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Drawing from the BRB and Chapter Approved, what do you think would be the best mission type for a game where one side is defending large city walls from an invading force? At the moment I'm thinking some kind of Stronghold Assault mission, but I don't know which or how it would work logistically in terms of bunkers and fortresses etc.

Skip them and make your own. May need to playtest it a few times.

If you're insisting on using pre-made stuff, I'd agree some Stronghold assault things might be the way to go.

In my opinion, there is two homebrew rules that would be great for the mission.

Deepstriking counts the walls as units, making it impossible to deepstrike on or behind them. Stops super hardcore alpha strikes.

Second rule would be the win condition. If the defender has less units on/behind the wall than the attacker, then the attacker wins. For example, if the defender is down to a single unit and the attacker manages to breach with 3, then the wall is lost, and with it the city.

Given the benefits that come with holding a prepared defensi e position, let the attacker recycle.units andjustnplay until the defenders are all.gone or the attackers have x units over the defenders board edge. Then swap.over and see who can get in quickest.

Drawing on historical games for inspiration I might suggest instead of defining "on/over the wall" as the objective placing some objectives in important positions along the wall (towers, for instance, that might offer a strong firing position, control a gate or weapon emplacements, and control access up to and down the wall for infantry) could be interesting.

You might also consider that Deep Strike on top of the wall is exactly what Terminators and such are supposed to do in the lore; I'd suggest doing this as a narrative game with some army restrictions (like "no more than (X) PL spent on units that start the game in Deep Strike reserve") to avoid min/maxxed alpha-strike armies rather than outright banning Deep Striking into the fortifications.

I'd also suggest taking a look at some of the WHFB rules for assaulting buildings (where you fight combat between a small number of the occupying unit and a small number of the attackers rather than treating the fortification as a vehicle that can't be accessed by the attackers).

 vaklor4 wrote:
In my opinion, there is two homebrew rules that would be great for the mission.

Deepstriking counts the walls as units, making it impossible to deepstrike on or behind them. Stops super hardcore alpha strikes.

Second rule would be the win condition. If the defender has less units on/behind the wall than the attacker, then the attacker wins. For example, if the defender is down to a single unit and the attacker manages to breach with 3, then the wall is lost, and with it the city.

Deepstrike limitations like that would be kind of bad, I'd say, because that is THE way they work in the fluff. You drop in your super hard distraction units like terminators and play merry havoc on the enemy while the rest of the army gets close under a less intense fire storm. Limiting silly alpha strike lists with a gentlemen's agreement is the better way here, considering it's a narrative scenario anyway.

The second one I agree with, the win condition is very important. It could be a less clear cut, though: there's this one mission in BRB (I think) where the defender sets his buildings, like this wall, in his third of the long table. The attacker has to cross most of the table on foot first and then scores 1 VP for every unit that makes it in the first city half and 2 VPs for every unit that makes it deeper in into the second half, while the defender racks in their points by killing the attacker's units (that do cycle back on the board if they die).

Other setups I might imagine could be:
- Set some parts of the wall as objectives to be destroyed.
- Attacker scores 1 VP for all units in the city and D3 for all that cross the table edge out (into) the city.
- Divide the defenders into strongpoints either along the wall or in the city and give the attacker points for emptying them of defenders and points for the defender if they hold them.
- CA's Forlorn Hope: the attacker either slams in the city and plants their flag on the city hall or dies trying.

The Stronghold Assault missions in CA are pretty nice if you like these siege games, just tweak 'em to your taste.

One other thing I might also recommend is AnomanderRake's suggestion of allowing assaults into not-yet-utterly-ruined buildings. Maybe you can assault into the building after it has lost half or 3/4 of its wounds? Maybe you can do that with only so many figures as its Transport Capacity x2 could hold with the others inside? Make the game yours.