RaceDay

A little competition between friends
Sometimes when you go to find a game of 40k, you only find allies, not enemies. All the bad guys are busy or off conspiring, and you only have good guys to choose from. Now, ultimately, this is a game with toy soldiers and it doesn't really matter who you obliterate or why, but sometimes it's nice to have a good story behind a game, and you can always claim a misunderstanding or that one side or the other committed some heinous crime or heresy, or you can just go head to head in competition. Of course, this goes for the bad guys too, they don't always have to be at each other's throats, sometimes they might want to actually conserve their resources to be used against a common enemy. Plus, sometimes it's fun to just chuck the standard Cleanse mission and do something else. This brings us to Race Day.

The idea is to have some friendly competition (and some battle, of course) but not have it be an all-out war. The forces may be competing to see who gets a particular honor, like going on a crusade or joining an Inquisitorial Task Force, or they just may be trying to prove who is faster and cooler! If both players want to make it even more focused on winning over bloodshed, disallow any assaulting, though you can still shoot and move to block your opponent.

When I created this scenario, I had a request from The Axisis to make a scenario about racing fast bikes or vehicles, and it gave me this idea. I wanted to create a scenario that made it more important to go fast than to just fight to the bitter end. I also wanted to account for the turn based system of the game ("Of course you won, you got to move first!") I've included mechanisms in the scenario to avoid these problems, and I think it's a good balance.

At first, I thought to myself, "I don't do unusual scenarios." After a moment, however, I realized that I actually do. I have taken part in unusual scenarios, such as Dreadnaught Arena. I have organized unusual scenarios, such as Bug Hunt, based on the one listed on The Jungle. I have even helped create and written up unusual scenarios before, Capture the Frog. When I got an idea almost immediately for what I'd need to do to make a good scenario, I realized that, yes, I apparently do scenarios after all! So, enough with the preliminaries, let's get on with the show.

It's Race day, sports fans!
This is a head to head competition to get to the other side of a board and back, touching a marker along the way. The side that completes the race first with at least one unit wins. Due to the turn-based nature of 40k, if both sides complete the race on the same turn (Player 1 finishes during his turn 5, then Player 2 also finishes during his turn 5) then the player that finishes with more units wins. (Squads under half-strength and Independent Characters that do not normally count as units also do not count here, the idea is to have a force capable of doing something cross the finish line, not just get that one guy with a Jump Pack and a Power Ax over there.) Players will set up next to each other on one short board edge. Roll for who picks the short board edge, then roll to see who gets pick of the side. Then place the marker approximately 12 inches in from the opposite board edge, in a central location. Each must race up his or her own side to get to the marker. They must then race down the other player's side of the board and leave the board edge where the other player started. Units and models may not cross the long centerline of the board until after that unit/model has touched the marker. Non-vehicle units/models may make an assault move to contact the marker (think of it as an adrenal surge to get there first.) All units must move out of their deployment zones, and no one may fire or assault until one unit/model from either side has touched the marker, then it's on!

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