Scenario Contest!

[NegativeZer0]

Mini campaign - Boarder Skirmish
This scenario is intended to be played as two consecutive battles.  If both players agree player 1 can play the first battle solo.

History
There has been relative peace between your two nations for many years.  As a condition of this treaty a large stretch of land between the 2 kingdoms has been designated as a demilitarized zone and it is forbidden for any soldier to cross.  Because of this fact many bandits and wild beasts have entered into this territory making it very dangerous to travel.  As a result only 1 road crossing between the two kingdoms has been maintained.

Armies [can not be changed/modified between games 1 and 2]
Player 1s Army - Any player designed force of 2000pts (can not include hill giants)

Player 2s army - Any player designed force of 1500 points and 4 hill giants (these must be separate from the 1500 pts).

Game 1 Ambush

Player 1
As the local general tasked with guarding the boarder you have grown tiered of the treaty and believe that the enemy will be unprepared for an attack after so many years of peace.  You have secretly gathered an army to raid the Northern kingdom, however you must first cross the long stretch of land between the two kingdoms and fight your way past whatever dangers await you there.  As your actions are not sanctioned you will receive no reinforcements during your raid and must press the attack with whatever forces you have remaining after crossing the demilitarized zone.  Knowing that you will need to make use of any advantages and resources that you can you have ordered all of your troops to capture any powerful creatures that they come across instead of killing them so you can use them in the coming battles.

Setup
Map size will be a standard 2'6" x 3'
Player 1
Deployment zone - standard deployment zone on the south side of the map.
Player 1 must deploy a single unit on the road. [hereby referred to as "Objective Unit"]
This Objective Unit must be assigned a Close standing order with the north end of the road as it's objective.
This unit gains the following 3 rules:
- Always has the Close Standing order and may not be given a standing order Modifier or be directly controlled.
- If this unit reaches the end of the road move it off the board. The game ends at the beginning of player 1's next turn.
- If this unit dies Player 1s remaining units will immediately flee the battleground.  Immediately treat any engaged units as failing a route check (player 2 immediately receives free attacks as if the unit had routed).  After all free attacks are made remove all of player 1s surviving units from the board and the game ends immediately.

Player 2
No deployment zone
Player 2 starts the game with no units on the board.
Player 2 does not get command cards for having hill giants even if playing a M&M army

Terrain
The board should consist of a road in the center of the map running  North to South
Measure 7" from player 1s deployment zone and place the road block terrain peace here.
Take all 3 small hill terrain pieces and 3 other equally sized terrain features at random.
Dived each half of the board (east and west sides of the road) into 3 equally sized portions
Randomly place ONE of the 6 terrain feature in each of the 6 sections.  See Example (not to scale):




Game Play Special Rules
After setup player 1 may move his units in any fashion he/she chooses in accordance with the normal turn sequence and rules of play with one exception.  Player 1 must always move his objective unit AFTER all other units have moved for that turn.

Do not forget to apply the road bonus for movement.

As soon as player 1's objective unit touches the road block player 2 will place one hill giant on each of the 3 hills with a close order.  The fourth hill giant must be placed at the North end of the road. 
All hill giants gain the rule:
This unit passes all courage tests
The hill giant being placed on the road will be assigned a Close order with player 1's objective unit as it's objective. 
This unit gain the following rules:
Always has the Close standing order and may not be given a standing order Modifier or be directly controlled.

If at anytime the last yellow box on a hill giant is marked off player 1 will gain control of this unit and its standing order will change to hold.  This unit may not attack, be given a standing order Modifier, or be directly controlled for the rest of the game.

(note: if player one is playing the first battle as a solo game all hill giants will gain their range attack for free as long as they are not engaged.)

When the game one is over do not erase any damage done to player 1's units including the hill Giants he/she has gained control of.

In between game 1 and 2:
Any hill giants not captured by player one are removed.  These units will not be coming back for game 2.
Any hill giants that player 1 has captured will heal until all of their yellow and one of their green marks have been removed.
Any of player 1's units that have died are removed.  These units will not be coming back for game 2.
Any of Player 1's units that are in green will completely heal to full health.
Any of Player 1's units that are in Yellow will heal damage until all of their yellow and one of their green marks have been removed.
Any of Player 1's units that are in red will heal damage until all of their yellow marks have been removed.

After healing the units will enter game 2 exactly as is.

Game 2 The peace has ended
Player 2
Never fully trusting the Southern kingdom you have secretly employed several merchants that travel the dangerous road in between your two kingdoms to act as scouts.  This tactic seems to have payed off as you receive news that one of your scouts has seen a large army moving North towards your territory.  Reports also indicate the army was ambushed by Hill Giants.  Although this is very grim news at least the Hill Giants will buy you some time to prepare defenses.  From the reports it sounds like your army will be out numbered.  You quickly send a messenger to request reinforcements but you know they will not arrive in time.  It is up to you to stop the attack before it reaches the boarder towns as their will be no one else to stop the raiding army for many days.

Setup
Map size will be a standard 2'6" x 3'
Player 1
Deployment zone - standard deployment zone on the South side of the map.

Player 2
Deployment zone - standard deployment zone on the North side of the map.

Terrain
The board should consist of a road in the center of the map running  North to South
Player 2 may setup as many stake terrain pieces as he chooses (limited to 1 terrain pack) any where he wants so long as they are no further than 12" from his deployment zone

Game Play Special Rules
Player 1 does not gain command cards for controlling the hill giant(s) even if he/she is playing a M&M army.
It is a great shame on himself and his tribe for a hill giant to be captured and in attempt to regain some of their lost honor they will blindly charge into combat and fight until they die.  To represent this effect any hill giants player 1 captured will deploy with the close command.  Additionally they gain the following two rules:
-This unit always has the Close standing order and may not be given a standing order Modifier or be directly controlled. (you may still spend two command actions to give them a range attack but as you can not assign them orders they will always attack the closest unit)
-If at anytime this unit would fail a route check it instead receives one point of damage plus one damage for each enemy unit engaged with it.  No other penalties are suffered and the unit will remain where it is.

Standard Last man standing victory conditions apply.

[andrewgr]

Questions:

In scenario 1, is there anything preventing player 1 from running one of his fast units out in front of the Objective Unit and using it as a roadblock, to slow it down?
If I am reading correctly, in scenario 1, player 2 never deploys his 1500 point army-- he's just controlling the Hill Giants.  This makes sense, I just want to confrim that this is the intention.

My first attempt would be to do something like 1600 points of missile units and 400 points of as much cheap junk as I could afford-- zombies or peasants or whatever.  Strategy would be to put 2 hill giants into the red with missile fire, thus capturing them; and throw the other 400 points away just to delay the other 2 hill giants-- get in their way, then engage, use all blue cards to live as long as possible, etc.  Zombies don't make courage checks, so they might be ideal for this purpose.

I'd need to do the math, but I'm pretty sure 1600 points of missile units should rate to put two hill giants in the red without ever needing to engage.

[NegativeZer0]

Questions:
In scenario 1, is there anything preventing player 1 from running one of his fast units out in front of the Objective Unit and using it as a roadblock, to slow it down?

The idea of the objective unit is that it creates a turn limit so that you cant just sit back with range and kill all of the ogres.  Maybe an additional rule that the unit will move through friendly units without any penalty or something could be added to prevent abusing this.

If I am reading correctly, in scenario 1, player 2 never deploys his 1500 point army-- he's just controlling the Hill Giants.  This makes sense, I just want to confirm that this is the intention.

Yes you understood correctly.

My first attempt would be to do something like 1600 points of missile units and 400 points of as much cheap junk as I could afford-- zombies or peasants or whatever.  Strategy would be to put 2 hill giants into the red with missile fire, thus capturing them; and throw the other 400 points away just to delay the other 2 hill giants-- get in their way, then engage, use all blue cards to live as long as possible, etc.  Zombies don't make courage checks, so they might be ideal for this purpose.

I'd need to do the math, but I'm pretty sure 1600 points of missile units should rate to put two hill giants in the red without ever needing to engage.

The hill giants also have range and will always have the first turn of attacks.  (If playing solo they all get the range attack for free. If being controlled the other player can activate the range on key turns to deal with missile units.)  The hill giants shouldn't have trouble dealing with a missile heavy army. 

In addition the giants you capture will not heal fully or be fully controllable in game 2 and so they are worth much less than 500 points.  If you stick around too long in game 1 to try and capture the giants you might end up losing more points then you gain.  It's a trade off of how fast you want to move through game one to avoid damage vs how long and how many giants you want to capture.

Game 2 also has a very subtle yet definitive way of balancing a missile heavy army in game one.  In game 2 those giants are going to blindly charge across the field.  If you don't have units to support them those giants you fought so hard to capture are just going to be led into the defensive spikes setup by player 2 and slaughtered.

[andrewgr]

All these answers make sense.

If the main purpose of the Objective unit is to provide a turn limit, this will make different factions have different options-- not all factions have a unit that moves as slowly as 2.5".  If you percieve more turns being an advantage, this could be a bit of a problem, I guess.

PM me your BGG account name and I'll tip you the Geek Gold.

[Niko White]

You could also consider "offscreening" the objective unit and just giving a time limit, if you think that makes more sense.

[NegativeZer0]

the on board unit adds several things to the battle:

Theme - your forces are marching down the road and although they become ambushed the ultimate goal still remains to cross the territory not capture hill giants

Variable time limit that gives player 1 different tactical options

A victory condition for player 2 and an increased risk for player 1

[gull2112]

Chad, I will post the dragon horde scenario here with all the guidelines you have layed out as soon as James and I are done playtesting it. At this point it may end up being fought between Rome and Carthage!