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Hey all doing a tournament end of December here. A small one with a lot of young players, and was hoping to pick your brains for some fun and simple scenarios for them to play, have a few myself but am always willing to steal ideas from others lol.

Honestly, the best way to go is using the scenarios out of the book as people know these, are what they will play most frequently and are very simple, balanced, fun and work great in the 5th ed setting.

You can make some simple modifications to these but when people make their own scenarios they are almost invariably unbalanced and less fun than the basic missions.

Good luck with the event!

Simple W/L scenarios are:
Dawn of War, Kill Points (must win by 4+), Victory Point tie breaker
Pitched Battle, 5 objectives (1 central), Victory Point tie breaker
Spearhead, 3 objectives; central and one in each of the center of the table quarters that are not deployment zones. Victory Point tie breaker.

If you want to use battle points then rotate the above objectives as primary / secondary / tertiary objectives. Primary worth 18 / 9 / 0, Secondary 6 / 3 / 0 and Tert. 2 / 1 / 0. This gives you points from 0 - 26.

As long as the ratio of deployments and mission types are consistant with the book, you are good. In other words, 2/3 of your missions should involve objetives with one of them involving kill points. At least one mission should be Dawn of War deployment and one spearhead. If you operate within that framework, you are on the right track.

Ok, I have came into posistion of a huge building, like 2 and half feet high. There are 4 floors with sub floors on windows and stair cases, I was going to do a mission on that table where each floor is an objective. Put it in the middle of the table and we should be good, interesting at least.

Good luck with it and I hope it's fun, but that mission will heavily favor assault armies as it forces everyone to come together. Orks, Bugs, Demons, etc will be licking their chops. IG, Tau, Crons, etc. will be boned.

I agree that using core book missions is the best way to go with young/inexperienced players. It's one less thing for them to keep track of, and makes the whole thing run smoother and easier.

I also agree that you want to be careful with new scenarios, and try to maintain a similar ratio of objective and KP missions when doing new ones, too.

Further, I agree also that the building mission sounds like it will too-heavily favor armies based on assault.

doubled wrote:Ok, I have came into posistion of a huge building, like 2 and half feet high. There are 4 floors with sub floors on windows and stair cases, I was going to do a mission on that table where each floor is an objective. Put it in the middle of the table and we should be good, interesting at least.

Another potential issue being: do you have enough buildings for everyone to play this mission at the same time? Given your typical tourney has 3-4 rounds tops (rtt that is), if you have more than 3-4 pairs, they won't be able to circulate through that table. Not to mention playing it in game 1 means being paired randomly, playing it game 2-on means whatever armies did well in the earlier missions are more likely to meet up, creating an unbalanced environment.

I'd stick to the book missions as others have said, a lot of tourney organizers come in with good intentions trying to spice things up to make it "fun", however what ends up happening is the players feel cheated/boned if they land in an "nigh unwinnable" mission, or if they're confused about whats going on. The real fun comes from playing the games, not coooook-e missions.

Have fun and gl!

The real trick I have found with making missions is keeping the core of the mission simple, but making bonus points to make things interesting. For example, in a annihilation game you make the victory condition whoever has the most KP, but you add in that if you kill your opponent's general you get +1 point, if you have more scoring units in your opponents deployment zone +1 point, and if your general is still alive and not fleeing at the end of the game. I usually make the scenarios worth 10 points for the massacre, 7 points for the major win, and 5 for the draw. I also include 4 bonus points that can be earned. The trick to the bonus points is try not to make them things that the players are already trying to do (IE killing more units in an annihilation game).

Rednekgunner made a great point. Those types of missions are fun, simple and provide enough difference in results to stratify the field for matching purposes.