One of my new year's goals for my tabletop wargaming hobby is to develop and play more scenarios. I do very much enjoy miniature wargaming, but I'm getting tired of the "line everything up and move forward while shooting" games.
To that end, Josh and I cooked up a little scenario the other night that revolves around a staggered deployment. Originally, we had intended the game to be a set-up for a Dystopian Legions engagement at a later time, but the conflict ended up being pretty lopsided in his favor, so we ditched that idea.
So here's how we set it up:
We had an objective in the middle of the table--in this case, a fortress on an island.
We then both deployed one squadron of small ships on the opposite short ends of the table. (This was a 1,000 point French vs Prussians battle.)
The goal was to land as many assault points as possible onto the objective, which would have translated into Legions combat troops, but like I said it ended up pretty lopsided in his favor so we abandoned that idea.
Once our small ships got within RB2 of the objective, they were able to radio back to the fleet for reinforcements. (In this scenario, our two initial small squadrons were acting like scouts, looking for the island fortress.). They both reached RB2 on turn two. So we were then able to roll for reinforcements--we could attempt to bring on up to three squadrons per turn. 3+ would bring on tiny flyer wings, 4+ would bring on small squadrons, 5+ would bring on mediums, 6+ would bring on large squadrons, and 7+ would bring on massives and dreadnaughts. For each successive turn after turn 3, we added +1 to the dice roll for each class, making it easier to get ships on the board.
But the REALLY interesting part was that we also rolled for deployment edge for each squadron as it came on. On a 1-2, it would deploy on the player's left; 3-4, in the center; and 5-6, on the player's right. Which led to deployments like this:
And, unfortunately, also like this:
Which led to this:
He won initiative after those ships deployed, and activated his reinforced cruiser squadron before I could get my cloud generator up. The resulting critical hit was a magazine explosion, which he--conveniently--was too far way from to get hit in the fireball.
The deployment system we used resulted in a lot of quick, short-range firefights between larger ships. This was interesting to watch, as these vessels normally would pick at each other from longer ranges and not get into a full-strength slugging match. Initiative rolls were VERY important on every roll.
In the end, I had to concede victory to Josh after he mauled my French fleet into a state of combat ineffectiveness.
Since we kinda thought this up as we were setting up the board, the scenario could obviously use a few tweaks. For starters, we messed up some of the deployments, and had models sitting on the table for a turn before they could be used (but they couldn't be shot at either). And, since we were sharing two deployment edges (the two short ends of the table), we were putting ships on very close to each other. We decided that, next time, they should be at least outside of RB1 from each other on deployment.
That being said, it was a nice shakeup to the standard DW game. Not knowing what was going to come on the table, and when and where, kept things lively. I recommend it, and if you give the scenario a try, let me know what you think.
Thanks for taking the time to read this report!
