Hey, guys - just posting this for feedback and hopefully some playtest info if folks are willing...
If it works out alright, I will probably use it in my March Event...
Escalation
A scenario for Warmaster
Overview
Large armies often travel in a loose foraging formation, with small sections spread out over a fairly large area, cleaning out small villages and farmsteads of any useful supplies as they travel. When they encounter the enemy in this situation, the various sections gather as quickly as they can to form up for a full battle. The result can be a chaotic battle where new forces are arriving from all directions and charging into the fray. In this situation, it is often it is the most flexible general, who is best able to take advantage of random opportunities, who will manage a victory. This scenario represents the advance elements of two such armies meeting, engaging and calling for the rest of their armies to gather to their location.
Terrain
Escalation is played on a 4’x6’ table. Terrain features can be set up in any mutually agreeable manner; roughly one third to one half of the board should be covered with terrain.
Armies
Both players select an army to an agreed upon point value. This scenario will work best with larger forces – smaller games will not yield enough Foraging Sections to simulate the feel of an escalating battle.
Set-Up
Before beginning the game, each player must divide his or her army into Foraging Sections. A Foraging Section consists of one character and between one and eight units. A player must have one Foraging Section for each character in his or her army – characters cannot be left without units. If an army has eight units in all of its Foraging Sections and still has unassigned units remaining, they are added to the General’s Section.
Once both armies are divided into Foraging Sections, each player chooses one Section to be their Advance Element – these are the only figures that will begin the game on the table. A Foraging Section controlled by the Army’s General cannot be chosen as the Advance Element.
Both players roll 1D6. The player who rolls highest chooses who will deploy and play first. That player chooses one of the long table edges and deploys his Advance Element within 20cm of the edge. The other player then places his Advance Element within 20cm of the opposite board edge, and the game can begin.
Reserves
At the end of each player’s second turn, and the end of each turn after that, 1D6 is rolled for each Foraging Section that has not yet been deployed to determine if it arrives on the battlefield. A roll of 6 indicates that the Section will arrive, and will be placed on the table. As the battle continues to grow, word will spread farther, so there is always a greater chance for these Sections to arrive as the game progresses. To represent this, on each consecutive turn, the result required to deploy a Section will improve by 1. Thus at the end of turn three, a 5+ will indicate arrival, on turn 4 a 4+ is needed, on turn 5 a 3+, and so on. Regardless of what turn it is, a roll of 1 always means that the Section will not arrive.
Once a player has determined which Sections are arriving, it is time to determine where they will be deployed. To do this, roll 1D6 and consult the diagram below. This will determine the section of the board edge where the section will be deployed. All units and the character in that Section must be deployed within 20cm of that section of board edge.
Note: Foraging Sections only exist for the duration of Reserve rolls and deployment – once a Section is on the board, units can be commanded by any character that would be legally be capable of issuing an order to them, and they are not required to stay with other units in their section.
Ending the Game
The scenario ends when one army has lost half of its total number of units (not just the number of units on the board!) and withdraws from the battlefield. Winner is determined by calculating the number of Victory Points as described on page 69 of the Rulebook.
