Some background: I’m GMing a long-running Tilean campaign for 6 players (lots of stuff in my campaign thread in the Imperial Office.) In a nutshell -
there’s a lot more to this that will come out in the stories - an Empire player is trying to get a lot of wagons loaded with loot, guarded by a small force, back to a city. He is being pursued by a large force of ogres. The Empire player’s force would get utterly and completely ‘gubbed’ in a straight battle – but he’s not trying to fight a straight battle, he’s trying to escape a battle with the loot, by getting inside the protective walls of one of his cities.
Every campaign season I re-roll the 6 players’ initiative order. This season the Empire player has the initiative advantage over the Ogre player. Considering that alone, then he moves one hex and thus enters the city before the Ogres get to move. BUT the ogres move faster than the Empire player – their slowest speed (if the ditch their gnoblars) is 6” (doubled if marching); the Empire player’s slowest movement rate is 4” (no march move, i.e. the wagons). As I sat before my maps and notes I thought: 'I’ll toss a coin – do the wagons and their guards get into the city before the ogres catch them? If they do, all are inside. If they don’t, all are lost (loot and men).'
Then I remembered we’re meant to play the interesting games as tabletop battles. Doh! And I realised this would make for a great scenario.
The Ogres have 2600 points (including a Mournfang regiment, not including the ruler lord – it’s a game mechanic thing.) The Empire player (the city state of Pavona) has a mere 750 points of crossbow, wizards and helblaster, plus 350 points of standing force soldiers from the city the player is trying to get into (up to half being special or rare).
To better balance the forces I will allow the Empire player to have a large horde of peasants (rubbish stats) to represent the more able bodied of the large number of refugees he has with the wagon train. The wagons train represents the loot as well as the women and children, thus the peasant mob's willingness to help in the fight.
The Empire player has to make contact with the gate (or wall) with the wagons. The Ogre player has to get into contact with the wagons to take them. Each wagon carries an equal portion of the loot (‘supply points’ in technical game terms). Casualties amongst the combatants to be decided using normal campaign rules.
I currently see deployment as follows …
The ogres deploy in the top-right corner. The Pavonans deploy anywhere on the bottom half of the table, except their wagons have to be behind the half way line. This represents the much more mobile soldiers deploying to protect the wagons as they trundle in.
It’s a 6 turn game. The idea is that without the defenders distracting, slowing or misdirecting the ogres they will definitely lose the loot - the ogres can get to them by turn 5 if movement alone was considered. The defenders are gonna lose casualties, sure, but that’s kind of inevitable. But if the Empire player can interfere with the ogres’ progress then he could save the loot.
The thing is I want this to be balanced as I was about to toss a coin if we didn’t do the battle. I want tactics and/or luck to carry the day! I can’t change the forces as this is a campaign and players have what they have. (
Although I admit I’ve rustled up some extra forces for the Empire by turning non-combatants into a mob of pseudo-combatants, but that fits the scenario perfect and helps balance the game.)
So … any obvious problems? Any ideas on improving the balance?