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With just two moons and one Blood Red Sun, a Bolter means death to everyone... This past weekend, I was hosting a small 40k tournament and I was casting about for an interesting scenario to use. While I enjoy playing 40k, no matter what the scenario is, Cleanse gets a bit boring after the first 600 times or so. Particularly for tournaments, I like using weird or unusual scenarios to keep the players on their toes. While I was pondering what to use, an old idea of mine surfaced... A long time ago I came across some ideas for weird terrain. One of the terrain types was for a planet or moon that was being torn apart by a Warp Storm or something. There were odd twisted spires and arcing lightning and places where gravity didn't always work the same. It sounded pretty cool. While reading about it and thinking about what it would be like to play on it, I came up with an additional idea. What if the battle was over some very small planetoid or moon? You could drive around the circumference of it easily, but it would be difficult to build a board that would truly represent that tight curvature, plus models would fall off when they moved onto the underside of the board. My first thought was to make two half-cylinder boards, with edges where models would appear when they left the other board. After thinking about it more, I decided to take a page from some old videogames, like Pac-Man. If you leave one board edge, you come in on the opposite board edge, wrapping around the table. Just move off the board edge in one turn, and move onto the other board edge the following turn. If you have "off-board" movement, however, you may run into circumstances where it would make sense for two enemy units to run into each other off the board, rather than somehow mysteriously passing each other. The easiest solution then, is to have the wrapping effect be immediate. (If you move 3 inches off the Right board edge, you then move those 3 inches on from the left board edge.) It was an interesting idea at the time, but I didn't have the time to work up a board for it, so I just filed it away for later. Okay, so now it's later and I wanted to give it a shot. When planning out deployment zones, however, I hit a snag. If both sides start on the long edges of the board, up to 12" onto the table and 24 inches apart, then what's to stop them from simply turning around and hitting the back of the enemy formation? Okay, so I'll have to move them in a bit from the board edge. If I do that, however, they'll start getting pretty close to each other in the middle. What to do? Enter the special rule Very Light Gravity. Since the planetoid is so small, it has very little gravity to hold combatants in place, and moving too quickly may send you careening out into space. All movement, even Fleet of Foot or Blood Rage movement, is halved. (If you would normally move 6", you can now move 3.) Even skimmers and jet packs and other sorts of movement follow this limitation. (Sure, the skimmer can handle accidentally zipping out into space, but then it has to get turned around again and get back into the fight, so just don't do it, okay?) In addition, due to the extreme curvature of the small planetoid, shooting ranges are halved as well, since the horizon is much closer and the gravity makes it even more difficult to shoot at things that are beyond the horizon. These rules make it a more balanced scenario and give the option of using that wrapping effectively without it being overpowering. Deployment is 6" in from all board edges, and 12" away from the enemy deployment zone in the middle. (On a 4x6 board, this equates to an area 12" deep by 5 feet wide for each player, leaving that 6" gap from the board edge.) Any reserves will appear inside this deployment zone in later turns. (This scenario does not use reserves, but should you wish to use them, or if a player has an army that requires reserves, this gives a guideline for how to handle them.) This scenario is compatible with most objectives and special rules (see Reserves, above) but I think it lends itself best to Victory Points, though an objective to hold might work as well. Any rules involving special deployment, such as Lictors or Infiltrators, should be based on the 1/2 rule as well. (Instead of placing Infiltrators at 18" away from the enemy, place them at 9", while Lictors cannot be within 3 inches of the enemy deployment zone.) As a playtest note, it is vitally important to use the half-range shooting rule, as otherwise armies will be trapped inside rapid-fire range for too long. Note that this will give flamers an unusually long range, but unless somebody regularly brings lots of flamer template weapons, I wouldn't worry about it. So, get out there and conquer those moons for the Emperor (or the Archon or whoever, just do it!) If you enjoyed this, or the song got stuck in your head email me and let me know |