A little scenario help please!

The Serene Badger

The Serene Badger

Vassal
I'm planning a big 4th edition battle with my daughter in half term, she'll have high elves, I'll be dwarfs.

Both my girls like there to be a story rather than a straight up fight. I also want to encourage her to attack me hard, as she'll likely be cut to pieces if she hangs back.

I've got a small dragon and I was thinking of the elves and dwarfs meeting on an island where they can capture the baby dragon and dragon eggs. I've got a ruined tower that would make a great nest site. I'll make up narrative reasons why they'd want to.

A straight up race for objectives seems possibly a bit flawed when the elves move nearly twice as fast as the dwarfs, that would lead to her defending an objective, and likely being cut down with crossbows and artillery. So I did wonder about having the dwarfs start with the dragon and eggs, to encourage her to attack. I thought about having the elves blocking the dwarfs route back to their ships, but we'll need a lot of turns for the dwarfs to march 4ft across the board.

I did think of just using it as a narrative idea, whoever wins captures the dragon sort of thing, but would like there to be more to it if possible. Any ideas gratefully welcomed!

It'll be high points as she wants to get as many monsters in there as possible so she'll have a dragon mounted lord, and heroes and wizards on Griffins, eagles, and unicorns, chariots etc etc. I'll be picking her army to be overpowered if anything and will be holding back on all the dwarf dirty tricks. I'll still use a few, but won't be going full beardy. I will resist. There may be a Rune of slowness or two, and a swift striking though, can't make it too easy!

What I really want is to encourage her to do lots of co-ordinated high impact attacks that crush the dwarf units in one hit, so she doesn't get stuck in the dwarven meat grinder. I just feel it might be tricky for her to do that holding an objective. When she played her sister and they had to capture the Marvellous Mystical Mammoth Mushroom of Murkwood it did devolve a bit into sniping from behind hedgerows. But at least it gave the battle a focal point.
 
Think outside the box :)

I did a game a while back, where the dwarves started stretched out along a road in the middle of the board, and chaos was springing an ambush from all around them, see here.

Such kind of setup would fit with your "dwarves have the egg and need to bring it home" idea. For what you describe as your goal, try to leave the standard set-up scenario behind.

You could also for example have the elf pursuers having cornered/surrounded the dwarves with the egg (only half a force) and a dwarf relieve force (the other half) coming to aid, having the elves sandwiched.

Also think about uneven point values, depending on the initial setup. As you describe it, your main goal is narrative, so "fair" does not seem to be as important. In my scenario the dwarves were convoy guards, so did not have any war machines.
 
Would wonder about having the Dwarfs already have the objective eggs probebly centre board, with the dwarfs having to get it off the edge of the board, where the Elves start on one edge and are trying to get it from them before they escape with it. a bit like what Leadie said about the ambrush really.

Not totally about 'balance' but it would give a bit of balance between speed issue as it gives the Dwarfs a bit of a start.

Though that idea of spitting up the dwarfs into main and relief force sounds good. Maybe something like at the end of each turn, roll a D6 to see if the force arrives, but that works best if you don't use the standard random 4-6 turns (as it's 4Ed), else just have the relief force start from one end of the board with the other half in the middle
 
I do like the dwarves in the middle, elves on the edge idea. If the distances seem too long you could always have a smaller board. Maybe there's an impassible mountain on one, or even two sides? So the "center" is closer to the third mark. (Or wherever you want it to be.) And maybe the elves don't quite start out blocking the path away, so they have to race to get to it. Maybe the tower is guarding a pass. The elves are coming up one side. The dwarves want to leave by the other. The dwarves are in the tower, and the tower is a little off to the side of the pass, so the elves can try to get to the top of the pass to block the dwarves. The dwarves can try to force it, but if they get there first they could also hold it with a rearguard to keep the elves from overrunning the dragon egg and stealing it. Lots of options here. And a smaller table will play faster for a skirmish. (Which I find is often better with casual gamers. Even sometimes tired serious gamers.) Likewise, the narrative helps. Good luck! Lots of possibilities.

A friend of mine and I played a sci-fi scenario a bit like that the other day. I started in the middle of the table in control of the main objective, a crate with some gizmo or other in it. There were also four minor objectives scattered around the table. Taking the crate required three successive actions on separate turns. (Complicated lock needed picking.) That bought my friend time to grab a few objectives and try to stop me. The primary was worth two points, and the secondaries were one each. (A crate of guns, a bomb, a canister of fuel, some parts of something or other, if I recall correctly. It was a pick up game and we'd just randomly rolled it up from a scenario generator similar to the one in RT, so I don't quite recall all the specifics.) Anyway, the center of the table was a three story apartment block, and the locked crate with the gizmo was on the third floor. It was about a three by three table. He grabbed up two objectives on the side where he entered quickly enough (the chemicals and the mechanical bobs), but he couldn't stop me from getting the gizmo, so I made for the edge and grabbed up the guns on the way out. The bomb had a guard, so nobody grabbed that one in time, though in theory if he'd attempted it it might have come out a tie. (I was too low on forces to really grab it. I had a bunch of grots, most of whom had already been iced, and he fewer, but tougher punk gangers.) Very similar scenario in some ways.

And it was great fun. So yeah, maybe add some secondary objectives. (A tie is never a bad result between siblings, right?) Maybe there's a magical gem in a cave at the edge of the pass, or a scroll with some important information at an abandoned camp. Possibly someone lost a particularly fine sword while attempting to get the dragon egg int he past, and it's lying with their bones in a clearing. Or some magic boots, or a special cup, or what have you. So many possibilities with a dragon nest in the middle of it. Loot just tends to accumulate in places like that. Anything the dragon might have found particularly shiny.
 
Just want to throw a small idea in the pot as well.
The idea of the dwarfs trying to ‘escape’ with an objective is great. As I understood it, the elves had a dragonmounted lord so maybe the dwarfs have captured one of its off-springs?
Make it a ‘unite-the-family’ kind of adventure with the dwarfs being the baddies?
 
Have non mounted Elves start on the board and have cav and monsters be a relief force that show up turn 3? Then they will have to play aggressively to hold Dwarven units in place until help arrives.
 
Or try it the other way around since mobility still an issue for dwarfs? Elves starting with the eggs and dwarfs lying in ambush on a mountain pass? Perhaps there are a few passes the elves can opt to travel down and the dwarfs have an option to dynamite or trap a couple of them? Both would have to conceal their choices and reveal when the game begins.
 
Thanks all, there's so much good advice there I think I'm going to make up a little campaign of linked scenarios for the girls. I think my battle with my youngest is probably just going to be a straight up fight as it's only her second battle ever, and we"ll be introducing fliers and things. I want to do the scenarios justice and I've realised I don't have time to rebuild all the models and monsters she wants to use. So a bit smaller scale, but she's happy she'll still get to use the dragon. And the Pegasus, and unicorn. Have realised if I put the eagle on a flight base it'll be a pig to paint, but might do anyway if I can at least undercoat it first.

But scenarios will come, I'm itching to do something campaigny. with consequences for outcomes
 
Slave to Darkness said:
May the Dwarves trim many Elven ears, if they can catch them. 😆
Click to expand...
You say that, but in my girls' last (and first ever) battle, the dwarf spears broke but out ran the elf silver helm cavalry TWICE, then rallied, broke the same cavalry unit, which included their general, and ran it down! The rolls were unbelievable - must have been an excellent batch of Bugman's that day!
 
Well, after fighting all yesterday afternoon and finishing off this morning, the 4000 PT each side battle between elves and dwarfs finally finished turn 6 (at the very end of my daughter's attention span, needed a bit of encouragement to keep going by the end!).

It was the result I wanted, with her winning by 1VP at Elves 17 : Dwarfs 16, decided by her dragon coming back on from being driven off and taking a decisive battlefield quarter. 4th edition Victory calcs are a bit odd as you get nothing for reducing a unit to below half strength. So the silver helms and archers that rallied in the last turn and were just above 1/4 strength counted for nothing for the dwarfs.

The scrap brewing in the village ruins between tyrion, thorgrim, the dragon and the runelord could have gone either way. We'll never know...

She wants to play again with smaller armies/turns, so I count that as a success! She wants scenarios too.

I'll write up a battle report soon.
 
4Ed victory points were more scenario based with only an 'example' victory chart. Not really much different from before but you would define them yourself, or just use the example one, so could have had reducing if you wanted.
 
First, glad it worked well! Getting someone new into gaming is a real treat. :)

A bit off topic, but I've found that smaller, skirmish games sometimes work better with more casual gamers. One of 40K's real weak points is that you end up sitting and waiting quite a long time while your opponent is rolling all the dice in larger games when it's not your turn, and maybe Warhammer Fantasy has the same problem. (From your description it kind of sounds that way.) Have you tried a skirmish game with your would be player? I hear Frostgrave works great, and you can play that with oldhammer fantasy miniatures pretty easily. I love the heck out of Pulp Alley. It feels like my favorite action TV shows. I could easily see some really epic Robin Hood style stuff using Pulp Alley rules.

In any case, however you proceed, keep up the great work. So glad to hear she had a good time! :grin:
 
Skirmish is definitely the way forward, and the first game she played was 1000pts. The giant game came about because she saw the dragon, griffin, unicorn and the other monsters and wanted them all at once. I did warn her it would be a mammoth battle lasting all day. And she didn't have to do the set up and taking down, which took almost as long 🤣

But she definitely wants to play again, which was the goal 😃
 
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