Hammerfest Date!
OK, guys, we need to sort out a date for Hammerfest!
I’m thinking it would be safest to book a half-day or full day off on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and play as long as we can. Doing a 3-army battle the other week (the first Hammerdown!) showed that starting around 7:30 with 3 1000-pt armies, we could finish Turn 4 by 10:30.
Tack on another 45-60 minutes for another couple of armies to do their four turns and we’re looking at *approximately* an hour per army to do four turns, so we should try to set aside 6-7 hours to do a full game, from terrain setup all the way to playing to the end of Turn 6.
As for the rules, we’ve got the random rules that have been posted previously, plus these are my suggestions:
- Must play with your gifted HQ unit (that means CSM instead of DE for me)
- Same setup to the Hammerdown scenario, except the center objective will have 5 loot tokens (one token generates for each army) with all of them using the Relic rules (so you can steal another loot token, etc.) and the central objective is worth 3 points, plus 1 kill point awarded per unit, as well as 1 point each for Slay the Warlord/First Blood/Linebreaker.
Let me know what you think! As I talk to you guys directly I’ll post any updates/votes here, or just comment on this post.
Note: I’ve been treating this separately to the trip to Warhammer World, but if everyone wants we can combine the two!
Edit: I’ve asked online for more help with this, because deployment and turn order will be an issue of course – so the main rules of the 5-way scenario can and will change, I think – mainly because no one has done this before!!
Edit 2: Ok some actual rules suggestions as far as deployment, turns, etc. (these are suggestions from experienced 40K players, so think about them and don’t discount them out of hand):
- 1000 point limit
- Terrain: standard terrain, roll a D3 for each 2×2′ square and everyone takes turns laying out terrain
- Deployment: Deployment zones are 18×6″: the corners and in the middle of the long edge. High rolls decide who picks their deployment areas first. Then we put up cardboard blockades (!) so we can’t see each other’s deployment zones, and everyone has 5 minutes to deploy! This includes deciding what units are coming in via Reserves.
- Turn order: I think randomized turn order would be most fair and more fun. Either we draw numbers out of a hat at the start of each turn (so slips of paper marked 1 to 5), with the 5th player not allowed to be the 1st player in the following turn (so no one can have two goes in a row) – or we have a roll-off to decide the turn order, and do round robin turn order starting in round two (so player 2 goes first in turn 2, last in turn 3, fourth in turn 4, third in turn 5, etc.). The game goes for 6 or 7 turns no matter what (so no rolling to see if the game ends).
- Time limit: 15 minute turn limit for each player, that’s movement-shooting-assault in 15 minutes! Very doable with 1000 pts each.
- Reserves: roll normally to see if they can come in, but they can enter from any table edge. This encourages everyone to press forward for MORE ACTION! No Deep Striking onto the center objective, or within 5″ of it (so the central 10″ of the board is off-limits to Deep Striking)
- Also, a Hammerfest rule: Winter Wonderland – All cover saves are improved by +1 due to the thick blanket of powdery snow covering the battlefield. Weapons that utilize flame, such as flamers and plasmaguns, deny the Winter Wonderland bonus.
- And another: Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons – Any non-vehicle unit may elect to voluntarily expend their actions on their players turn to gather enough snow to build an army of oddly misshapen but still strangely loveable snowmen. Immediately place a 5″ large template underneath the unit to represent the army of deranged snow goons. That unit may react normally on opposing player turns and act as normal on their next turn. Ducking behind the snowmen, models in this area count as being in cover. Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goon templates do not count as difficult terrain.