Celesticon - Missions

I’ve played at Celesticon the last 3 years, since the convention began.  Normally run by my friend Doc, it seems that this year he was promoted to management and so isn’t available to run it.  He asked me if would take over, and I couldn’t say no.  This will be my 5^th event, and first not at Great Escape.  Doc said that he would provide me with his terrain and cloth boards along with trophies and prizes as I haven’t yet had a chance to raise those items.  My max player count will be 32 players.

One of the comments I’ve received about my Bonus Victory Point style event, is that it just changes a little a win on the 20-0 scale, but doesn’t further break up in the same why that Bonus Battle points do.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a 20-0 style mission with bonus victory points, but I decided to give it a try and Celesticon seemed like a good place to do that.  Doing it mid-year at the CoC just seemed to be counter the yearly cycle that Great Escape maintains.  So these three missions are 18-0 with 2 bonus points.

Mission 1: All the Colors of the Wind

Deployment – Dawn Attack

Terrain – All forests are blood forests

Special Rules: Specific lores receive a +2 to cast on specified turns.  When receiving the bonus, a miscast requires 2 roles on the table with the opponent choosing which result occurs.  Bound spells count as lores contained in army books if they don’t directly use a spell from a lore.

Lore	Turns
Fire, Beasts, Shadow & Death	1-2
Lores contained in Army books	3-4
Metal, Light, Heavens & Life	5-6

An army that contain no wizards gets +1 to dispel in all cases.

Bonus Victory Points:

100 – For each channeling model killed

50 – Each bound spell killed (only once per model)

Bonus Battle Points (1 each):

Kill general

Have more banners in terrain features than your opponent, based on model not unit.

This mission is a modification of a mission I ran early in the year at the CoC (and one I borrowed from another event).  I kept the lore table the same, but changed magic bonus to +2 instead of D3.  I also added miscast to provide a negative as well as a positive.

Mission 2: Cloaked in Fog

Deployment – Blood and Glory

Special Rules: At the beginning of each GAME turn, 4d6 are rolled, the total being the maximum line of sight available for that game turn.

Bonus Victory Points:

300 – breaking without being broken

100 – breaking first if both broken

Bonus Battle Points (1 each):

Kill a model in a challenge

Most expensive core unit alive.

I think this mission is interesting as it adds a level of predicable randomness to the game.  Most often it won’t affect the game to much, but may limit shooting such as cannons at their farther ranges.  With an average of 14” it shouldn’t prevent charges.

Mission 3: King of the Hill

Deployment – Battle Line

Terrain – Hill in center of table is Anvil of Value, but only effecting units with models on hill.

Special Rules: Watchtower ending

Bonus Victory Points:

300 – most wounds in contact with hill.

Bonus Battle Points (1 each):

Most banners outside of 12” of center based on the physical model

Destroy most expensive magic item.

This mission has a little for both players.  While the hill gives 300 points, possible granting a win or shifting the 18-0 scale a point or two, controlling outside the hill nets you an automatic +1.  The hill granting magic attacks (but not working with banner of world dragon – that would just be unfair), will help to ensure that Vampires don’t get a big advantage.

Overall, as my first event outside of my traditional gaming environment, I’m interested to see what other people think of my ideas of how Warhammer can be played.  I hope these missions provide the players with an interesting, dynamic event.  Unlike the CoC, I will be providing them ahead of time as all people have to email me to register.

Play Catchup - August CoC - Missions

When planning these missions I went back through what I had already done and tried to pick styles that I hadn’t.  While some people might view the game as a battleline environment, I believe that the game has 6 mission types and that those missions types help to balance the game.  4 sessions means 12 missions, which means that each mission type should be used about twice.  It’s not completely true, but its close.  I hope by the end of the year (6 sessions means 18 missions) to have the balance complete.  While I haven’t started working on October missions yet, I do have some end of the world ideas for December.

Mission 1: Control the Field

Deployment – Dawn Attack

Special Rules: Units with fortitude (including gen/bsb) don’t have to roll.

Bonus Points:

200 – For each table quarter controlled (having more fortitude)

I like this mission.  It combines the randomness but also provides a reward for bring the balanced army.  Without a blood and glory mission I wanted to include something that reward players for maintaining their balance.  Additionally, it might encourage someone to put a character outside a death start or their normal unit in order to make one more unit controllable.

Mission 2: Escort the Messenger

Deployment – Battleline Scenario

Special Rules: Get a messenger whose rules are:

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD
5	4	-	4	4	3	4	1	9

Unit Type: Unique

Hand Weapon, Light Armor, Shield

Skirmish, Vanguard, Protected

Protected: If not joined by any characters, the messenger may receive a Look Out Sir from any nearby unit above minimum required size as if it were the same unit type of that unit.

Bonus Points:

50 – For each wound you do to your opponent’s messenger

250 – Ending the game with your messenger in your opponent’s deployment zone.

A friend of mine, when I asked him what mission type he really enjoyed, suggested this style mission.  He is not actually going to be able to make the event, but I will be going ahead and seeing what other people think of it.  I’ve seen the style where you take a model off your opponent’s army, but I wanted to try something new.  I’ll just have to remember to bring 30-40 clan rats for people to use.  I wanted to give him some interesting rules, but not make him extremely survivable with something like a ward save.  So I allowed him to be joined by characters OR to get a look out sir for basically anything but another unique unit or a warmachine.  I gave him skirmish, both for the shooting protection, but to also give an interesting reason to put a character into a unit with him.  I could see a conga line style with a character in front and the messenger following behind.  Should be interesting.  Also gave him at least a 4 in the various kill spell stats (toughness, initiative and strength), along with a good leadership defense, but didn’t make his stats so high that he becomes an offensive unit.  I’ll be curious to see what people think of it.

Mission 3: Secrets Revealed

Deployment – Battle for the Pass

Special Rules: Choose a victory condition

1.     Get opponent to half models

2.     Break your opponent

3.     Remain unbroken

4.     Get your general into their deployment zone

Bonus Points:

400 – making your objective

100 – each other objective met

First, because this missions bonus is worth up to 700 points I drastically changed the scale on the 20-0.  I really liked this idea, as it allowed people to choose their objectives while still considering a multi-directional game.  It’s also a fall back to the CoC’s former style of secret objectives.  As often occurs, people forget to select their objectives, so I included a clause requiring notification of selection (not of the selection, just an “I did it”), otherwise the first one becomes the default.  This will hopefully prevent someone from trying to cherry pick late in the game.

Catching Up - June CoC - Missions

So this post came out why later than it should have, as I would have liked it to post on game day.  For the June missions I themed them off of the QCR missions.  Quake City Rumble is the biggest West Coast (California) event.  I knew I was missing it this year, for the same reason why this post came late… baby, remodel and 2 moves (in and out for first phase of remodel).

Mission 1: Magically Depressed

Deployment – Meeting Engagement

Special Rules: During the magic phase, note the lower value when rolling to generate power dice for the turn.  Any power or dispel dice rolled matching that value is discarded without effect.

Bonus Points:

150 – kill thing the highest level wizard, or a model with a bound spell if no wizard

150 – destroy most expensive magic item

The QCR mission actually had a separate roll to see which number was ignored, but I felt that this change maintained the idea without directly copying it.  I was looking for a mission like this as I had already offered a few with increases to the magic phase.

Mission 2: Envoy Escort

Deployment – Battleline

Terrain – all forests are fungus forests

Special Rules: Select a non-flying core unit, it gets Stupidity, ITP and Stubborn, cannot be joined by characters nor use inspiring presence

200 – captured this units banner (or met the conditions of capturing their banner even if they don’t have one)

100 –Not having the 200 point goal be achieved by opponent

100 – end the game with the selected unit in your opponent’s table half.

This was themed off of the Keg mission.  I didn’t feel using that term was appropriate at my local game store as we have some younger players so I switched it to an Envoy Escort.  I figured that some snotty ambassador could cause the same confusion as a little alcohol (making the commander wanting to avoid the ambassador and even having him countermand some orders causing confusion).  I really like this mission and will likely maintain it for next year as I look back.

Mission 3: Cut off the Head

Deployment – Blood and Glory

Special Rules: Instead of counting banners for the blood and glory, use characters: General (4), Lord (3), Hero (2) and champion (1).  The general doesn’t count as a lord or hero.

300 – breaking opponent and not being broken

100 – breaking them before you broke, if you are also broken

100 – have a unit in their deployment zone and not have your opponent be in yours.

I felt this was a good spin on the blood and glory mission.  Finally gave champions some value besides dying instead of a character.

Sadly, in my move out, I discovered that the comment sheets for this event and the previous 2 were not maintained (specifically wife threw them out thinking them garbage) so I will not be able to do any sort of after action review posts.

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.

Contest of Champions – Round 1 Recap

Well, I think the event ran very smoothly.  We started early, every round started on time and we were only 10 minutes late on the final scores – mostly because we had a traffic jam of people at the top and needed to actually go down to the 4^th person for best general, and then only have a tiebreaker to determine that.

So congratulations to our winners:

Overall:  Joe Finlayson, playing High Elves (and reader)

Sportsman: Jeff James

General: Mike Carbone

Appearance: Sean Smaker

Player’s Choice: Micah Pierce

Wooden Spoon: Troy Perez

Most of those names should look familiar, as I think all but Jeff has been on the other end of a battle report at least once.

At Great Escape Games, we don’t have the same person winning more than one award, so I also want to acknowledge that Joe was top General.  The second place General was Jeff, who took Sportsmanship.  The third best General was Sean, who took Appearance which left the prize going to Mike, but only after a tiebreaker to beat out Greg Barret.  Jeff won sportsman ship only on the second tiebreaker to top Jesse Cuccia.  The other awards were easily taken by Sean, Micah and Troy.  Congrats.

The final standings are:

Player	Club	Army	Overall	Sports	General	Paint Award	Player's Choice	Wooden Spoon
Joe Finlayson	Redding Gamers	High Elf	108	32	52	26	0	57
Sean Smaker	Guns N' Warpstone	Lizardman	103	37	42	32	3	47
Greg Barrett	Guns N' Warpstone	Empire	98	34	40	27	2	45
Jeff James	N/A	High Elf	98	38	42	18	0	27
Van Nguyen	Guns N' Warpstone	Ogre Kingdom	92	35	35	15	2	35
Zach Brooks	Guns N' Warpstone	Bretonnia	92	36	35	13	1	35
Doc Glenboski	Powers of the North	Orcs and Goblins	89	36	31	23	0	31
Mike Carbone	Min Max	Dwarf	86	37	40	6	0	35
John Lee	Bizarro Hammer	Vampire	85	35	29	21	0	29
Darrell Grigsby	Min Max	Orcs and Goblins	84	35	30	19	0	30
Jesse Cuccia	Rogue	Bretonnia	79	38	19	16	1	19
Troy Perez	Guns N' Warpstone	Warrors of Chaos	79	36	22	12	2	7
Paul Kuehnert	Bizarro Hammer	Ogre Kingdom	77	37	36	0	0	31
Rhett Ussery	Rogue	Bretonnia	76	31	38	5	0	23
Steve Fox	Powers of the North	Warrors of Chaos	75	35	19	22	0	24
Drew Seagle	Minions of Mayhem	Warrors of Chaos	73	37	27	7	0	27
Henry Griep	Min Max	Chaos Dwarf	69	32	14	25	2	29
April Hall	Minions of Mayhem	Daemons of Chaos	66	34	27	1	0	32
Nick Adams	Bizarro Hammer	Warrors of Chaos	63	35	12	12	0	17
Micah Pierce	Min Max	High Elf	60	37	19	0	7	19

Only a 20 person turn out, which was disappointing, but it did seem some of the Modesto guys who usually come up, instead went to Las Vegas Open (where I hear they only had 24 on the fantasy side).

Based on my running of the event, I have now retooled my excel sheet to more easily include sorting and tiebreakers.  Basically, I just automated it all so that I just have to click buttons and enter data and not actually have to think of which fields I need.  Made things very smooth last time, and now without having to do all the sorting each time, should make it even smoother.  I still haven’t figured out a good way to automate the pairings, so I will have to be careful not to pair people with those they have already played.  Easy enough with 20 people, but I would want an upgrade before going to 60 and 5 rounds.

At Great Escape Games there is also a prize for the yearly winner, based only on Overall score.  I have already set up a page to keep track of that, and will start to include it after the April event.  I was also thinking of entering the event into RankingsHQ, and had already created the event.  I’m reconsidering now that he is again asking money from players.  I have no problem with him getting paid through sponsorship (where every player gets in), but feel that charging individuals for entry invalidates that system as players drop out.  So if he wants to charge, that’s his business and he can, but I think I will be choosing not to support it by uploading scores.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Waaaph!PACA battle reports and hobby updates… so behind on Adepticon.

Note:  I did include comment space on the after game/event sheets.  I however went to have a meeting with the store owner to review and that turned into him taking them and being too busy, so I can’t yet go over the feedback and therefore have no changes to make at this point.  I expect they will mostly be mission comments which I will try to keep in mind as I develop future missions.