Scenarios that change the style of play

What scenarios outside the originals in the Mordheim book do you find change the style and tactics of how you play?

I'm interested in finding different "mechanics" that drive play in a scenario, and to that end hearing your experiences as to which scenario types you find interesting and why. By mechanics I mean both the objectives and game board occurrences/special rules that will effect your play in that scenario. For example, I find the basic mechanics of the following three examples to radically change the style of play I would use:

1. The Skirmish scenario: straight up fight until there is one warband standing.

2. The Occupy scenario: no route test, try and hold the most buildings.

3. The Avalanche scenario (from Border Town Burning): A straight up fight, but one in which the board itself is "destroyed" each turn, possibly ending in a draw if no warband has routed by the time the board has been almost completely swallowed up.

Those are all quite different, while the Chance Encounter scenario from the Mordheim book, I find to be tactically the same as Skirmish (a straight up fight with slight changes to deployment plus a few wyrdstone shards thrown in). My style of play will not be all that different when playing either of those two scenarios.

What alternative scenarios have you found that really make play different from the basic ones? Links please, if they are available.

Scenarios are the engine that drives Mordheim for me. I am constantly tinkering with them. My thoughts about a number of scenarios can be found here--
https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t2286-scenario-reviews-an-irregular-commentary?highlight=Scenario+review

My thoughts on Occupy is that there is no reason to bother playing it. It is a skirmish with a time limit and no tangible reward. There is no reason to hold buildings, but every reason to attempt to break the enemy since that's the only way you are going to gain a reward, in this case experience for your heroes. I like playing against an opponent that is intent on holding buildings. They usually leave warriors to hold buildings, which decreases the number of fighters they have available and divides their forces. This makes it easier to defeat each group in turn, which usually demoralizes them so that they voluntarily rout.

Here's an example of an alternative scenario that I wrote:

Runaway Thief

A known pickpocket for which a bounty has been issued has been found. Which warband can catch him for the reward?

Terrain: Normal terrain and deployment zones for the campaign you are playing. Place a model representing the pickpocket in the middle of the table. If in a building he will start on the ground floor.

Special Rules: No player can measure how close any of their warriors are to the pickpocket during their movement phase unless they declare a charge.

Starting on turn 2, the pickpocket will move during the recovery phase of every warband. He is in a state of panic and flees 2D6” directly away from the closest warrior of any warband each time. If within a building he will try his best to exit it by any opening closest to the direction he is traveling. If touching a building or structure that can be climbed, he will climb it as soon as possible. The pickpocket will jump off all buildings if his movement leads him to a building’s edge. If the pickpocket is hit with any missile fire (but not wounded) he will immediately flee an additional 2D6” in a random direction. The pickpocket will stop short 1” of any warriors should his movement otherwise bring him into base-to-base contact with them. The pickpocket will not flee when successfully charged, his energy is spent and he surrenders to his captor (place in base-to-base contact). The pickpocket will stay in base contact with warrior who captures him as the warrior moves. The pickpocket cannot be given to another captor unless he escapes. Should the warrior who captured the pickpocket become involved in close combat or suffer a wound, the pickpocket escapes and flees 2D6” in a random direction (disregard any warriors in the close combat for this flee move). If the pickpocket is knocked down or stunned, he recovers normally during the recovery phases of each warband.

Warriors refuse to attack the pickpocket in close combat, they deem him too valuable. The pickpocket will not fight during the scenario.

The pickpocket
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
4 3 3 3 3 1 4 1 8
Items: dagger
Skills: Climb Sheer Surfaces, Acrobat

Should the warband who has captured the pickpocket route, the pickpocket will remain on the table.

The winning warband collects a bounty of XX gold crowns. (players in a campaign can determine what is a good amount for this scenario).

Set Up: Roll a D6 to determine who chooses to deploy first. Any warriors who can deploy directly on to the table outside normal deployment zones must begin at least 16” away from the pickpocket. These models will not affect the pickpocket’s flee movement until turn 3 (the pickpocket in his panic does not notice these stealthy warriors).

Starting the Game: Roll a D6 to determine turn order between warbands.

Ending the Game: The first warrior to escort the pickpocket to any table edge will win the scenario for their warband. Alternatively, if there is only one warband left on the table, this warband wins the scenario. Should the pickpocket go out of action or flee of the table himself the game immediately ends in a draw.

Experience:
+1 Survives
+1 to the Winning Leader
+1 Per Enemy Out of Action
+2 to the Hero or henchmen group to escort the pickpocket to the table’s edge.

Nice little scenario.

Quote :

The winning warband collects a bounty of XX gold crowns. (players in a campaign can determine what is a good amount for this scenario).

What bounty do you usually award in your group? (My group hate having to decide things about a scenario for themselves, at least until they have played it a few times.)

Von Kurst wrote:

Nice little scenario.  

Quote :

The winning warband collects a bounty of XX gold crowns. (players in a campaign can determine what is a good amount for this scenario).

What bounty do you usually award in your group? (My group hate having to decide things about a scenario for themselves, at least until they have played it a few times.)

Thanks!

We've most often used 30 GC for the bounty. In some of our own campaigns the objective has been to collected the most gold after X number of battles. In such a campaign rewards tend to increase as the campaign progresses. So we have played games where a bounty after battle #1 is 10 GC and after battle #10 is 100 GC.

I love your pickpocket scenario.

For multiple player battles I love hold the building scenarios, in which you get rewarded for holding the building each round. Of course there is also a round Limit implemented.

I also love to hunt some non player monster, thiefs or whatever is feasible for the scenery. I also love the wyrdstone well scenario as I love the wyrdstone hunt because they give you more obejctives and reason to separate the warband.

We also tested in a multiplayer scenario to have hidden assassination targets other targets. This was fun too! I also love the treasure chspest hunt, although it is needed to be modified because the ridiculous two round battles were a runner finds the treasure with double 6 in first round are not sooo funny.

Not to go off topic, but here are some other threads that relate to scenarios:

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t2700-favourite-multi-player-scenarios

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t4023-scenarios-for-one-player

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t4715-narrative-scenarios

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t15-my-coolest-scenario

We've been discussing how changing the experience awarded for a scenario might change a player's approach to the scenario on the scenario review thread. Specifically the scenario Nightfall, which does not award heroes +1 experience for taking an enemy out of action, but does award the hero +1 experience for escaping the table edge.
http://www.mordheim-nemesiscrown.de.vu/

My group had always played the scenario as a really bloody skirmish because it is played on a 2x4 table with only 8 inches or so separating the warbands at setup. But that was before I finally REALLY read the scenario. Without the motivation of extra experience perhaps my group will actually start racing toward the objective (scaling the village wall before night falls...)

Which would change our style of play...

I agree, Von Kurst. Nightfall is definitely different. There's always a few casualties, but the main idea in this game is to sabotage each other by making sure your opponent's Heroes can't run or shooting the enemy in the back, while they attempt to move forward.

All good fun!

Me and Von Kurst were discussing this on the "Scenario review" thread.

While there may be scenarios where some particular rules were simply left out "by mistake/forgotten" by the designer/writer (not at all uncommon for Mordheim), replacing the "almost-core" rule of getting XP from taking out enemies by objective-based XP can really change how a warband might approach a scenario objective.

What I had put forward was the idea that some gaming groups could extended that same change to other scenarios if they wished. In that way, fulfilling your mission becomes more rewarding to your warband than a straight up fight.
You could even make XP rewards different for attackers and defenders, so that attackers could only get XP from fulfilling their mission (ie. escape through the other end of the table, escort the caravan, grab the item, etc etc). Which breaks the general pattern of "you can always win by stomping your opponent". Yes, you can still Rout them and win, but it won't be as satisfactory (fittingly so, as a warband would take more risk than necessary to fulfill its mission).

However, because this is generally the main form of XP earning in Mordheim games, changing it wholesale in too many scenarios may be playing with fire

I am really interested in this idea. For my own group I know it would be a problem to remind players that they DO NOT receive the extra experience for putting enemies out of action as the fact that you usually DO is one of the things that we try to pound into new players heads to remind them of the record keeping aspect of the game. We are always saying 'mark it down'.

We play several scenarios that reward other activities (most notably the scenario Pressgang from Sartosa). Pressgang only rewards the player if the NPC victim of an attack DOES NOT die. Getting that idea across is difficult in my group.

One example of the different approaches and perspectives on Mordheim is that Thespian would rank Skirmish as one of group of a scenarios "that radically change the style of play I would use." Since to me Skirmish is the basis of my tactics when I approach any scenario. After reading the rules for a new scenario I was introducing to the group, one new player commented 'so its a Skirmish with a couple special rules," which sums up most Mordheim scenarios for me.