Thoughts on Scenario Play for Matched Play Players

Good morning gamers,

Here at TMAT, we do a lot of things - we post articles on the internet about the unique aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of each faction, we probe the depths of the best and worst Legendary Legions to see what good can be found in them, and we explore ways to beat the nastiest of models and elevate the most despised models in the game. All told, if you're interested in Matched Play content, we've probably got you covered (except battle report videos - we don't really have the time for those and lots of other people are doing them really well these days, so we're not going to get in that game).

One of the other things we do here at TMAT, however, is scenario play. After looking at the views on our pages over the past year, it's clear that among the demographic of least popular posts by views are the scenario-driven posts. Over the past two years, Centaur and I have played through a Fantasy Fellowship campaign (from my favorite supplement) as well as the Scouring of the Shire campaign (from Centaur's favorite supplement) - and while neither of these series generates a lot of views (in general), we really enjoying scenario play - and you should expect to see more scenarios from us this coming year as well!

But what is it about scenario play that appeals to us? More importantly, is there value in scenario play for other people - especially those who are less driven by theme and more interested in the competitive aspects of Matched Play? With scenarios from the Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, and Return of the King available for download now, I thought that it might be a good time to reflect on my lessons learned from scenario play and I will be contending today that there's a benefit to everyone to play through scenarios - let's dig in and see why that is!

Why Play Scenarios?

Chances are good that if you're reading this blog, you're already invested in (or are looking to invest in) the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game by Games Workshop. This game is incredible and VERY fun to play. While the core rules are good and the models can be stunning, the biggest draw for most players is their ability to be immersed in a world that they love from books that they've read or films that they've seen.

Sometimes, when playing a Matched Play game, this immersion is lost - I mean, if you see the Fellowship of the Ring fighting against a Last Alliance list on a board that looks like it's from Mordor . . . well, that's not how the story went. Other times, the immersion is still there, but mostly in a what-could-have-been kind of way - if you see the Fellowship of the Ring fighting against a band of Uruk-Hai but Gandalf is there, you could say, "Well, this is how things might have been if Gandalf had turned around and ran faster in Moria." This is not as bad as the first case, but it's still not quite the same.

The scenarios available to us in the supplements provided for the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game (starting with the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement all of the way through the Rise of Angmar supplement) follow basically two rules: first, that the scenario that you're playing comes from a particular scene in a book or a film that's specifically about Middle-Earth. This scene might be a reference in the Tale of Years appendix to the Return of the King (like the battles for the Fords of Isen at the start of the War in Rohan book) or might be a central pivot point in the stories (like Weathertop or the fight with the Trolls). This intentional immersion makes it seem like the scenario you're playing actually happened - and often times, you'll get extra rules thrown in to reflect how characters or entire armies would have felt at that time in the story (regardless of their usual stats or special rules).

The second rule of scenarios is that the scenario victory conditions are going to be slanted (slightly or heavily) to whatever side actually "won" the event in the books or films - and this can be a bit of a turn off for some players. If you check out the Quest of the Ringbearer or Scouring of the Shire tabs at the top of this page, you'll see that Centaur and I have recommendations for changes to the scenarios to make them more even - but occasionally, you'll find a scenario that plays just fine and appears to be balanced for both sides. For you hyper-competitive types, check out the unmodified scenarios in those lists - you might really like them. For everyone else, having one side hold the upper hand presents an interesting challenge for the other player . . . and honestly can make the game feel more immersive than a "fair fight" would.

A third unstated rule of scenario play (and it isn't always true, so I'm not sure it's a "rule" so much as a "guideline") is that scenario participants mirror what's available in boxed sets and blisters - why are there 8 Easterling Warriors with shields, 8 Easterling Warriors with bows, and 4 Easterling Warriors with shields and pikes in a scenario? Because that's what comes the box . . . even though you'd rather just skip the bows altogether and have a 2:1 ratio of pikes to shield-guys, right? Yeah, that's scenario play for you.

But this isn't always the case - in fact, if you read the posts I've done on what you need to play the scenarios, there are some scenarios that require an outrageous number of kits just to get what you need for a single scenario (like having 15 Mordor Uruk-Hai with no extra gear, which requires 3 blisters if you're willing to overlook the two-handed maces on 6 of those guys or 5 blisters if you want to do it "the right way"). When this happens, it's for one clear reason: that's how it was in the films or books. Theme is at play, sometimes, but other times the scenario participants might seem a bit . . . well, odd.

Leaving the immersion point behind us, another big reason why scenario play is great is because it's rarely used in a tournament setting, which greatly reduces both player's stakes for winning or losing a game (but hey, if you put your own bets on the line, that's your call - you can certainly do that if it floats your boat). For Centaur and me, it's nice to know that we're not competing very hard in a scenario (though we will occasionally do things that ignore the scenario's theme if it means we "might be more likely to win"). 

Some scenario victory conditions are not directly tied to the theme - as an example, should Gothmog stand on his rear board edge in The Ride of the Rohirrim scenario from Gondor at War so that when his army of Morannons invariably breaks, he can probably walk off the board without a chance of being caught to force a draw instead of losing the game? Probably not, but if you can exploit that for a win . . . I mean, sure, take it and laugh about it (or make sure the other player understands the victory conditions so he can enjoy romping on Orcs before getting a draw (or using those Heroic Combats to race for Gothmog before his army invariably plows through the Orcs). Honestly, when the pressure's off, you don't have to win - and often times for us here at TMAT, this encourages us to try new things and take risks that we wouldn't try in matched play games (especially in a tournament setting).

I will admit that the linked campaigns do give incentives to winning a game - so if you're the competitive type, the linked campaigns can still give both players a feeling of urgency to win or at least force a draw in every scenario (and some campaigns can snowball hard if you can stack enough bonuses from winning games early). Not everyone enjoys this kind of thing, but if you don't mind a little extra difficulty to make a series of game nights feel like a continuous story, it's well worth doing!

Scenarios often include cool new rules that can make a model or an entire army feel more like how they're described in the books or how they do things in the films (like when Legolas surfs down the stairs on the shield in the Deeping Wall is Breached scenario from War in Rohan). These moments are really cool - and honestly, sometimes you don't even use them - and they really aid with the immersive nature of scenario play without adding a ton of rules for everyone to remember in Matched Play. Also, it would be silly for Legolas to have a shield-surfing rule on his profile in a game where no one had any shields and there was nothing to surf on . . . best if we have this baked into a scenario, eh?

Something that Centaur and I have only dabbled in (and my son, Gorgoroth, really enjoys) is creating our own scenarios where we experiment with new rules, scoring objectives, and scenario participants in order to bring a part of a book or film to life. Yes, this might be "Open Play", but it fits with the idea of scenario play - they provide an outlet for creative players to test their ideas and see if they can make something cool for a game that they already love. You can also do this by implementing "house rules" for existing scenarios - and this can also be a good way to test out "house rules" that fix common Matched Play conundrums that you're running into at tournaments that you run. Something to think about, tournament organizers . . .

Scenario play is particularly good for new players, as it's both immersive and limits their exposure to the game on their first outing. I had a friend who I taught the game to by giving him Aragorn, King Elessar (his favorite guy in the films) and a bunch of Minas Tirith guys (a collection of Warriors of Minas Tirith and Rangers of Gondor, since their profiles are simple and their Fight Values are varied and average), while I used the Cirith Ungol Legendary Legion with Shagrat, Gorbag, and a bunch of Orcs and Uruk-Hai (who also have simple profiles - but showcased what happens when you invest in two smaller heroes instead of one bigger hero).

He had a lot of fun, but it took a little time to get him to understand what the victory conditions were. If instead I had gone to Gondor at War and pulled out the Black Gate: Left Hill scenario (p. 65), then my friend would have gotten a battle from the book and the scenario objectives would have been much simpler (break Evil before the Good force is quartered). The game we played was fine, but I gotta say, many scenarios (like the Left Hill scenario) have smaller board sizes than a standard 4'x4' game of MESBG Matched Play, which can make wrapping your head around the play area easier - and often times, the objective of a scenario is much, much simpler than Matched Play scenarios (and can also involve really weird mechanics that make things fun and exciting).

Speaking of weird mechanics, many of the advanced rules from the main rulebook show up in scenarios if you play through a campaign. Sentry rules are a LOT of fun to play with (though the rules designers rarely give you the commensurate boost in models that you need to make Sentries "fair" to both sides), as are rules that give you special kinds of movement (like Legolas riding down the stairs on a shield) or pulling wounding models across the battlefield as heavy objects. Scenarios also give models special rules that are incredibly thematic for the scenario and are sometimes reflected in Legendary Legions, but are otherwise absent from Matched Play. As an example, there is little chance that Samwise Gamgee would be able to threaten an entire tower of Uruk-Hai and Orcs, but if he's got Sting in hand, 2 Attacks base, Terror, and a free Might point each turn (with access to Strike - or just to boost a dueling roll), golly he's a real threat to pretty much everything in Cirith Ungol!

Perhaps I've convinced you that scenarios are fun, but surely scenario play is so radically different from Matched Play that there it's really only good to let off steam - scenarios don't actually make you better at Matched Play games, right? Well, actually they do have some benefits - let's see what those are . . .

How Does Scenario Play Prepare You For Matched Play?

The greatest advantage of playing through scenarios is that they force you to use units you might not want to take on paper - and because you're forced to use units you'd otherwise skip over, scenario play forces you to find ways to make less-appealing units work. If you think Orc Warriors are garbage (they are - but they're also fine), play the Last Alliance scenario (p. 214 of the Armies of the Lord of the Rings) where all you have are Orcs, a few Captains, a pair of Trolls, and Sauron! Your Orcs are terrible and WAY worse than the Elves and Numenoreans on the other side. However, they can also be used to take up space, stall out heroes/burn through their resources, and manage fights for the larger monster models (your Trolls and Sauron). The Osgiliath scenario from Quest of the Ringbearer (p. 54) is another great example of how Orcs can be good - and both scenarios see units coming back as the game progresses, which gives you opportunities to experiment and make mistakes in the game while figuring out how they work!

One of the other advantages of playing through scenarios is that your list is written for you - and because you don't have a choice in what you're bringing (except in Fantasy Fellowships), using a list you didn't write might help you find a play style that works for you and might showcase situations where a particular unit shines. When Centaur and I were playing through Fantasy Fellowships together, I took Bofur the Dwarf from Thorin's Company as my "tax" and put him in my Merry slot . . . and then discovered that his two-handed mattock (which gave him -1 to all of his dueling rolls - but always gave him +1 to all of his To Wound rolls) was incredibly good at killing F5/1A Ringwraiths (even chance of winning if he used his Might to boost his dueling rolls, only needed to wound once with two dice looking for a 5+ each) and F3/1A Barrow-Wights (even chance of winning without boosting his dueling rolls with Might, could Piercing Strike back then to wound on a 4+ with each of his wounding dice). Between him and Farmer Maggot (who I wanted for strategic reasons - but was also in much the same boat when it came to killing things), I didn't have much of a problem dealing with the casters in the early missions.

As we moved into the Moria sequence, I still had to fight two-handed with Bofur, but beating up F3/1A Wargs was ridiculously easy (wounded them on 3s with each dice!), F2/1A Goblins (still had a good chance of winning, even when supported - could wound them on 3s too), and had a decent chance of chopping into the Balrog (with Piercing Strike he wounds on a 5+ - which is a great complement to the likes of Champ-Dwalin and Piercing-Striking-Champ-Gloin who are wounding on a 5+ as well). By the time we got to Lothlorien and Bofur had the option to fight one-handed with a dagger that rerolled failed To Wound rolls . . . I really only used the dagger if I was out-diced (that two-handed mattock was GOOD)! Never knew this would be the case until I played through those scenarios . . .

Scenarios can also show you how necessary certain upgrades are on units - Easterling players who play through Defense of the North are going to have to get creative with their formations because very few of their units are given pikes. Similarly, anyone who's used to using Aragorn with Anduril is likely to miss the "always-wound-on-4s" boost from that weapon (and possibly the Elven-made keyword, depending on the scenario) if they're playing through Quest of the Ringbearer or War in Rohan where Aragorn doesn't have Anduril. Sometimes an upgrade will be missing and you'll be like, "Yeah, that's an upgrade worth taking."

But the opposite can also be true: if you play scenarios with Eomer on a normal Firefoot instead of an armored Firefoot, you may decide that he functions just as well without it (though admittedly, many of the new Rohan lists that feature Eomer don't give you the option for an unarmored Firefoot). Similarly, I've played with D5 Elves a good bit because most of the Elves (Lorien and Rivendell in particular) are missing shields - and they still perform just fine without them! Yes, being D6 has benefits (and defending by shielding can be a really handy trick), but if you're dumping 25+ points on shields each game, you could get a few more bodies to manage fights/contest objectives by sticking with D5 units instead . . . just something to try before you write it off.

While playing the scenarios is fun, one of the cool aspects of preparing for scenario play that we feature on the blog is the incentive to expand your terrain collection. If your primary focus in Matched Play, a good bit of your hobby budget is probably reserved for really good units (or whatever the "new hotness" is). If you're looking at playing scenarios, however, terrain becomes a HUGE part of the immersive experience - and building terrain for scenarios that can also be used for Matched Play is incredibly useful and can help your Matched Play games be much more fun as well. I wouldn't have prioritized making a Shire board (I actually ended up making two - one for me and one for Centaur) if I was just focused on Matched Play, but because we planned to do the Scouring campaign, I made a Shire board last year (and yes, it was a lot of work but also very, very rewarding).

Matched Play is really great in its own right, but if you just play Matched Play games, having the same set of scenarios can get old. Yes, there are soon to be 24 scenarios for Matched Play, but if the previous scenarios survive in some incarnation, three of them are often viewed as very skew-happy scenarios that few lists will actually want to play and probably half of the others are either "pretty much the same as each other" or "just not fun to play for my list" (Contest of Champions, Seize the Prize, and Reconnoitre). If you find that you're always playing Destroy the Supplies from Pool 3 or Divide and Conquer from Pool 5 because the other options just aren't fun . . . yeah, you might find yourself complaining that the scoring objectives are stale.

Enter scenario play: some of the scenarios that Centaur and I played through last year in the Scouring of the Shire campaign felt like they were a copy/paste of previous scenarios (having the Death of Lotho right after the Mayor's Arrest was one of those situations - and walking across the board in The Bounders Strike Back felt like a bow-heavy variant of Maggot's Farm), but you also get scenarios like The Arrest of Folco Boffin (which didn't look like it was gonna be that close on paper - but ended up being SUPER fun to play), The Burning of Woody End, and the Old Storehouse that are nothing like Matched Play scenarios. Similarly, scenarios like Attack on Tuckburough and the Battle of Bywater felt like Matched Play scenarios with a twist - very fun and yet provided insights into how the list might want to approach Matched Play scenario requirements. If the Matched Play scenarios appear boring to you, consider throwing in some scenario games to get your zest for life back.

The previous two paragraphs hit a bit on the psychological nature of Matched Play - we are people playing with toy soldiers after all, and whether we intend to or not, we bring our mental state to the game as well as our physical selves. While having a fresh excitement for the game is part of the benefits of scenario play, the low-key nature of scenario play (aka, these aren't used in traditional tournaments) can disassociate the stress or competitiveness that you might feel when playing with miniatures in a tournament setting and bring you back to "just playing the game" - and when you're in that mindset, you don't mind as much if your Ruffians can't climb out of a pit trap, whether your sentries are walking away from the action, or if your Ringbearer can't roll higher than a 3 in any of his duels. No, you're just having a laugh, playing with a friend or two, and trying to have a good time. And yes, there will be times where you curse the design team for not giving you enough Ruffians or Goblins or Hobbits with a Fight Value of higher than 1 to give you a sporting chance of winning . . . and it's still funny and everyone can be a good sport about it. :-)

To build on this, scenario play is a great way to build relationships with friends and get better at the fundamentals of MESBG - while "teaching MESBG" can certainly happen in a Matched Play setting, highly competitive people who are learning the game might not like it if you as the experienced player are "taking it easy on them". If, however, the scenario is working in their favor while they learn the mechanics - or if you teach them things to do and not do by "punishing them" in scenario play when the stakes are low, players can learn in a space that's controlled and fun. This isn't to say that winning certain scenarios never feels hopeless, but you don't have to work really hard at winning when you play scenarios - and it can give you a space to learn from a better player (or learn to teach tactics better) than Matched Play can offer.

Finally, perhaps the greatest benefit of playing scenarios is that the scenario participants list can drive your collection into a direction you didn't anticipate - and show you models that you actually love that you wouldn't have known until you played through the scenarios. When Centaur agreed to play through Fantasy Fellowships with me, I knew immediately the Fellowship I wanted to run - the "Erebor Reunion," which featured Old Bilbo, Gandalf, Farmer Maggot, and the six surviving-and-mobile members of Thorin's Company (two in their cheaper Thorin's Company versions because list composition rules and four in their Champ versions). I had a Gandalf model, the two Thorin's Company models, Maggot and his dogs, and a Bilbo that I really liked painting . . . but I didn't have any of the champs. So what did I do? I bought a second copy of Thorin's Company, a box of Grim Hammers, and a box of Warriors of Erebor. 

Why? Because if I was gonna drop $150 on the Champions of Erebor, I might as well turn that into an army instead of "just the champs." Also, it gave me a TON of room for hobbying together a really fun spear-toting Dwarf list - something I'd kind of wanted to do for a while, but didn't have a reason to do until then. My Champs (as well as the rest of the Champs and King Thorin) turned out super nice and I'm really happy with a custom set of models that I can use in Erebor Reclaimed lists now. Needless to say, fielding these guys (alongside Old Dain and Thorin III, who I got as gifts from Rythbyrt just before starting Fantasy Fellowships) has been really fun for me, but also really fun for my son who likes elite grunts, high Defense, and access to spears - all while having pretty decent numbers. He even won a team tournament with my models, beating my beloved Depths of Moria Legion . . . yeah, all a good call. :-)

Conclusion

So yes, there's my apologetic for scenario play - it's a big part of what keeps me in the game and I know a lot of other players enjoy it for its immersive element and its ability to keep the game fresh. If you enjoy scenario play (and I didn't catch one of the reasons you like it!), let us know in the comments below! We'll be back in this "Thoughts on" series throughout the year (there's a lot to think about with a new edition and all) - until next time, happy hobbying!