Simple Pro-tip: Re-write the Tournament Scenarios
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
And despite the fact that these were the famous last words of a man found stabbed to death nearby, I never go to a Tournament without a pen. Apart from chipmunking sports scores*, let's have a look at what you can do with your own pen.
The Brief version for Pros:
Tournament Organisers LOVE Custom Scenarios. It gives them the chance to play 'Armchair Fieldmarshal', a big step-up from their usual 'Armchair General' role. As long as the scenarios are play-tested and don’t unbalance the game too badly this can actually make a tournament more fun, but since often they are only handed out right before the games in a noisy room full of confusion as people move cases of models from table to table, here is your one simple, practical pro-tip.
Re-write the Win Conditions for every game at the tournament in as simple terms as possible.
Re-writing them makes them easier to remember, checks you understand them fully and gives you a quick and easy reference rather than the hodge-podge of fluff and home-brew rules often provided in Player’s Pack. This is a simple, quick technique that has helped me to win me countless games where my opponent didn’t actually have as clear a vision of what was going on and what the priorities actually were.
Here is an example of the sort of synopsis I would write into the margin of a scenario at a tournament (the scenario it is based on is further down the page):
Scenario 1: Git dat dirty git!
- Pitched Battle, Annihilation, Traitor counts as 5 Kill Points
- 10 or more lead for massacre, 7 or more lead for Major win, 1 lead for Minor win
- +1BP kill an HQ
- +1BP Kill traitor
- +1BP control more pieces of terrain (scoring unit within 3’)
- +3BP Get traitor to enemy deployment (12’ of board edge)
And that’s it. It works for any tabletop game and is not 40K specific, but until you start doing it I don’t think you’ll really understand what a difference it can make.
The Detailed version for everyone else:
There are 9 standard scenarios for 5th Edition 40K, but since we are all probably very familiar with them, this article is going to be about analysing the home-brew or mixed scenarios Tournament Organisers (TO) frequently introduce to add variety or match their own preferences. We won’t be looking at the increasingly popular Nova format, but rather at reading and understanding the sort of tournament scenarios you can expect to face at all levels of competitive play.
Why is this important? Because so many of us get them wrong, at least occassionally. When was the last time you heard someone at the end of a game say something like 'Oh it has to be within 3 inches?', 'This one wasn't worth any kill points?', 'What do you mean the middle objective is worth more!?' or 'Darn I thought this was random game length!'. I even had a tournament game end only for my opponent to be surprised we were actually playing for Kill Points**.
I like to think I pay more attention than most, and I got one wrong recently ---in no less a game than the final round of the Australian Masters. Stay tuned, that’s probably a great example to use later.
Let’s have a look at some of the common reasons we get it wrong, and then I’ll go through some real examples.
The TO scenario
- Is well-written but we misunderstand it
- Is badly written
- Has an unusual approach to scoring
- Conflicts with core rules
Let’s get started. Rather than pick on some poor unwitting TO’s scenario, I picked the first one that came up on Google and it just so happened to be….
40K Ard Boyz Preliminary Scenario 1:
Git dat dirty git!
Mission:
Score as many kill points as you can and try to kill the traitor.
Objective:
This mission uses Annihilation with one modification. Each player will give his opponent 1 troop model form your army list to represent the traitor. The traitor is worth 5 kill points. The traitor can join any troop unit in your army. He can ride in a transport as long as his squad meets the unit size for the vehicles capacity. He loses all of his equipment/special rules and gains the Independent Character special rule with the following profile:
WS4 BS4 S4 T4 I5 W2 A2 LD10 S4+/5+.
Deployment:
Use Pitched Battle as per page 92 of the main rulebook.
Length of game:
Use random game length as per page 90 of the main rulebook. Or until time is called, so that each player completes the same number of turns.
Massacre: If a player has 10 more kill points than his opponent.
Major Victory: If a player has 7 more kill points than his opponent.
Minor Victory: If a player has more kill points than his opponent.
Draw: If both players have the same kill points.
Battle point modifiers:
+1 If you kill your traitor. (You only score this point if you kill the model you gave to your opponent)
+1 If you kill an enemy HQ
+1 If you control more pieces of terrain than your opponent. (To control you need a scoring unit within 3” of a piece of terrain)
+3 If you get the traitor you are controlling into your opponents deployment zone.
That’s a lot of text to try take in, but at least this was a scenario released to the players in advance. We’ve probably all seen longer and more complicated scenarios given out on the day, which is anything but ideal. Anyway, it’s workshop time, so let’s break the mission down!
Mission:
Score as many kill points as you can and try to kill the traitor…etc.. etc... The traitor is worth 5 kill points
This is a Kill Point Mission. The traitor is worth five points. For reading comprehension it would be much better if these two things had just been written next to each other, but this is fairly par for the course.
If you are a serious Tournament player you need to register immediately that this means the Traitor is extremely important – he is worth as much as five other squads/vehicles.
Each player will give his opponent 1 troop model form your army list to represent the traitor. The traitor is worth 5 kill points. The traitor can join any troop unit in your army. He can ride in a transport as long as his squad meets the unit size for the vehicles capacity. He loses all of his equipment/special rules and gains the Independent Character special rule with the
following profile: WS 4 BS 4 S 4 T 4 I 5 W 2 A 2 LD 10 S 4+/5+.
There are a lot of profile and rule changes in this paragraph. First, look at how it affects balance. Exchanging a model for a ‘traitor’ is great for Guard, Orks and any army with cheap troops, as they are losing 4 to 10 points worth of models.
This is bad for armies with expensive troops like Marines, and terrible for those fancy armies that are fashionable like Draigowing and Paladins who lose a lot more when they give a man away. At least you get to pick which of your models you give away so it won’t be a Tervigon lol.
When handed over the traitor becomes something like a Scout Sergeant with LD10 and 2 wounds. Some squads might even benefit from having LD10 join them, but apart from that he is unarmed so fairly mediocre.
How should you use the traitor? You should absolutely hide the little bugger. Ideally he should be in a transport, or out of sight. 5KP is a game winning amount, and he needs to be kept out of the way. This affects balance since it favours armies with durable squads in durable vehicles, but we’re past the point of no regrets.
Independent character means he will be vulnerable in combat, but also means he doesn’t have to stay with your troops. 'The traitor can join any troop unit in your army’ is a poor example of rules writing, since people will not be sure if it means ‘Can be deployed with any troop’ or ‘Must be deployed with any troop unit’ or ‘Can only join troops’. If my best guess at what it means is correct, it should simply say ‘The traitor gains the Independent Character special rule and must be deployed with a troop unit’.
Deployment:
Use Pitched Battle as per page 92 of the main rulebook.
Nice and simple, I approve!
Length of game:
Use random game length as per page 90 of the main rulebook. Or until time is called, so that each player completes the same number of turns.
Note that this starts simple, ends complicated. Read as Written, this means that when time is called, if the game hasn’t ended play continues until both players have finished the same amount of turns.
This is the fairest approach to ending games, but is often not the case, and you will need to be aware in advance when the game will end on a timer with ‘Dice Down’.
Scoring
Now we have reached the scoring section at the end, and it is only here that we find out the full goals of this scenario!
Massacre: If a player has 10 more kill points than his opponent.
Major Victory: If a player has 7 more kill points than his opponent.
Minor Victory: If a player has more kill points than his opponent.
Draw: If both players have the same kill points.
Battle point modifiers:
+1 If you kill your traitor. (You only score this point if you kill the model you gave to your opponent)
+1 If you kill an enemy HQ
+1 If you control more pieces of terrain than your opponent. (To control you need a scoring unit within 3” of a piece of terrain)
+3 If you get the traitor you are controlling into your opponents deployment zone.
It will require a 10 KP lead to get a Massacre. Normally that would be rare – some armies don’t even contain 10KP and the only really realistic way to get that massacre would be to table them. This time though, you just need to get a 5KP lead and kill the traitor – and make sure your own Traitor is kept safe.
+1 If you kill your traitor. (You only score this point if you kill the model you gave to your opponent)
The traitor is worth 5KP AND an extra Battle Point after the game, meaning they are absolutely pivotal to this scenario. Again it’s badly written, but for the purpose of this exercise we don’t have to worry about whether you still score the point if the traitor’s squad runs off the table, if the traitor is killed by friendly blasts, shot by a commissar and so on.
For the purposes of this exercise we just need to identify in advance that the Traitor is absolutely key to victory, being worth 5KP and a bonus point to the final score.
+1 If you kill an enemy HQ
Simple enough. This should include HQ dedicated transports.
+1 If you control more pieces of terrain than your opponent. (To control you need a scoring unit within 3” of a piece of terrain)
If you like to be thorough, you might want to agree with your opponent that craters during the game don’t count, and make sure you point the individual pieces of terrain out before the game so there are no arguments about things like whether several small terrain pieces (trees, barrels etc) clustered together count as one or several.
+3 If you get the traitor you are controlling into your opponents deployment zone.
And this makes the mission a little more tricky, since you want to keep him alive at all costs.
Hopefully by now it should be clear why it is often a good idea to re-write the scenario in your own words, as simply as possible. If the amount of effort involved in turning this single scenario into this easily digestible, memorable version hasn’t convinced you this is a good idea, then just try doing that in a crowded, noisy room while your opponent proffers their hand-written list of 1750pts worth of Dark Angels under your nose.
Here’s the synopsis I wrote at the top of this article, which you can now compare to the scenario itself and see why I’d rather have this simple, concise set of bullet points.
Scenario 1: Git dat dirty git!
- Pitched Battle, Annihilation, Traitor counts as 5 Kill Points
- 10 or more lead for massacre, 7 or more lead for Major win, 1 lead for Minor win
- +1BP kill an HQ
- +1BP Kill traitor
- +1BP control more pieces of terrain (scoring unit within 3’)
- +3BP Get traitor to enemy deployment (12’ of board edge)
Writing a Simple Battle Plan
Now for the next step, if you’re willing to make it a little more advanced and actually make a plan for this mission in advance. Simple plans are often the best, so here are two versions of a plan for this scenario, created to suit very different armies.
Git dat dirty git Battle Plan: Imperial Guard
- Pitched Battle:
If I get First Turn, deploy centrally, prepare to scout forward and use demovets on enemy vehicles. - If I get Second Turn, refuse flank towards the board edge furthest from enemies long ranged anti-tank, or if they have an equal spread of anti-tank, deploy on the side furthest from their fastest moving attack.
There are 3 points for getting the Traitor to the enemy deployment zone. To do so will put this and other KP at risk. Ignore this objective entirely and play to strengths; make the enemy come to me.
Keep the Traitor in a troop unit that will come in from reserve, inside a vehicle.
If opportunity arises to pop Traitor in a skimmer late game for a quick shunt to the enemy board edge, do it, but otherwise play to the army’s strengths, not weakness.
No, seriously; play to the army’s strengths, not weakness.
For 1 point have more scoring units controlling terrain at the end, but only if it doesn’t conflict with a higher priority goal.
Target Priority:
- Kill their fast transports.
- Kill long ranged anti tank / closest melta
- Kill the traitor
- Kill an HQ
- Easy kill points from then on
Git dat dirty git Battle Plan: Blood Angel Drop Pod Army
Pitched Battle deployment (enemy will be within 12' of their edge)
Try give them first turn.
- Version 1: If the enemy is only moderately threatening:
- Put Traitor in a Pod coming down in second wave, the later he arrives the better.
- There are 3 points for getting the Traitor to the enemy deployment zone, which should be extremely easy. Choose a landing zone as far from enemy threats as possible; ideally clear a zone before his pod arrives
- Version 2: If the enemy is very threatening
- Put the traitor with troops that are not essential and have them walk on from reserve without a pod. He can either be in a large squad that can handle close combat, or a smaller squad that can sit in cover out of sight all game.
Apart from the above, play this as a simple KP game
Have more scoring units controlling terrain at the end, but only if it doesn’t conflict with a higher priority goal.
- Kill tanks on arrival with meltaguns
- Kill their traitor
- Kill their anti infantry squads/weapons
- Kill an HQ
- Mop up easy KP
Those are nice, short example plans. I'd often go into a lot more detail, but that can get a whole article to itself later.
Conclusion:
This advice may sound really simple to many readers
- Re-write the tournament scenarios in your own words
- Write a short simple plan for how you will win
And you’re right, it is simple. That’s what makes it practical, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s made the difference between victory and loss for me at least half a dozen times.
Your homework is to try this out at your next tournament and find out if it makes a difference, if you feel more in control of the game, and if you noticed anything in the rules of a tournament scenario you’d otherwise have possibly missed.
Your homework is to try this out at your next tournament and find out if it makes a difference, if you feel more in control of the game, and if you noticed anything in the rules of a tournament scenario you’d otherwise have possibly missed.
Good luck!
*Never, never, ever do this.
** Very important to not laugh. Keep a serious expression, express sympathy about what an easy mistake it is when the scenarios are low quality photocopies, try not to lose all your sports points in one round lol.
