Secret Santicorn 2023
The Prompt
For the OSR secret santicore, you’ve been paired with evilscientist42, who would like A couple of system-neutral fantasy skirmish wargame scenarios! A scenario could include an objective, special conditions (of terrain, weather, etc.), complications, rewards.
Thoughts
Fantasy says no guns, maybe some magic.
Skirmish scale says that this is intended for movement of units with individually represented units, as seen in wargames such as Warhammer. I’m assuming you’re not asking for scenarios for games where you primarily move individual pieces like in standard rpg/dnd combat. If dnd combat is what you want, I’ll Leave that to the various adventures you can acquire for most systems.
Wargame says that these are intended to be “fair” fights. I leave that to the system to mean fair but that means not designing scenarios intended to be run away from or steamrolled.
“Games are a series of interesting decisions” – sid meier
Inspirations
- Warhammer fantasy/40k/Old World
- one page rules(grimdark future, age of fantasy)
- Acks – Domains at war battles
- An Echo Resounding
Elements
Combatants
I am. Assuming the combatants on each side are grouped into units with certain characteristics. Given you asked for fantasy I’m assuming magic doesn’t make these fights irrelevant. As such, whatever setting youre running you’ll generally have some version of humanoid, trained to act in coordinated units, armed as:
- Artillery(armed with ranged weaponry)
- Shock Calvary(Mounted with heavy armor and designed to charge in)
- Bow/Scout calvary(mounted with light weapons or ranged weapons)
- Light/Scout infantry(less armor and lighter anti infantry weapons)
- Heavy/Shock infantry(well armored and heavier anti infantry weapons)
- Pike/spearmen(armed with counter charge weaponry, can be light or heavily armored)
- Engineers (units specialising in composing fortifications and siege artillery)
Each of these may have an officer whose job is to maintain order and morale.
If it’s a fantasy setting you’ll generally also have
- Giant versions
- Flying versions
- Amalgamated swarms
- Mounts able to act independently of their rider or grant them extra abilities/characteristic
- Versions which use magic to
- Change a units characteristics and/or abilities
- Deal ranged damage to
- a Single target
- over an area (AOE)
- to a chain of units in proximity to one another
- Alter the terrain
- Heroic individuals who are capable enough to act independently and take on whole units themselves.
In terms of scale I’m assuming that no Matter the scale of the individual Units , each side will have about 10-25 individual elements/pieces to move around, regardless whether said element consists of 1 super powered dude or 500 gremlins.
The specifics of your fantasy world and battle system will determine the specifics of all of this. More interestingly I think having some “templates” to use for opposing armies will make sense.
General Army Templates
Most armies with the logistical availability to specialize however they want usually go with one of the following two
The Mono/Skew Builds
This is the army where someone builds an army entirely to do one thing with a single unit type, ork boy spam, Steppe bow calvary, zergling rushes etc.
composed of:
- as many of your one unit type as you can get
- as many officers for said units as you need to keep the units completing their orders
The Combined Arms Force
The jack of all trades army, designed for the units to cover one another’s weaknesses and be adaptable to every situation. Most “realistic” armies try for this. Space marine chapters, roman legions etc.
composed of:
- At least one of each type.
Specialized Army Templates
In systems and settings where you can’t bring one of everything and don’t want to mono-build you are often restricted by logistics to only bringing some of the types. In these cases what you bring with you to an engagement is based specializing for the missions the unit is supposed to engage in.
The Scouting Party
Designed to find the enemy and report on their movements in time for the main force to counter their actions.
composed of either
- light infantry for stealth
- light calvary for speed
The Patrol
Small unit meant to act as an early warning system away from the main unit
composed of either:
- a unit of entirely scout calvary to deliver messages
- Pikemen (to counter scout calvary)
- artillery (to counter bow cavalry and light infantry)
The Garrison
Meant to hold a position against attackers. Imperial Fists, planetary defence forces, Frenchmen throwing insults, etc.
Composed of:
- Artillery
- enough infantry to man the defences, so any combination of
- Heavy Infantry (for more important fortifications)
- Light infantry (for less important fortifications or ones less likely to be assaulted)
- Pikemen(for countering any calvary that manage to break through but really they;re just extra hands)
The Siege Unit
units specialised for committing sieges. Iron Warriors, Terran siege tanks,
Composed of
- Artillery
- Engineers(to build siege artillery to destroy fortifications)
- Heavy Infantry (to protect the artillery and engineers)
- Pikemen (to counter any sort of counter assault by calvary)
The Rapid Reponse Unit
Unit supposed to react and crush targets identified by the patrol.
composed of
- Heavy Calvary
- Light Calvary
Fantasy Ideas
While all of the prior army templates are good general templates, these are specifically units that only work when fantastical elements are taken into effect.
The Spec Ops Unit
Aka the High Level DnD Party
- The Lancer (Heroic Pikeman)
- The Saber (Heroic Heavy Infantry)
- The Archer (Heroic Artillery)
- The Caster (Heroic Wizard)
- The Assassin (Heroic Light infantry)
- The Rider (Heroic Calvary)
- The Berserker (Heroic)
- The Ruler (Heroic Officer)
The Kaiju
All big monsters. The titans from attack in titan, Godzilla and his ilk, Mecha\
generally have the qualities of:
- Giant
- Swarms
The Monster Hunters
The army is specifically meant to deal with non-humanoid opponents. The jaegers from attack on titan, hunters from monster hunter
Generally they’ll have the qualities of:
- Flying
- Magic
Mission Objectives (do the thing)
- get the thing
- destroy the thing
- protect the thing for a period of time
- escape with the thing
- escape without the thing
- survive for a period of time
generally best to have multiple, perhaps in differences of importance.
Complications
- map complications
- in the sky
- for giants
- underwater
- underground
- Environmental complications
- It’s raining:
- rain
- snow
- men/fish/enemies
- ash/fire
- sand
- The terrain is dominated by
- Obscuring Terrain like clouds smoke or mist
- Dangerous terrain like swamps or pits
- impassible/difficult terrain like swamps and brush and chasms
- Some combination
- Obscuring+dangerous like clouds of ash
- Dangerous+diffiuclt like pits with spikes
- impassible+obscuring like walls and buildings
- It’s raining:
- objective complications
- The objectives move
- The objectives grant a buff/debuff to whichever unit currently possesses it
- the objective is detroyable to deny advantage
- The objective has to be obtained/done/protected within a time limit or “else”
- The objectives location isn’t known until after a certain point
Things
- Intel
- non-combatants
- Fortifications
- Difficult terrain
– Obscuring Terrain
Places
- field/farm
- forest
- blood Gulch
- beach
- small town
- city
- boats
- wizard tower
- In a room/series of rooms
- on a steep slope
Maps
pulling from lancer, maps of a tactical wargame will have for a tactical wargame generally will consist of
- Allied Deployment Zone (ADZ): The starting point for the PCs and their allied NPCs, unless otherwise noted.
- Enemy Deployment Zone (EDZ): The starting point for the hostile NPCs.
- Control Zone (CZ): An area that must be defended or controlled.
- Extraction Zone (EZ): A place PCs need to reach to successfully complete certain objectives.
- Ingress Zone (IZ): The starting point for any hostile reinforcements.
- Objective: An object or person that the players must reach and interact with.
- Reinforcements: NPC forces that don’t begin on the field, but can arrive later in an IZ.
- deployments, either of zones or pre-set slots.
- across from one another
- short edges
- long edges
- corners
- across from one another
- terrain pieces
- objective markers
Three Scenarios built from these parts
Scenario 1 – Siege of Castle Redstone
The duke wants the castle redstone for it;s strategic logitical location. The viscount doesn;t want him to take it, and upon learning of the siege, has sent some men to take the keep. on the final day a breach is created that must be held until the calvary comes in to rescue
setup: one half the map is enclosed by fortifications with a breach wide enough to fit two units through in the direction of the offenses deployment.. Defence deploys half their units inside this area. offense deploys from on the other side of the breech.
Attackers Objective – The dukes men have to take the relic at the center of the hillfort and escort it to one of the open areas of the map.
Defenders objective – defend the relic with half their forces, with the other half coming in from the enemies backline.
The Relic – WHoever holds the relic gets a system appropriate buff to their defences/health
Scenario 2 – Into a nest of Dragons
The local Dragon population has been a menace for years, and the viscount has decided he’s had enough. He’s hired a mercenary company to deal with the dragons at the source
setup – 5 objectives, one mid map and one in each corner. defenders deploy touching one of the eggs, attackers set up on any of the map edges.
Attackers objective – destroy the eggs, each objective is destroyed when the attackers spend an action to start destroying them and hold control of the objective until the following turn.
Defenders objective – keep the eggs from being destroyed until the attacking forces are reduced to 20% of their original attacking force and are forced to flee.
Scenario 3 – All Wizards are bastards
The friendly local wizard cabal has finally lost it. They’ve summoned forces and made the local village of foordston the map for their game. The viscount isn’t happy about it and has dispatched his forces to eliminate the two most annoying ones
setup- include as much urban terrain as possible. wizards start at opposing long ends of the table.
special rules
- summoned armies. when a wizard dies all of his troops are removed from play as they are returened to wherever they were summoned from.
- viscounts ambush, the viscounts forces only have half strength of a wizards army. on the first turn of play 25% appear touching any building on the map. every turn after that 25% more appear from the viscount players table edge of choosing.
Wizards objective – kill the opposing wizard and wipe the board of the viscounts forces
viscounts forces – kill the wizards