Is That Still 40k?
I've played a number of scenarios over my 40k career. Some of them have been fun, some boring, some too complicated, some too simple. Some of them were fairly evenly balanced, others were heavily unbalanced. I rarely thought about how they can completely change the game of 40k.

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about army composition and figuring out the most effective layout for my armies. When I do think about scenarios, I typically think in terms of how to win the different kinds of scenario. Some scenarios significantly change the way the game or various armies play.

Using old scenarios, part 1
One time that I ran into this situation was when I was exploring the Tyranid section of a 40k forum that was new to me. In the forum was a huge post by one of the moderators complaining about how horribly broken 4th edition Tyranids were. I was floored by this point of view, since most of the Tyranid world was underwhelmed by their effectiveness. I asked him about it and he was very aggressive in his response. Eventually I managed to work out that he and his friends were still using 3rd edition scenarios. This was a big problem, because most of the standard 3rd edition scenarios only started the opponents about 18"apart.

The key was Fleet. Many Tyranid units in 4th edition had it. When the fastest units in the whole game can only travel 18" in a turn, scenarios only need to start opponents 18" apart. That gives a few units in the game the possibility of a turn 2 charge, and everything else won't hit until turn 3. Once you add in another 1d6" per turn for some units, the dynamic changes. A turn 1 charge is a _much_ different beast than a turn 2 charge. Turn 1 charges mean you might get charged before you can even move, whereas a turn 2 charge gives you at least 1 turn of shooting at the gribblies before they make contact.

Using old Scenarios
Some time back I was participating in a 5th edition tournament. For one of the final battles, the organizer pulled out a scenario from the 4th edition rulebook. The 4th edition rulebook had a number of interesting scenarios, but they often made changes to the force organization chart and some of them were rather unbalanced anyway. The combination meant that my Tau army was in a horrible position to prevent the daemon army from breaking out from between the two halves of my force.

The issue this time was the difference between the attacker and defender and how scenarios of the old edition changed the selections on your force organization chart. In addition, there weren't entire armies that could deepstrike in when the scenario was written. With those changes, the scenario could be incredibly unbalanced. With my army split in half and the daemon army able to summon wherever it wanted, the battle went poorly.

Rolling your Own
Some time ago, I ran into someone that had played 40k in 2nd edition (this was toward the end of 3rd edition for the rest of us.) He told me that the only way he ever agreed to play anyone was if both sides placed 1/2 their forces in reserve and brought them out on turn 3 on whichever board edge they chose. He said that the test of a good general is to be able to know where the battle will be taking place ahead of time, or to be able to shape the battle to their will. He then told me that he had never been beaten. He also mentioned that he played a Chaos army devoted to Khorne.

Well, this scenario is heavily unbalanced in favor of assault armies. How many shooting armies do you know that can function effectively when half of their units don't arrive until halfway through the game? In addition, being able to have half of your units show up on the enemy board edge on turn 3 is a fantastic boon for assault armies, but is near useless for shooty armies. It should come as no surprise that an assault army (Khornate Chaos) wins that scenario every time. That scenario changes the game so much that it's barely even 40k anymore.

Moderation in all Things
If you feel the need to design a scenario, and you want it to actually be balanced, it is actually possible. You just have to take a few things into consideration. First, the balance between shooting and assault. In general you want to keep the deployment zones between 24 and 29 inches apart. Over 30 inches and assault armies will be unable to effectively assault. Under 24 inches and too many units have the possibility of a 1st turn charge. In addition, objective locations are important. Objectives that don't require movement favor static shooty armies. Objectives that require moving across most of the board favor assault armies (because they tend to have more mobility and most shooty things cannot shoot effectively on the move.) Central objectives usually work pretty well. They encourage shooty armies to move, but not too far and their guns can still be effective.

Probably my favorite unusual scenario would be Carpe Ranam. It was really an off-the-cuff scenario that several of us created in response to the frequent occurrence of 3 people showing up to play a game of 40k. With a central objective that you simply need to be close to, assault and shooty armies both have a chance. The fact that the objective is mobile means that the armies don't have a reason to gang up on each other. I won't pretend it is perfectly balanced. It definitely favors mobile armies, or at least armies with highly mobile elements. It also favors armies that can take some damage and keep on going, and armies that have multiple small units.

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