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Post by wstevens on Jan 30, 2010 2:02:25 GMT
Please read through the rules carefully and then ask me questions about it. Its pretty straight forward. This gives everybody a fair amount of time to finish their 5th round games and to get a game plan ready. Remember its just your 750pts skirmish army! Actually ignore this attachment now as i have tweaked the rules a little .... please see abridged version below Attachments:
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 30, 2010 19:17:17 GMT
Just thought I'd post the rules text up here as it'll be easier to make comments if the rules are easily visible. Round 6 - Find the Siege Engineer – a skirmish game.In this Skirmish game you have to find a very well known siege engineer who’s mastery of building war machines is legendary. He has had a number of offers from your armies and a number of threatening ones if he so joined the other team. This has made him terribly frightened and he has gone to ground. However, scouts from both sides have seen a few fleet sightings of the man that matches his description in the area. Simply find the engineer before the others do and get him back to camp. Deployment: This is played on a 4 x 4 table with two base camps (any 40 x 40 marker will do for this). The base camp may be placed anywhere within your deployment zone see later instructions. Basic Skirmish rules are as the first round game. However in this case you are searching for the siege engineer. Please note that the tables here will have D3 +2 markers placed equidistant on the centre line. Only one of them has the engineer motif on it. YOU MUST NOT TOUCH THEM. Should you land within one inch of a marker you are allowed to scout. Roll a D6 on a 3+ you may uncover the marker secretly and look at it (you can feign anything here and it adds to the excitement of the game). If you rolled a 1 or 2 you found nothing (do not even think about turning the marker over) and must carry on searching. However the unit can scout the same marker in the next round and does not need to move off but beware if you stay there the opposition will charge you. In the next round at the beginning of the turn you must elect to scout or charge - you cannot do both. If you chose to scout then you can then move in the movement phase. However beware of being march moved. This could enable you to rotate about the point to receive a charge in the front rather than in the side. However, it may arise that two units may be involved in combat. Note that the unit that got there first may scout. If a combat ensues via charges etc the unit that breaks will automatically lose their markers to the opposition. Fleeing models cannot scout and lose their markers at the spot that they started to flee (via panic). Pursuing models that happen to cross over a marker (undisclosed beforehand or not in play) whilst in pursuit cannot stop and check the marker, as they are too busy pursuing and don’t really notice it. If you have found the engineer marker you must not give this notion away – put it carefully behind your troops that found it. You must try and get this marker back to your base camp. Decoying is a good mode emploi here so if you uncover a non-engineer marker then it may be a good point to feign that it is real. Base camps are set up after the scenery has been set up. You can place this anywhere within your deployment zone although it is not allowed partly or wholly in a wood or any terrain designated as difficult ground or worse. This is just a flag marker or other marker. Each base camp MUST be a least 18 inches from the central line. You should roll a D6 – the highest has the choice to lay the base camp first or second. Who wins? There are no victory points counted for a win – its just the first to get the engineer back to the base camp will win. However, VPs should be recorded for the league tables. However, the league points here are difficult to share out without it looking one-sided. If you get the engineer across that should be a massacre 20-0. This does look rather unfair. So instead the winner of the game will be awarded just 10-0 even if the opposition has scored more VPs than you (A possible total of 30pts if you win them all!). This game could effectively be over after 3 rounds – there is no limit of rounds in this game therefore no draws! Battle points: Winner will get 3 battle points the loser will get one battle point. Bonus battle points include one battle point for a steal. In other words if you manage to steal the engineer marker during the game you earn yourself an extra point. This can only be done via combat or pursuing broken / fleeing troops. What does the winner get? – If you were successful in two games – this engineer will build you one war machine or train crew (to use it). Roll a d6 to see what he has built you and add it to your 1500pt army. As in the last desperate defending the newly acquired hero popped up in the reserve army. For all defending garrisons the engineer has been left behind at the garrison to build this and it ready for use here before it can go into their 1500+pts army. The attackers have theirs with them as their engineer was much more adaptable to his surroundings. ;D The newly acquired 200pt unit from round 5 has just arrived at the battle scene and will count as a seperate reserve for both teams and will come on in round 2. Defenders must have this unit come on not more than 12 inches away from your initial reserve force. Attackers likewise. This ensures that the numbers are a little balanced. However I do feel sorry for the attacker if he hasn't gained either; he is likely to be outdone by the defenders - especially with their protection by the middle of the garrison. D6 What the engineer has built for you… - 1 - 2 A Light Bolt Thrower (Scorpio) + 3 crew armed with HW (35pts)
- 3 - A Light Bolt Thrower (Scorpio) + 3 crew armed with HW that can re-roll one missed hit per game (45pts)
- 4 - A Bolt Thrower (Ballista) + 3 crew (Light armour) and HW (50pts)
- 5 - A Bolt Thrower (Ballista) + 3 crew (Light armour) and HW that can re-roll one missed hit per game (60pts)
- 6 - A Small Stone Thrower + 4 crew (Light armour) hand weapon which can re-roll the scatter dice once per game. Both must be rolled and this has to be taken as the final result. This can be particular useful if you roll a misfire. (80pts)
Games to go. Round 7: Role reversal for Desperate Defending – Byzantines defending this time with skirmish and reserve coming on – Europa will use 1500+point army! Round 8: Ambush the Convoy! Both armies use the 1500+pts army but defender can use one skirmish infantry from their 750pts skirmish army. Round 9: Doubles Matches – choose a non-same army partner from your League team (IR and IR cannot team up). You will be randomly paired up with your opponents. Your army will be a new 750pts army chosen from any of the units used in any battles thus far from any of the 3 armies you have. Round 10: Two “3 on 3” games. Using 1500+pts army plus your reserve! This would be effectively a 6000pts + collective game each. Good for the All Dayer on May 29th. This would round off the campaign!
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 30, 2010 19:52:22 GMT
I've had a read through the rules for this round and had a bit of a think and here are my thoughts, along with some questions.
First of this strikes me as a fairly random game. If you rout your opponents army you should get the engineer anyway. But there is a lot of potential here for one or two bits of luck to decide the outcome of the game.
Deployment I'm presuming here that the phrasing means that you intend the markers to be evenly spaced out along the centre line. I.e if you have three markers one would be in the centre of the table, with the other two 12" inches on either side. Four markers would I assume mean two markers 6" either side of the centre point with the other two 12" further out.
Scouting Markers The chance of being able to look at the marker is clear enough. I'm less sure about having to move away at least a move if you roll a 1-2. What happens if you've got an enemy unit bearing down on you. In all probability you won't be able to move away from the marker, without exposing your unit to the enemy attack.
Question. What happens if you have a unit that is within 1" of two markers at the same time (easily possible for a decent sized skirmishing unit). Can you scout more than one marker at once?
Moving Markers The rules don't say but I'm assuming that a unit carrying a marker moves it with them?
Victory Conditions Given that a game won't end until one side or the other gets a marker back to their base camp, and that people have a 1 in 3 chance of not even being able to look at a marker, and that there might be 5 markers in a game, four of which are wrong, this game has the potential to take an extremely variable amount of time to play through. It could take ages, if people are unlucky on the searching rolls, or be over very, very quickly.
As there are three games to get in, this could be a little frustrating if your game finishes within half an hour, and one of the other three games takes more than an hour to play through.
Winners Bonus Two things here.
Firstly why would you put your war machine in your reserve army. Even if you are defending in desperate defence in round 7 having your warmachine in the reserve force isn't exactly useful. A better case would be adding it to the Skirmish List or Main Army.
Second while I'm not keen on random tables at the best of time this one appears more than a little unbalanced. Why do some of the rolls have Warmachines that can re-roll missed hits? This seems far to powerful to me, especially far to powerful to be decided on the roll of a dice.
On top of that, like the assassin this has a bad result for the winner. Why? You've won two games, so your reward for that victory is to make your opponent better, that makes little sense.
Further with regards to the one result, which of the three opponents you played gets the free Bolt Thrower? Should we rolls for that at random? If that person also managed to win two games does that mean they could potentially get two free war machines. Actually it would be possible for the same player to get three free bolt throwers, one through their own efforts and two through two of their opponents being unlucky.
I would suggest it would be better to simply give the winner the choice of getting either a Small Stone Thrower, or a Ballista (winners choice). There are pluses and minuses to each machine.
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 30, 2010 20:04:56 GMT
I've also got a few thoughts on the final rounds.
Round 7 Quite looking forward to this one. However since round 3 there have been some additional opportunities for people to add new units to their armies.
Which since most of these have gone into the 1,500 point army makes the defending task a harder job as the attacker potentially has access to more stuff than was available in round 3.
If I can make a suggestion additional forces gained ought to be attachable to either the Skirmish Force (or more sensibly the Reserve Force), as this would be only fair.
Round 9 Why have people try and make up a new 750 point force from their current armies. Surely with units designed to fit into either a 1,500, 500 or 750 point armies mixing and matching to make a 750 point list will be difficult. Wouldn't it be simpler to simply use the Skirmish List after all that's already 750 points.
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Post by wstevens on Jan 30, 2010 23:21:00 GMT
The additional force if gained from the engineer game does go either in the Reserve or 1500pts. If I were to allow all gained forces to go into the skirmish or reserve force then the shoe is on the other foot. As the Byzantines are defending any additionals gained would never be used by the Europa league as they will attack with their 1500pts+. They have no need for the skirmish army again - so they would be gaining a unit that they couldn't use. To make this fair I would suggest that any additions from round 5 (200pts) of Infantry or Cavalry could either go into the reserve or the 1500+pts army. However you couldn't make the swap to suit yourself. I would be most unhappy if you gained (Simon I did say if) a 200pts infantry unit if you were defending (stopper), used it for your reserve force and then it appeared in your 1500+pts force for the Ambush Convoy. So with this in place gains from rounds 5 and 6 should make the task a little easier for the Byzantines. Again ensure you place your 200pts troops or war machine in one army list and stick to it. Difficult choice considering - but I thought you liked a challenge . As for round 9 I just wanted people to create a one off new force so that it worked well with their partner. This opens the channels for healthy debate about what to take to outdo the opposition. I would trust everybody to ensure they kept to the rules on this as the only time I would check this list would be at the tables. If there were any discrepancies then a VP penalty would apply. As I presume from the comments above about certain people's skirmish armies being under powered maybe its time for a change to get something in there that's different - for the doubles match only. However I will poll for this to give people the option as I know a few people are not that confident with their skirmish armies - I'm one of them .
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Post by wstevens on Jan 31, 2010 0:02:42 GMT
I've had a read through the rules for this round and had a bit of a think and here are my thoughts, along with some questions. First of this strikes me as a fairly random game. If you rout your opponents army you should get the engineer anyway. But there is a lot of potential here for one or two bits of luck to decide the outcome of the game. DeploymentI'm presuming here that the phrasing means that you intend the markers to be evenly spaced out along the centre line. I.e if you have three markers one would be in the centre of the table, with the other two 12" inches on either side. Four markers would I assume mean two markers 6" either side of the centre point with the other two 12" further out.. Yes Scouting MarkersThe chance of being able to look at the marker is clear enough. I'm less sure about having to move away at least a move if you roll a 1-2. What happens if you've got an enemy unit bearing down on you. In all probability you won't be able to move away from the marker, without exposing your unit to the enemy attack.. That should really be errata "unless marched moved." (although chances of being charged could occur) but you wouldn't need to present your rear or flank to them - however you could charge the enemy yourself. Question. What happens if you have a unit that is within 1" of two markers at the same time (easily possible for a decent sized skirmishing unit). Can you scout more than one marker at once?. This would be deemed as not being with the spirit of the game or sporting and I think a Conga line of numidians wouldn't be either "let's check all three markers - ah there's the engineer back to camp with my fast cav and game over round 2" The answer would be no - you make your choice to which one you would like to look at then move the rest nearer to the one you didn't look at in the last round. Even if the opponent gets there in the next round as well, you were there first and get to scout. However you put yourself in such a position that you could get charged. If you flee you drop the counter, if you lose combat you lose the counter.... Moving MarkersThe rules don't say but I'm assuming that a unit carrying a marker moves it with them?. Yes as in the rules ... "carefully put it behind the troops that found it" this means they do carry it around. Victory ConditionsGiven that a game won't end until one side or the other gets a marker back to their base camp, and that people have a 1 in 3 chance of not even being able to look at a marker, and that there might be 5 markers in a game, four of which are wrong, this game has the potential to take an extremely variable amount of time to play through. It could take ages, if people are unlucky on the searching rolls, or be over very, very quickly As there are three games to get in, this could be a little frustrating if your game finishes within half an hour, and one of the other three games takes more than an hour to play through.. The difference between times should not be that great and I'm sure there are a number of things that can one could do in the meantime. Although I can see your point if we have a late start. Winners BonusTwo things here. Firstly why would you put your war machine in your reserve army. Even if you are defending in desperate defence in round 7 having your warmachine in the reserve force isn't exactly useful. A better case would be adding it to the Skirmish List or Main Army. Actually you are correct when I thought skirmish I kept saying Reserve. This should be changed as it doesn't really make sense. Second while I'm not keen on random tables at the best of time this one appears more than a little unbalanced. Why do some of the rolls have Warmachines that can re-roll missed hits? This seems far to powerful to me, especially far to powerful to be decided on the roll of a dice. On top of that, like the assassin this has a bad result for the winner. Why? You've won two games, so your reward for that victory is to make your opponent better, that makes little sense. Further with regards to the one result, which of the three opponents you played gets the free Bolt Thrower? Should we rolls for that at random? If that person also managed to win two games does that mean they could potentially get two free war machines. Actually it would be possible for the same player to get three free bolt throwers, one through their own efforts and two through two of their opponents being unlucky. First point I can see a major blunder here with the roll of a one - indeed how could you decide which opponent would get it? However I think that the re-rolls should be toned down to one reroll in the game as the catapult is. He is a much sort after engineer after all! 1 and 2 rolls should be light bolt thrower as described in roll 2. Thanks Stephen for noticing that - I thought about it this evening but you beat me to it - kudos! I would suggest it would be better to simply give the winner the choice of getting either a Small Stone Thrower, or a Ballista (winners choice). There are pluses and minuses to each machine. True but where's the fun?
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Post by wstevens on Jan 31, 2010 0:09:35 GMT
Stephen could you change the random roll table please - The 1-2 should be Light bolt thrower etc Where there is a re-roll to hit - this should be only once in the game. Forget the march moving bit it needs more clarification. If you scout and roll a 1 or 2 then you would have to move off this point - is what has been stated. Let's say that this rule wasn't there - would you stay on this spot long enough for the enemy to come at you? Remember that the enemy is not just going to sit there and watch you win. If you sit there long enough waiting to look at it again in the next round you become a sitting duck anyway. Regardless if you move off or not. Now I believe if we omitted the original rule this would be the case anyway. I suppose in the interest of time this could be a viable choice. I don't mind that you wait about on the marker so that I could charge you. Either way the enemy will be on you if you stay or move from there. Ok sod it - we will omit this rule in the interest of saving time. You can stay on the marker until the next round and look at it again - the enemy will get ready to charge you any case however you can only do one of two things at the start of the next round - scout (as part of a compulsory move) or charge you can't do both. However if you move onto a marker or steal it within the game you can scout it immediately.
Also the war machine can be put in either the skirmish army or the 1500+pts army. I seem not to be able to change or modify on this forum. As I am the person who is organising this campaign I find this a little odd.
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 31, 2010 10:17:21 GMT
That might be down to the fact that I'm the Board Admin, I'm not sure if anyone other than another Admin can modify my posts.
However I don't remember what level of access you have, I'll check. You should find you can now modify posts in here.
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 31, 2010 10:56:59 GMT
Actually I still don't think your position on the bonus units is balanced.
Considering that the bonus units gained by the Europa League will be able to be used in rounds 7,8 and of course 10.
Why should the Byzantine's have to choose whether to have those troops available in either round 7 or round 8. The extra Hero was available to both sides in round 3, so why aren't these additional units? I don't see why both sides shouldn't get the same chances to use their extra stuff.
I'm not suggesting they should be in the Garrison, that would probably be unfair. But attaching them to the reserve force (for round 7 only) in the same fashion as the Hero from round 3, seems fair enough to me.
Otherwise the extra units on the part of the attack could easily make it 1,800 vs 1,250 - 1,300 rather than 1,500 - 1,600 vs 1,250 - 1,300.
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Post by wstevens on Jan 31, 2010 14:01:27 GMT
I have taken some of your advice (moans?) onboard and have reached a compromise which I feel now doesn't give the attackers much of a chance especially if that attacker has not gained any bonus units. Fully united defender would have 750pts + 500pts + 200 bonus pts + hero guy? + bonus warmachine. On top there is all the bonuses that you initially quibbled about for defenders (via the middle of the garrison which acts as an ASB) when you were attacking that makes the defending force unlikely to lose unless they were extremely unlucky with dice rolls. This could easily see the defenders go 1600pts+ and against an attacking side which with no bonuses only has 1500pts. Talk about being unfair Stephen. When the Europa side were defending we had no bonuses at all apart from the hero guy who was ineffectual in my game due to poor foresight (wrongly guessing Alex's deployment ). We were vastly outnumbered. So I cannot see where the complaints are coming from apart from the fact that it is your turn to defend. No matter I have significantly changed things to a compromise. However the Europa League will rise to this occasion and still try and beat you - although it is going to be a mammoth task in Round 7. I just hope Roddy doesn't face you as he no bonuses at all - I think he would have a right to moan more than any of the Byzantines ;D
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 31, 2010 15:38:30 GMT
I've already played Roddy. By round 7 the only two people I won't have played are Darrell and Robert.
It's not a complaint, just an opinion.
I have to admit the round 3 scenario actually was far more balanced than I had thought on reading the rules for it. Hence the even split of games, and James was unlucky to loose to me, a couple of failed leadership tests handed me a lot of points. A fair result in that game probably would have been a draw.
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Post by wstevens on Jan 31, 2010 15:46:50 GMT
So have you looked at the changed rules above? They do suit the Byzantines more than the Europa league but I think its for the best as we will probably whoop all of your little rears in other matches.
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Post by Stephen Mawson on Jan 31, 2010 19:57:55 GMT
Hmm.
I'm quite happy for the attacker to just set up their new unit with the attacking force. That makes sense, their main force is gathered to attack after all.
From the defenders perspective maybe it would be better to make the defender make a standard reserves roll for the additional unit (if gained). So 4+ on turn 2, 3+ on turn 3, etc. Having it arrive from the same entry area as the Reserve force.
That would represent the newly raised unit not being quite as ready as the rest of the army. Also the roll would make it less likely for the Reserve force (plus bonus) from being to large a relief force arriving all at once.
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Post by wstevens on Jan 31, 2010 22:53:18 GMT
I suppose that would be ok.
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Post by Simon Robinson on Feb 10, 2010 12:30:55 GMT
Is there a revised version of the round 6 rules reflecting the above discussion?
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