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I love the ideas of having random troops in games adding an unexpected element to the game!  Say playing the escalating engagement scenario and whoever wins is the attacker for the campaign.
6 points are assigned a number.
Each side write an 18,000 pt list and splits it anyway they want between 6 points secretly.
After troops are assinged a dice is rolled by attacker to see which is played (with attacker allowed to reroll).
During the game formations are allowed to withdraw by moving off their own table edge.
After the game whole formations that are destroyed stay destroyed.
Formations on the winning side of the battle still surviving must stay put, they may be reinforced but nothing may leave.
Sides may move 1 formation from every position (6 total) or deploy as many as is available from reserve.
Defender then becomes Attacker/counter-attacker.
continues for as long as you want or until one side concedes as they can see no hope of victory.

e.g.

game 1 = 3000pts escalation A vs B  A=orks  B=guard
A wins and is now attacker
both sides generate 18k points of troops and can split them between 6 positions or leave in reserves
B knows they will be defending in missions so takes 12k worth of siegemasters,3K AMTL and 3k elysians for any counterattacks.
B deploys 2k of siegemasters to each point and keeps AMTL and elysians in reserve.
A takes 6k speed freaks,6k OGBM and 6k infantry heavy normal orks.
A deploys 3k of speed freaks to point 3-4 and 1k OGBM to point 3-4.  A also deploys 1k of orks to points 2-5 to scout out the defences.
A rolls for position and rolls a 1.
As they have no troops there they elect to roll again rolling 5.
They have to accept this result and play the game.
The orks are hopelessly outmatched by the artillery and defense works and withdraw early on suffering few losses.
Both Sides reorganise
B places his 3k AMTL over points 5+6 hoping the orks are still only there in a small force.
Player A places another 1k normal orks at points 2+5 just in case there is a small counterattack.
The guard player rolls a 5 and goes for it, easily winning.
Reorganise again.
A deploys all remaining OGBM to point 5 and remaining orks to point 2.
B moves superheavy tanks to support counter-attack expecting it to be countered by gargants.
A roll a 4 and attack.
A wins suffering heavvy losses to speedfreak mobs but OGBM forces suffer few losses due to lack of guard anti titan weapons.

rinse and repeat.

I may try this out as it requires people to think out side of a single deployment.  Maybe all initial missions play the assualt mission.  The counterattack is a normal game etc.

there could even be a map based around two sets of defenses facing each other :
One half of the map:

        Pos   1    2    3    4    5    6
no mans land           cleanse
DEF     scen:          Assault
-DEF    scen2        normal game
city                    assault

if the attacker loses in no mans land then they become defender and all troops are pulled back and redeployed.

loads of extra rules can be added in e.g.
reinforcement rolls each side gets d6 x 500points to place in their reserves.

Rapid reaction forces: defender may have up to 3 seperate 1000pt RR forces.  Each one covers 2 positions and may be added to the defenders force.

Preliminary bombardment = every indirect fire weapon in the attackers reserves section is allowed an activation in the first turn with unlimited range.  If the activation is failed the gunners got the wrong co-ordinates and the defender may carry out the attack on any unit on either side immediately.

I have a "No Man's Land" scenario for "EPIC: Total War", but it's still a work-in-progress... represents a "bogged down" battlefield more than "neutral" ground between forces though.

I'll see what I can finish on it this weekend and send it to you if it's presentable.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Nice ideas, but you probably need to be a bit careful about allowing very unevenly matched battles as these might not be much fun to play. Small points differences would be good though.

I really like the ideas here, but I think you need to have some way of deciding how the campaign is won / lost eg, the first to control 5x battlefields.

On very uneven battles, as I understand it the weaker side can withdraw everything immediately, leaving the larger side in control of the battlefield, but with forces that cannot be extracted until that battlefield is revisited.

However, I do see some problems, mainly in the re-deployment mechanics: -

• How do you determine the winners / losers in each battle - using the usual tournament victory conditions?
  
• What is to stop the player that is winning from exiting surplus formations during the game?
  
• I think there may need to be some minimum allocation to prevent a player from putting a single formation on each battlefield to "lock in" the initial enemy forces to a single table, allowing them to outnumber enemy formations elsewhere in the next battle.
  
• E:A generally relies on complete openness, so I presume that the formation allocation process would be done as a separate mechanic, which you should document as well. Something along the lines of each player taking turns to pick a formation and allocate it to a table or to reserve. During each subsequent "reorganisation" phase, the players may only allocate those formations in reserve.
  
• How do you propose to handle A/c and Spaceships? Are they permanently in "reserve" or are they allocated to each table?
  
• Do you need to add some mechanic to avoid the random selection of uncontested battlefields? (ie where a battle has occurred and only one person has troops in the battlefield)

_________________
"Play up and play the game"

Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt

some good points, as this is only a WIP i'm open to any suggestions.
tyring to address some of them:

On very uneven battles, as I understand it the weaker side can withdraw everything immediately, leaving the larger side in control of the battlefield, but with forces that cannot be extracted until that battlefield is revisited.