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Sturmgeschutz and Sorcery Or, How good is that Panzerfaust against a Troll, Heinz? A little while back, someone on The Imperial Guard list on Yahoo Groups posted about an old scenario written by Gary Gygax. The idea was to have one player prepared for a fantasy wargame and the other prepared for a sci-fi or modern wargame. The original forces were a small group of WWII German mechanized infantry vs the Castle and minions of an Evil Cleric, but other groups could certainly be factored in. In the original scenario, they converted all the German weapons and rules to the Fantasy system (D&D) but with related games like 40k and Fantasy, there is an easier way. Some of the local outriders have done 40k vs Fantasy games by simply saying that when it is the Fantasy player's turn, you use the Fantasy rules, and when it is the 40k player's turn, you use the 40k rules. If both sides are not familiar with the other's rules, this may take some explaining during play, which is why a referee is helpful. A referee is more than helpful, actually necessary if you want to use the surprise factor, which is what the original plan was. Remember that the WWII gamer thought he was in for a WWII game, and the fantasy player thought he was in for a fantasy game. The referee set up the first 3 turns as map movement. Each player had a map depicting his own forces and what, if anything, they knew about the terrain. The referee had a map depicting the actual terrain and both players' forces, so he could see if they would contact each other during those initial moves. Hidden map moves bring an interesting element to campaign games or very large scale battles, but they require a third party to check the movement so that someone will know if units make contact. So often in standard games, we miss the element of surprise, or even the unknown, since we can see everything on the table. We know that the Assault Marines are waiting around the corner to ambush the Guard unit, we can see the Basilisk with it's Earthshaker cannon prepped for firing. There is no "fog of war" for us. We know who the enemy is, where they are located and how many of them there are. It really takes some of the tactics and much of the strategy out of the game, but it does make it simpler to play. With map movement, you must actually find the enemy before you can fight, and you may end up finding more enemy than you bargained on. Typically, map movements are done purely with symbols on a map and coordinated through a referee of some kind. Actual miniatures are not put on the table until units are within sighting distance of each other. I have seen a variant on this that didn't work badly. Units and models were replaced with bits of paper or other counters, marked in some way so that the owning player knew which was which. When an enemy unit came into LOS of them, they would announce their intentions, revealing their unit (remember, Line of Sight works both ways!) and see what they could see. Although this gives you an idea of where the enemy is, you at least don't know what is over that hill, which gives some of that surprise back. An additional way to do this would be like the Mandrake 'blips' for Dark Eldar. For each unit of Mandrakes, 3 models are placed on the board. Up until the Dark Eldar player reveals them, he simply moves those models. On the turn they are revealed, he removes two of the models and places the whole unit where the third one is. This could be added to the counter idea above for more 'blips' on the board and less certainty of what is where, since 2/3 of the counters are nothing but air. (Of course, you cannot spot an enemy blip with a blank counter, so you must give up something to find information, but that's what recon is all about, right?) One thing to remember, if you have units with different movement rates, it's better to move at the pace of the slowest one. No sense in giving away which counters are which, after all. There are a lot of rules and modifiers for both Fantasy and 40k. Some of them are army-specific and some of them are situational. It would be difficult (and boring to read) to list all the possibilities where the two systems might have conflict. I feel that the best way to handle this is to agree that you'll just have to 'wing it' on some things, but have a general plan for a few of the bigger ones. (If you both know ahead of time that there will be some unusual rule situations, you are less likely to think the other person is just arguing to get an advantage.) That said, here are some of the bigger areas of conflict. The Magic Phase. There is no such thing in 40k. Some things could be ironed out by giving the 40k army at least the minimum 2 dispel dice that all Fantasy armies get. In addition, you could consider magic to be akin to Psyker powers, so Psychic hoods could nullify them, for example. You might even consider any Psyker character to give a dispel die or two to the pool. Similarly, if you do this, you might want to consider any Psychic power to be a spell, and use casting pool and dispel options for it too. Personally, I doubt that I would go that far, since most 40k armies don't have enough Psychic powers to really worry about it, but it's something to consider. The Assault phase. Most of the difficulties here are at least modified by the ruling that the game systems are taking turns. Combat resolution is vastly different, but if you handle it the way the current side does it, you've got some consistency and a modicum of balance (even if the system totally screws you this turn, next turn you should get yours...) In terms of 40k units and ranking modifiers, you could either always treat them as skirmishers or you could agree to treat them as being a unit about 5 wide and just see how many ranks you would have. (IE: a 15 man Black Templar squad would be the equivalent of 3 ranks of 5 until they started to take casualties.) Oddball stuff. These are the things that are exceptions to rules. They move, shoot, whatever, differently than other things even in their own system, and there is probably no real analogue in the other system. Things like Night Goblin Fanatics or Tyranid Synapse, for example. The best way to handle these items is to always treat them as being in their home system for the parts of them that aren't handled in the other system. Okay, so now you've got two players and possibly a referee, you've got two armies from two different game systems and you are ready to throw down. Have fun, be prepared for some weirdness, and let me know how it goes. I expect my Orcs and Gobbos will have fun with my Deathwing list, as well as my Tyranids and Dark Eldar, and I fully expect that I will also run one or more of these armies against other players as well. There's a certain player out there that I know has more Dwarves painted than I have Orcs and Gobbos, so we might just have to get in a game with one of my other armies. Incidentally, I seem to remember that the Troll ended up as little flaming chunks, so Heinz did alright, I guess. Hmm, I may have to run a tournament like this. Perhaps set up so sometimes you will have a 40k opponent and sometimes a Fantasy one, to keep everyone on their toes. Muahahahahah! If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |