Defend the Crawler! A 40k Scenario

[ElectricPaladin]

What do you think?

Scenario: Protect the Crawler!

A supply column of Imperial forces have been surprised. The enemy is intent on claiming the valuable supplies carried by their land crawler (a vehicle related to the land raider, but designed to carry food and equipment rather than mount weaponry). The Imperials must hold off the ambush long enough for help to arrive.

Deployment

Choose a deployment style randomly, as usual.

By default, the attacker both deploys first and takes the first turn. The defender may attempt to steal the initiative as usual, though.

The defender deploys the land crawler as usual. The land crawler cannot be held in reserve.

Scenario Special Rules

The Land Crawler: The Imperial player (always the defender) has a land crawler. A land crawler is about the same size and shape as a land raider (a land raider model is an excellent stand-in), but with the following profile: AV 14/14/14, BS 3, 4 HP. This land crawler is equipped with two hull-mounted heavy bolters (on either side, where the lascannon sponsons are on a land raider). The crew of the land crawler are also BS 3 and are equipped with lasguns; all five of them they can fire from a single fire point on the top of the vehicle. The land crawler's crew cannot disembark and are assumed to be bunkered down inside the vehicle if it is destroyed.

Ambush!: The attacking player can Infiltrate d3 units from the Heavy Support category, in addition to however many units can already Infiltrate for whatever reason. These units do not gain the Infiltrate USR - they can't, for example, Outflank if held in reserve - they simply gain the ability to deploy in an alternate matter. These units represent supporting fire units that were secreted in the ambush area ahead of time.

Victory Conditions

This scenario uses all normal secondary objectives (First Blood, Slay the Warlord, and Linbreaker).

If the land crawler is destroyed, the attacking player gains two victory points.

However, if the attacker destroys the land crawler do not remove it from play, even if an Explodes! result is rolled on the Vehicle Damage Table. Instead, the land crawler becomes a terrain piece and an objective worth three victory points to whoever claims it.

Use the Random Game Length rule to determine when the game ends.

[Denzark]

I like a lot. I can see some variation though:

Firstly, if you have the defender objective as just to defend the landcrawler, you are encouraging castling. If you require the landcrawler to leave the table that makes a bit more dynamic.

Second, your idea about the exploded landcrawler gives me a supplementary idea. Something along the lines of - the crawler can explode, but if it does, the attacker can't get the points. Mebbe allow no explode results in hth - to represent a precision disabling of the vehicle - but allow it to explode from shooting, to stop the attacker just blasting it from afar?

[Tyrendian]

also, the Defender probably should get 2 points if the Crawler manages to survive (or escape as Denzark put forward - maybe both?) - or do we want the attacker to claim first blood and then just hide his Warlord, kill anything that comes at his deployment zone and otherwise call it a day since the Defender doesn't really have a good way to make up that deficite - there's no objective for him to claim yet?

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Minor fluff point, from what little we've seen of the Land Crawler, it looks to be a bit smaller than a Chimera. It just gets the "Land" prefix for being discovered by the same guy as the Land Raider. Not that you should change your rules to reflect that, just that it might be best to give it a different name.

Is the Land Crawler treated as a Tank? Important for Ramming/Tank Shock.

I'd agree that the Defender should score something for keeping the Crawler alive. Maybe the Land Crawler always qualifies as an Objective, and the Attacker gets no points for destroying it? They might still choose to, to make it easier for themselves, but it's not a requirement. This would only really work if it wasn't a Tank, since the Attacker could box it in.

Also, maybe include something to scale it up for different points levels? Destroying the Land Crawler would be a lot easier at 2500pts than 1000pts. Maybe "The Defender's army includes a single Land Crawler for each of their Primary Detachments".

[ElectricPaladin]

That's too bad... when I read the name "land crawler" I had this image of an enormous land-raider like thing, but designed to store a huge number of supplies, with an "assault ramp" style door that opened wide enough that the whole interior was revealed, like a walk-in closet. Like a cross between a tank and your mom's attic. I agree that I should give it a new name - any suggestions?

Ah, well.

Things I like and will include (a v2.0 to follow):
• 1 land crawler per primary detachment, so sufficiently large games won't turn into kill-point games while the land crawler sits there, ignored.
• The defender definitely gets victory points if the land crawler is alive at the end of the fight. Perhaps they should get 4 VPs if the land crawler is alive? That way the breakdown is: attacker gets 2 for killing it, defender gets 4 for keeping it alive, once it's destroyed it's worth an additional 3 for whoever is sitting on it. The idea was to put the attacker in a position where he wants to destroy the land crawler and also claim the stuff inside, because the defender could theoretically just defend the fallen land crawler and wait for the tech priests to come around and fix it up or distribute the baggage among their rhinos, or whatever.

Things I won't use, and why:
• I don't want to have the land crawler exit, because when a relatively simple supply convoy is attacked, there's no reason not to turn back; by contrast, if what you're transporting is something incredibly vital, you'd put it in something faster and better armed than a land crawler (like, for example, carried by an assault marine, or in a land speeder or a stormraven or even a full-on land raider). The idea was to create a scenario where something valueless and vulnerable could be protected, but having the defender try to move a convoy of food or something through a warzone, rather than simply back the food truck up until it's out of danger so they could win the fight without worrying about it, gets on my logic nerve.

As far as Denzark's idea about the land crawler being destroyable from afar, but not in melee, to reflect that the attacker wants to disable it without destroying its cargo... that's a thought.

Personally, I'm entirely ok with castling in this scenario. I mean, if you are accompanying a convoy of food or whatever, that's what you do. It definitely gives armies like the Imperial Guard an advantage in the defense, while some Space Marines lists (particularly Blood Angels) would struggle... but that's ok. I'm comfortable with that.

Also, it would be interesting to create transport vehicle equivalents for other races... the Eldar, Dark Eldar, and Tau would probably use some kind of skimmer with powerful defensive tech, while the 'Nids would use some kind of bloated monster that can excrete sucrose for the hive to feed on. The Ork one would be a lot like the Imperial one, just... Orky, somehow.

[Eldar_Atog]

That's too bad... when I read the name "land crawler" I had this image of an enormous land-raider like thing, but designed to store a huge number of supplies, with an "assault ramp" style door that opened wide enough that the whole interior was revealed, like a walk-in closet. Like a cross between a tank and your mom's attic. I agree that I should give it a new name - any suggestions?

You could use something about the size of a sand crawler from Star Wars. It should be so bulky that it blocks LOS completely.

A couple of other suggestions:

1: Give the defender victory points based on how many hull points the crawler has left at the end of the game.

2: Take control of the crawler's movement away from the defender. Instead, it moves at a set pace and it moves off the board at the end of turn 5. Force the defender to keep their units within a certain distance and give all their units "slow and purposeful"

3: Penalize the attacking player if the crawler explodes instead of wrecks.. or perhaps make the reward better if the vehicle is glanced to death. This would be a hard rule to apply to all armies.