Bloodbath at Orruk's Drift test scenario #2 Ashak Rise

This week I had time to test out scenario number two for my re-imagining of the classic Bloodbath at Orc's Drift campaign. The original scenario featured a small band of greedy dwarf deserters trying to save their gold from a chance encounter with an invading orc warband. This new version sees a small Order/Death army defending the same old shack from an invading Chaos/Destruction host. Slightly bigger scale, same principle. 

The game opened with a unit of skeletons and a lone Tomb Banshee standing close to the bridge on the road leading past Ahsak's Rise mining cottage.

For this scenario I kept the core concepts going. Two defending (Order/Death) units are set-up between the river and the woods outside the deployment zone. The invader moves in from the other side of the river with two clear goals: steal gold and burn down the cottage. The defender wants to stall the invader to make off with the gold. 

To reflect the haphazard position of the undead army I decided not to bring any big creatures like Zombie Dragons or Mortis Engines to this scenario. 

From a rules point of view a lot of the set-up of the scenario was easily translated from the old ruleset to the new. For instance Ashak Rise is a pass. This can be translated into rules by declaring only units with the FLY keyword can reinforce from the long table edges. To get a classic chokepoint set-up I declared the river sections impassable to any troops without the FLY keyword. This turned out to be a bit too harsh as the hapless Beastclaw Raiders got their giant monster stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge. I've already adapted the campaign scenario's to declare that only creatures with the FLY or MONSTER keyword can cross the river outside of the bridge (the wonders of playtesting).

For the same reason the Beastclaw Raider brought mounted ogres to represent a fast force of raiders. Not quite as fast as he would've liked as they got stuck in a traffic jam on the bridge.

At the outset of the scenario I got a bit worried about the gold. I wrote a rule that there where six objective markers (bags of gold) at the cottage. During the hero phase a unit within 3" of the cottage could take 1 bag of gold. I was worried this would make life very easy for the defender. I needn't have. It actually worked quite nicely to distract the defender from fully exploiting the choke point, as troops also needed to be near the cottage to load up the gold. I did chance the rule slightly to give the two units outside of the deployment area one bag of gold each (giving the invader more chances to take some gold early in the game).

The opening turn saw a large part of my undead horde hacking away at two massive Stonehorns. Both my Vampire Lords were incapacitated during the opening exchange of blows. 

Another big difference between classic 2nd and 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar (and later Warhammer editions too) is game length. A modern game lasts between 5 and 7 turns. You need to calculate this in when planning objectives. A unit that needs to move to a cottage, load up a bag of gold and then move off the table will probable take all game to do that. To make this work I translated the gold bags to objective markers. The player in control of the objective at the end of the game can claim the bag of gold. Moving of the table during the game is still possible and gives a small bonus. 

In the end the rather fearsome Morghast Harbingers helped make short work of the massive Stonehorns. 

Another big difference between classic and modern games is movement speed. I occasionally lament all the units teleporting, riding the lightning, secretly tunnelling, popping up from the grave and dropping down from the sky. To be honest, I'm about to change my mind about it. It does take focus from the old manoeuvring for position, but replaces it with a different tactical depth. You need to calculate when to strike and watch your opponents 'strike teams'. This is in addition to extremely speedy opponents like the Beastclaw Raiders. Manoeuvre is less prominent, but a unit with a 4 to 6 inch move can only do so much in a 5 turn game, so that is to be expected. 

This did clear the way for the rest of the Raiders to move over the bridge.

In the end this second test game, like the first, had all the hallmarks of a true narrative game. With armies focused and moving to perform wildly differing tasks. Long lines of undead shambling away from battle towards the table edge to carry the gold to safety while a dwindling set of defenders tried to hold the chokepoint at the bridge. 

Luckily a well positioned unit of Grave Guard was able to block the invading force, getting them stuck on the bridge and away from the fleeing undead. 

After the battle concluded my opponent and I chatted about small changes to make it better (the monsters can cross the river rule for instance). I also calculated victory points and discovered my initial scale was wildly off. I reset those too. With two scenario's down I only need to test two more and then (hopefully) the pandemic is ancient history or we get some room to responsibly gather and play the entire scenario with a group. Before I get to that point I'm off looking for a way to redraw the scenario maps as the originals just don't fit with the current tabletops.