Not too much on the modeling front this week. Most of my time was used cutting & then grinding down the excess metal from the head of a Cawdor mini to add to a sentinel driver to go with my kill team mentioned in the previous post. I think it'll work, however after cleaning up all the pewter shrapnel & dust, a bodiless Cawdor head didn't strike me as all that photo-worthy.
I have been thinking about the old 'Carnage' scenario though. We used to play it a lot. For a while we didn't have a FLGS to play at, and when the guys came to the house to play, I only have one table. So we played Carnage. We modified the deployment as we often only had 3 players, with one deployed on a short board edge. Usually that player had the advantage over the other two who, staring directly at each other, would get the Ork mentality and charge straight at each other. With the army on the short table edge just hunkering down and sniping. (One notable exception was with 2 IG armies on the long table edges with mortar squads vs. FW heavy mortar lobbing counter-battery fire back and forth for several turns, don't recall whose mortars won that one.)
5th ed. eliminated victory point scenarios, and Carnage was a casualty as well. However of late at the FLGS, we've often had an odd player out. Sometimes there's time for a second game so they can play, sometimes not. In general the FLGS's owner's son opts out of playing, but that means he hasn't played on Saturday night in close to a month now.
That's crap.
So...this week I thought about updating the ol' 3-player Carnage for 5th ed.
So that's what I came up with. More or less the same 3 player deployment as we used before, but the 'Capture & Control' scenario will eliminate the potential of a tie. Not to mention trying to keep track of who got what kill points, are there half kill points, etc. isn't a concern. I often forget the big yellow 'cheese die' turn counter on the table, so writing down who killed what simply won't happen, consistently anyways. Another thing is that in order to capture an objective, you have to advance on it and with out flankers potentially coming out of everyone's back field, there's no one deployment zone that offers any particular advantage. I'm sure that some people won't like the idea of out flankers in their backfield, however locally we have six, count them SIX Space Wolf armies (with their infernal scouts) in our group. So that's more or less a normal possibility anyways.
So, if we have another odd guy out this Saturday I'll see if they want to give this a try. 40k shouldn't be spectator sport/hobby.
4 comments:
This is a simple, elegant solution to a common problem. I'd like to give it a try myself just to see how the carnage plays out.
Nice one.
Scenario looks pretty good to me.
One thing you might spell out for the players in advance is what the turn order will be, and what happens in assaults.
I think a lot of people faced with a multiplayer game are tempted to vary the player order each turn, e.g., randomizing it. In my group we've found that actually to be bad, because someone can get last move on one turn and first move the next and really hammer everybody else with two straight turns. Better to just keep it the same throughout the game, unless you do something more extensive like interleave the phases, which can actually work well.
The other big question though, is how do assaults work? I.e., if you and I are in an assault, is it evaluated during the other guy's turn as well, or just during our turns? We've found that either way works, but evaluating it on every player turn makes them a lot more decisive a brutal. Not a bad thing, but definitely a bit different.
Also, you should have a clear, simple scheme for shooting into assaults that don't involve your own models.
All in all, good stuff. I think that deployment setup & the objectives should make for a good game.
@ b.smoove - Thanks!
@ Joe - Turn sequence is determined with the roll of choosing a deployment zone and ends up going clockwise of counter clockwise around the table depending on the die roll. As I recall we simplified the old 4 player carnage to limit the confusion of player turns zigzagging across the table. Turn sequence is also consistent throughout the game. We tried varying it once (again in 4th ed.), and after getting to fire Leman Russ battle cannons twice with no return fire we determined to never try that again!
With shooting into HTH, the 40k rulebook states that there is no shooting into HTH combat, and that still applies. Having say my enhanced CSM locked in combat with some Space Wolves when player #3 drops a pie plate on them killing everybody would render HTH into little more than suicide for both parties (though it would probably produce in an inordinate amount of glee for say an IG player to have done that).
In regards to who fights in HTH: We always played it where if combats involving the army of whomever's turn it is fights as per normal. If their in combat involves only one other player, then only that player will fight back in that combat. (i.e.: on player 3's turn he initiates HTH with player 2's squad, and the dice roll, whereas a separate combat involving player's 1 & 2 stays locked, but no dice are rolled as player 3 isn't involved). Of course Carnage invariably results in a huge swirling meat grinder of a melee involving all players.
Good points that should be clarified though, thanks for the input!
There is a 3 player mission in the big color rule book. It allows for shooting into HtH combat but only from the player who is not engaged in the said combat. They roll a dice for each hit landed and on 1-3 it hits Player A and 4-6 hits Player B.
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