learning points from your games or doing a thematic conversion. For example if I was playing myself, I might give the unit champ in a shooting unit a sun-laser rifle as looted Agloraxi tech, that sort of thing.

Total Wins in each round are a currency that gives you first dibs on conquering map locations – including conquering the territory of your opponents. So that’s how we’ve set about keeping the commitment low while making every game count.

And there’s a few ways you can spend that Materiel: conquering extra map locations (teams with more wins can steal territory from those with fewer), building forts to prevent your locations being conquered and zapping enemy cities from across the board with Prismatikon shards!

The full rules are here for anyone curious, including a minor catch-up mechanic to prevent the four-player teams from being disadvantaged:

So teams are rewarded for doing well, but you can certainly imagine a scenario where one team shoots off to an early lead, then finds a whole bunch of Prismatikon sun-lasers beaming down on them.

Let’s go!

So that’s a wrap! The alliances are set, the armies are on the march and the map is ripe to be conquered.

We’ll check back in as the Campaign’s results and emerging narrative as it all progresses – should be fun!

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