One of the things that I have been thinking about lately is the impact of having one tournament scenario. It tends to lead to a certain same-ness in list building, where the number of formations is critical, as is the consideration of the BTS formation, upgrades are crammed in if points are available at the end, etc. Note that there are some big generalisations in that last sentence, and there are plenty of exceptions, but that is how things "feel" for me at the moment.

Around the same time I was having this realisation, I picked up a copy of the General's Handbook for Age of Sigmar games.
For those of you who don't know, Age of Sigmar was struggling very badly as a product, thanks in part to the community's desire to play tournaments, and the fact that it wasn't really made with that in mind. But Games Workshop listened to the community (and continue to engage with them on an almost unprecedented level), and in conjunction with some of the top tournament players and organisers in the UK, sat down in Nottingham and developed rules for tournament games.

These scenarios had a variety of different victory conditions in them, to help to encourage lists that weren't just taking the most powerful units and upgrades. There were several little bonuses if you didn't spend every last point, for example, and some missions placed importance on the number of units controlling an objective, or the type of unit controlling it, and similar.

The thing I liked most about them though was how balanced they were for tournament play. To do well you had to take armies that covered a few bases, and weren't just collections of the "best" things in an army list. Games Workshop have invested a lot of resources into developing these missions to generate the best tournament scenarios that they can.

So I had a look at these missions from an Epic Armageddon player's point of view, and thought that I'd have a go at adapting them. Age of Sigmar is activation based to a certain extent, and isn't really a true I Go-You Go format, so has some similarities to Epic Armageddon. However there are also some big differences, and I have tried to smooth out these bumps as best I can, while trying to stay true to the scenarios themselves.

The attached file lists the scenarios, and a few rules for set-up, deployment and the like. It will encourage different lists to the Grand Tournament Scenario, and will hopefully maintain a reasonable amount of balance for tournament play while adding some variety. It doesn't require any changes to the core rules (as far as I can tell anyway), so should be fairly straightforward to just pick up and play. You may have to make some changes to your standard tournament list to be successful though, taking things that you mightn't normally take.

So have a look, see what you think, try and break it if you like, and let us all know your thoughts.

***Edit*** I've updated the file based on some good feedback. Triumphs are different, giving more advantage to the player with the lower activation count.

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http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

I'm about to kickstart Epic again at my local club and will definitely be giving these a go!

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Sounds good mate.
Let me know how it goes. I think the missions are a little easier to get your head around for newer (and rusty) players too, as you only have to remember one victory condition!

Also, for those interested I have a little more info about some of the thought process behind the document.

Linky

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http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

Nice work. I am currently developing a small, branching campaign to play a few games next year and this will help.

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Walk softly. And carry a big gun.

Hi Matty,

Totally agree about the lack of variety with only one tournament scenario - these look excellent for club games on a pickup basis. Will definitely give them a go next time i am playing regularly again.

Couple of initial comments (just thinking out loud really) :

1. Considering the concerns about the "activation war", wonder if the triumphs should be allocated to the player with the least activations rather than the least points ? Being down on points is rare in EA in my experience to be honest, and if you are its normally an odd 5 or 10 points because a unit costs a odd number of points - hardly a game changer. I think allocating on points would discourage people upgrading formations even more, just in case that spare 25 or 50 points gives a free re-roll in the game.

2. The Scenario "Three places of Power" might be unbalance with armies which naturally have a unusual amount of inspiring (guard) or leader (orks) troops. Might be better to give each player a number of tokens (2 per 1000 pnts?) which can be assigned to units in the players armies which become points scoring units. Could represent army engineers, psykers, spec ops, etc - whatever works for the armies being played. Just makes the game fairer.

Great work on the document btw.

Looks grand - will have a crack at some of these down the club once the GT is out of the way! Great work - thank you.

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@Steve, no worries mate. Let us know how they go.

@Blip,
A) that's a great suggestion. Low activation armies get the re-roll and the first turn.

B) Take more snipers I'll try and get a game in of this one vs orks and see how it goes. I'm not getting much gaming time in at the moment though, so would appreciate feedback if anyone does play 3 places of power.

Cheers all for the feedback.

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http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

I got a 3k game of Border War this evening, although we only managed two turns out of a planned four due to slow play and a very busy club night - batrep should be up in the next couple of days.

Overall it had a lot more tactical depth than I'd initially feared, with there being a delicate balancing act between pushing forwards in the first turn and not over-extending.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Sounds good Ian. I'm looking forward to the report.
All constructive criticism is welcome!

I guess what I'm most interested in are the triumphs, and if they unbalanced the game.

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http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

This is a fantastic idea. Echo what was said about activation counts for triumphs rather than point difference. One issue I can see though, it can be rather difficult to have a table with dimensions 8'x4'.

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Necron AC (click to see current Necron list threads)
Toronto Wargaming Group

http://wargamingtrader.com/epic-batrep- ... eed-freeks

Please note that we didn't use the triumphs, instead letting the lower-activation player auto-win the strategy roll-off in turn one.

So no feedback for you on the triumphs.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Nice report Ian. I loved that huge intermingled engage!
A strong first turn put the speed freaks on the back foot from the start, which can be hard to come back from when points are accumulated at the end of every turn.

@Atension, good point on the 8x4, I'll change it to 8x6. Agree on the triumphs being based on activation count too.

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http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

Yeah, without that mistake on the Ork part it would have been a lot less one-sided! I would like to get a longer more normal game in at some point, it would be interesting to see how the initial Speed Freeks advantages of huge numbers of fast units slowly gets worn away by the resilience of the Death Guard.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

P.S. We have a few more tweaks we're going to try before using the mission in a tournament alongside the Grand Tournament Scenario:

Triumphs
The force with the lowest number of activations in their list (not the one that finished deploying first) will get to choose who goes first in turn one. This is because the number of formations deployed normally doesn't have any direct correlation to activation discrepancies, especially for aircraft-heavy or teleport/drop pod/air-assault-heavy lists.

Garrisons
We're planning on either:
A. Each player can garrison one formation (following the usual limitations) off the objective totally in their half of the table.
B. Each player can have as many garrisons as they want (following the usual limitations) off the objective totally in their half of the table, but the formation must be completely within 30cm of that objective.
Probably option A. We looked at allowing standard garrisoning off the near objective, but but a fairly limited number of scouting screens could easily make it near-impossible to reach the far objective in the first turn or two.

'Only Contesting' Units
Count as half the number of units (round down) when counting up opposing force units to hold an objective. Basically so that my Plague Zombies don't get insanely good.

Wraithgates
Are more problematic... Possibly have them placed midway between that player's near objective and their table edge, as having it replace either the near objective or a midline objective could be extremely powerful.

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The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Hey mate, did have a read of this yesterday but had no time to respond. Still haven't tbh !

Looked like a good game. Looking forward to giving it a go.

Good amendments added above. Option A (1 garrisons) would get my vote.

Any need for more objectives to spread "tough" forces a little wider ? Did you play on 6x4? If so how did you distribute the objectives? Any need for a secondary mission do you think ? (i know its hard to draw conclusions from one game).