Big Trouble in a Little Village
A 'Hordes of the Things' Scenario
by Steve Price
This is played on an 8' by 6' table; you need a town/village at one end, various wood dotted around and some other bits if you like such as a river or marsh etc. Along one long edge should be some hills (start of mountain range) with road coming down to the middle of the table. There should be a long winding road from the village to the other short end of table. A wizard's tower should be placed on the other long edge/short edge corner on other side of the table from the village.
The umpire notes down the location of three small village children; these can be in woods, hills, other terrain but only the referee knows where.
If I recall it correctly, the humans had 20AP of Hero General, Blades, Warband, Riders and Shooters. They had also recently found a magical sword in the nearby mine shaft. This sword adds 1 to the dice, add 2AP to break-factor and is a rather nice ancient Dwarven mithril sword; any one can use it. There is a kindly wizard down the road who has been casting spells to improve the lot of the village. The Human mission is to solve why so many of the village children have disappeared recently and save the three children currently reported lost on the table by fretful mothers. Shrewd players will quickly work out it is the evil wizard; find the three children then locate the other taken. For this just capture the wixard tower.
The Dwarves have 24AP and have heard reports of an ancient sword of there is being used. It is a revered artifact and they want it back bad. The Dwarves must locate the sword, capture it and leave the table with it. All else is immaterial, just one dwarf needs to escape with the sword. They are mainly Blades and Shooters with a Cleric General to locate the sword and a Sneaker, a Hero is optional. For 1 PIP the Cleric can locate which element has the sword if the element is within 500paces.
The Elves have heard that dwarves are abroad and just fancy some plain old revenge for a recent insult (invent one). The Cleric is totally unaware of the recent diplomatic issue so might be surprised to find that the Elven objective is the death or the humiliation of the dwarves - destroy half the dwarven army should do it. The Elves get 36AP.
The wizard as far as the humans can recall seems to have been there for ever, they cannot remember him turning up... The wizard lives in his tower and has 12 AP available. His models are not on table apart from himself, they can be any and he can use dummy models that look nice (as opposed to evil) and then swap then as soon as he is seen by any to capture one of the three children, use line of sight rules. The wizard is planning one big spell to make him master of the blah...blah blah, and to do this he needs children that he can lock up and use their energy. He only needs three more children. (Parental guidance note, the children are all alive and can be rescued). So the wizard just has to get the three children to his tower. The wizard has his usual magic attack, but can spend PIPs on generating more elements of any 2 or 1AP type up to a maximum of 12 on the board at any one time. If these are destroyed even the 2AP can be resummoned for PIP expenditure. But as soon as he summons an element he will be unmasked as a necromancer and demonologist, so must use them at the right time.
Add various bit like who comes on when and points for killing traditional enemies, add the points to any objectives acheived and hey presto! Try to engender a bit of alliance and back-stabbing stuff by ensuring that no one knows the others objectives, eg the humans think wizard will help them, dwarves could ally with eithe elves or humans then stuff them afterwards, and so forth.