Contest of Champions – April 2012 – The Missions

I know so far I have failed to do any look back of the missions from February, and I need to, especially before I design any new missions.  But I have a few months for that as this session will be SAWS themed and June with by QCR themed to allow players to get a feel of how their lists might do in the missions.  I say themed because I took inspiration from them only.  Both of these events use modified win/loss/draw while the CoCs use a 20-0 system.  Instead of bonus points I use bonus victory points, though there has been a request to do an 18-0 system with 2 bonus battle, or some other modification.

For this event, the 20-0 scale will be:

Victory Point Difference	High Score Battle Points	Low Score Battle Points
2201+	20	0
1901-2200	19	1
1651-1900	18	2
1401-1650	17	3
1151-1400	16	4
901-1150	15	5
701-900	14	6
501-700	13	7
301-500	12	8
101-300	11	9
0-100	10	10

Like last time, this makes the high steps require more and more points, going from 100 to 300 and requiring a near perfect game to get a 20-0.  I may play with it in later events, and there is no reason it needs to be the same for every game.  We’ll see how it goes.  My goal is to have a good spread of battle points and to encourage people who may be losing to fight for every last point.

The other core rules, like conceding, terrain set up and tabling are the same as last time.

Round 1: Magic Flux

Deployment: Dawn Attack Scenario

A building is a Wizard’s Tower.  AFTER deployment, randomly determine which building is the wizard’s tower.

Special Rules: Power Flux:

During each magic phase, after rolling for the Winds of Magic and after all Channeling rolls are made, each player rolls all the dice in his Power/Dispel Pool.  Each D6 that comes up a ‘1’ in this roll is handed over to the opponent and added to his Pool.  Remember that the Power Pool may never exceed 12 dice, so if this dice exchange results in a higher number than this, the extra dice are discarded as normal

Bonus Victory Points

200 points:  Have more units in your enemy’s deployment zone than they have in yours.

50 points:  For each model that channels killed during the game.

This mission is closely taken from the SAWS version of the mission, or at least the Power Flux part is.  SAWS uses battle line 4 times, and I didn’t want to use it more than once in my mission set so I switched it to Dawn Attack.  I also added the 200 point bonus for units in deployment zones, taking it from one of the bonus objectives.  With the magic theme, and wanting to give them game a point of contest, I added in the wizards tower.  I made it random after deployment to make it harder to plan for on tables with more than one building.  I don’t find the wizards tower often changes the game too much by adding more spells as it doesn’t provide any more dice or casting level to cast.

Round 2: Battle of Attrition

Deployment: Battle for the Pass Scenario

All forests are Wildwood.  In addition, all forests block line of sight for units beyond the forest (but not units partially or wholly in the forest).

Special Rules: Attrition:

Any unit that is reduced to 50% or fewer of its starting wounds, or is fleeing, at the end of the game counts for half Victory Points.  Characters are determined separately.  For characters on a mount with its own wounds, the model is scored based upon half of the total wounds (of mount and character).

Bonus Victory Points

200 points:  You have captured more standards that your opponent.

This mission is really just a combination of 3 of the SAWS mission.  Mission 5 is just book rules Battle for the Pass, with mission 2(?) having the half points special rule.  Another of the missions is titled wildwood, though the SAWS version requires a roll.  I decided it was better to just fix it.  The bonus points again comes from one of the secret missions.  Finally, I added the line of sight rule to the forests.  It had been request at the beginning of the year, and I wanted to put it in and see how people react to it.

Round 3: King of the Hill

Deployment: Battleline

The center hill is a Temple of Skulls

Special Rules: Watchtower Game Length

Bonus Victory Points

300 points:  You have the most models in contact with the hill at the end of the game.

200 points:  Kill the most expensive enemy character.

The final mission at SAWS I hadn’t touched was their pseudo watchtower mission, which I took.  I added to that the temple of skulls rule to give the hill some importance earlier in the game.  I also dropped the summoning restriction and I don’t feel it creates that much of an advantage.  I then added the kill character, again taken from one of the secret objectives.

I feel that my missions maintain the essence of the SAWS missions, but provide a twist here and there that elevates them.  I feel that together they are still missing some of the key points of 8^th edition, as there is no reflection of blood and glory, but I ran one last time and want to keep the players on their toes.  I’m sure QCR will give me something to riff off of involving banners.