Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift test scenario #1 Kachas Pass

As far as I'm concerned the best wargames are narrative games. This year I planned to slap Oldhammer and Age of Sigmar together and reimagine a classic. Unfortunately grandfather Nurgle's 2020 tour made it irresponsible to host a day of group gaming. On the plus side it gave me time to actually polish my scenario. To take it up one notch (and because we can safely have limited contact again) I actually tested the first scenario. Now there's a first. Here's some ramblings about applying old school wargaming to new rulesets. 

With a roar the invading Skaven horde stormed the stockade manned by two units of Dark Elves and their commander. 

I got into Warhammer Fantasy Battle way back in the eighties (third edition) when all scenarios assumed at least two players and a game master (as with 1st ed. Warhammer 40K). I remember GW shifting away from this in 4th edition, making it much easier to have a casual game with a friend. On the downside this ended the fun of a GM writing a silly story, carefully picking armies for the resulting game, thinking up secret side-objectives, and adding insane plot developments. It also ended hours spent wondering and discussing how anyone could so thoroughly miscalculate game balance (I'm looking at you McDeath). 

With typical Skaven trickery, a small unit of Stormvermin accompanied by a Warpgrinder, jumped up just behind the Dark Elf barricade. Unfortunately the cowards promptly failed to properly charge their enemies.

Well zap ahead in years and after a lot of failed attempts to make a silly game balanced, GW is finally focusing more on the narrative aspect of games again (in AoS to be sure, I've kinda missed the entire new 40K edition to be honest). All well and good, but it takes a hell of a lot less time to just roll a set of objectives and have an evening's worth of fun as opposed to writing full on scenario's and campaigns. Why still write one then? Because its wonderful (in my humble opinion). Campaign are where the real fun memories get shaped. Also Age of Sigmar lends itself splendidly to the required slapdashing of rules. 

The spy, freshly escaped, apparently decided the top of the outhouse made for an interesting hiding place from his former captors.

Rules supporting narrative games are all well and good, but there's one thing I still really miss about the ancient GW of the eighties. That is the more freewheeling creative approach to gaming and storytelling (all the crazy political, punk and historical references). To add some of that old mojo to new games I decided to dust of an ancient campaign module written for 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It is called 'Bloodbath at Orc's Drift'. This book came out in 1985. In a nod to the new ways I decided to rename my campaign Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift. 

With the roar of trumpets a large part of the Dark Elf patrol returned. A seer was no longer needed to predict the fate of the Stormvermin.

The original story is about an Orc king that got defeated at Orc's Drift. Five years later he gathers a new host and invades the lands again. The campaign consists of three separate skirmishes following the invasion of different parts of the Orc army on their way to Orc's Drift. It culminates into a fourth battle, the climax, at the village of Orc's Drift. 

The original garrison did not even wait for the returning patrol to help. They charged and cut down the sneaky Skaven.  

The original module is written for two to seven players (and a game master). A little gem I found in the book (for all the folks screaming that Warhammer Fantasy Battles used to be about mass battles): "If your own model collection is limited in range and numbers, bear in mind that the Elves at Kachas Pass can be doubled up and used for the scenario at Orc's Drift, and that although total Orc forces number some 110 Orcs, you will need only a maximum of 40 Orc figures at each of the three preliminary scenarios. Orc forces are bound to incur casualties and their numbers are likely to be greatly reduced before the battle at Orc's Drift."

In a brave effort to buy their fellow soldiers time, three Dark Elf chariots crashed into a unit of forty Clanrats (made fearless by a Screaming Bell).

For a rewrite in these modern times I can assume the luxury of every player having a full army (no need for a GM to do all the painting and collecting). To make sure everyone got a chance to field those armies, I took the old story and rewrote it. In short (the full version is a lot more colorful). A group of Necromancers fled through a Realm Gate with an Orruk warlord (and self-styled king) in hot pursuit. The Followers of Nagash (Death) arrived in Ghyran (the Realm of Life) only to run into a battle between a Chaos host and settlers from the Order faction. The Necromancers tipped the scales for Order. While celebrating, the freshly made allies were attacked by the pursuing Orruks. Death and Order fought Destruction off. The survivors formed a kingdom with the battlefield (called Orruk's Drift) as its capital. For the past five years they may have been building, but deep in the mountains both Chaos and Destruction have been planning their revenge...Now they will enact it.

Meanwhile the spy decided to run from the Dark Elves towards his former Chaos masters. Only to change his mind (Chaos is a harsh master) and run towards the safety of the table's edge (and Orc's Drift beyond it). 

Rewriting game mastered scenario's for modern play is difficult but fun. For instance secret objectives have to fall by the wayside. The first skirmish at Kachas Pass originally tells the Wood Elf commander a patrol is on its way to help. In truth the patrol will never arrive as it has been killed. There's also a spy trying to escape who should be controlled by the GM or another player. Aside from that there are a lot of hooks and reasons that gave me an excuse to truly peruse the Age of Sigmar books to see if someone had allready made a rule for that. In quite a lot of cases I actually found rules too!

Not to be outdone by their spear carrying fellows, the Darkshard crossbowmen took aim together and fired at the lone Warp-Grinder. Needless to say it was overkill .

I rewrote the spy as an unwilling spy. Using a 40K mission (The Relic) as inspiration I turned the spy into a moving objective marker (long live scatter dice) that can be captured by either side. I also decided to let the patrol live. The player defending the pass gets only three units in his stockade. All the others arrive from reserve at the enemies table edge. The dilemma: do you ride hard to get as many of these troops alive at the final battle (the sooner they escape, the more victory points you get), or do you stop to kill invaders? The invaders don't have it easy either. They need to divide forces between burning houses in the stockade, capturing the spy and killing the fleeing defenders.

Ten Naggaroth Black Guard found out the hard way that a Hell Pit abomination is really, really deadly. A second unit of Black Guard made the same discovery a bit later.

Testing this rather complex scenario was very useful. For starters I was worried about multiple asynchronous objectives and that turned out to be misplaced. It was fun as hell and made for a very interesting game. Second it turned out that some General's Handbook 2019 rules about demolishing houses (and setting them on fire) where quite fun, but at the same time made the houses a bit too tough. Third I forgot in my enthusiasm that AoS models don't have an individual points cost, so I need to rewrite victory points allocations. 

Kachas Pass does not properly fit a modern size table. The red area marks the invasion forces deployment area. As you can see, it overlaps the stockade. It was easily solved by moving the stockade to the right (and everything else to different positions as well).

Another fun thing about setting up an ancient scenario is that a) I can use my Townscape (Orc's Drift had a number of buildings that would later be re-used in this venerable tome). And b) I forgot how big Warhammer tables used to be. Back in the eighties the advice was to use a table tennis table. These on average come in at 254 cm x 160 cm (100"x63"). Kachas Pass does not fit on a modern 180x120 (72"x48") table. The invaders deployment zone was almost inside the stockade :). I moved the stockade, reshaped the invaders deployment zone and moved the ruins. Kachas Pass may not resemble its map, but the stockade still looks the same. I will have to redraw the other maps will before I host the event.  

Three lucky jezzails managed to capture the fleeing spy. Two unlucky jezzails then met bolts fired by a group of hidden Dark Elf Shades. The lonely survivor proudly brought the spy back to friendly lines (at gunpoint).

Aside from the slightly too unbreakable houses my opponent and I agreed that the scenario worked (assuming no silly tournament list players attend). What makes it interesting is that you really don't want to waste your troops. You'll need them in the final battle after all. At the same time you'll need to sacrifice a few. Scoring victories and taking objectives gives you nice bonuses as well, so there's incentive to fight. As to the battle itself, I summarized it in the picture captions. It was quite fun to see the Dark Elf player use troops to hold up my massive Skaven horde (eighty Clanrats pushing a Screaming Bell) while the rest of his army made a run for it. My opportunistic and crazy lucky Jezzails managed to snag the spy (he almost ran straight into them), winning me the battle. If they hadn't it would've been a resounding Dark Elf victory (even though they sustained heavy losses, my Hell Pit Abomination crushed two units of Black Guard). 

Standing beneath the cotton wool smoke the Skaven wondered: how much does it take to tear down a shaky shed? 

At the end of the evening I looked at the one burning house (not destroyed, mind you). My clanrats stood menacingly beneath the improvised cotton wool smoke. It made me remember identical markers on the old cardboard Townscape buildings way back when. As I stared at the table I realized that the number of models available may have changed and the rules may be slightly different, but the spirit of a good wargame is still the same. All you need is a few enthusiasts looking for a fun evening or afternoon, something that resembles a scenario and cotton wool to mark the smoke. I can't wait to try scenario #2.