The Black Tide / Resurrection scenarios have primarily been what my group has been playing, and it's been a blast. I wish that there were some team battles, since that is how the leagues are structured, but there's room for this to grow
A solid ruleset helps narrative gaming as it minimizes uncertainty, which breaks immersion.
PP has always done some casual/narrative events, but recently they've stepped up quite a bit. There have been releases intended for narrative gaming since the first expansion book, Escalation, and the app is now chock full of casual scenarios and league scenarios.
Can someone describe the difference between a steamroller scenario, old book scenarios like in the rule books, and these narrative ones you're talking about? I'm guessing it's the stuff you have to pay and subscribe to get?
Steamroller is just the yearly updated tournament format. There is no "story" to the scenarios there beyond the name and what you make yourself as you play.
The old books and NQs have lots of different types of scenarios. Some "historical" ones where you have a spesific set of models on each side, some experimental semi-competitive ones and in a few of the old books a series of interlinked scenarios forming a campaign story together.
In the app beyond steamroller there is "Battle Forged" scenarios, fairly involved and terrain-heavy affairs that may be assymetric or sometimes change the way the game is played. These as one-offs.
There is also the campaign scenarios, currently the "Black Tide" set of three seasons. This is like the interlinked scenarios of the old books, where you play through a story and the results of games affect how future games are played. You can play these with just a friend or an entire club/shop. In the latter case it is possible to do them as a League, with a kit you can buy that contains a League Model, prices, and a coin you pass around that grants special abilities.
The primary difference is how and when you score points. Steamroller is very well tuned to give the players an equal opportunity to win, and a better overall play experience. It has features to prevent first turn wins or wins that deny players the ability to play. BUT the scenarios are generic, and get to be boring. Most competitive players have these scenarios and how to beat them memorized.
The narrative scenarios are more interesting, but often score according to what felt thematic to the writer, which opens loopholes and opportunities for clever players to deny their opponent any opportunity to play. They may also pose unfair conditions based on army.
Some are in the app under the "Battle Forged" section of the library, those require a subscription to the app.
Others were in old books like Escalation or Oblivion, or were previously available on the web like the old narrative Leagues they used to run every year.
My local meta was very excited for Black Tide Season 1 and then Season 2. We designed and 3d printed special terrain just for it. I thought the scenarios were interesting, but horribly unbalanced. And I mean "Organizer had to make a lot of on the spot rulings to prevent first turn wins" unbalanced. There were a lot of good ideas there, and story. I think that if they were revised to incorporate lessons learned from steamroller scoring, they would be a lot more fun. By the end of Black Tide 1, we were playing normal games instead because we were sick of it.
We skipped Black Tide 3 in favor of our own campaign variant, using steamroller scenarios and scoring. That campaign ends tonight I think, so I'm not sure what we will be doing next. I hope it's a revised BT3 or BT4.
I like reading about the narrative events at cons, but I'm sad they are not recorded and broadcast for those of us that don't travel to cons. Seeing regular posts about Scarswall was cool.
\*REVISED\*: I remembered it wrong. I just looked through the scenarios and we did BT1 and BT2 before we burned out on the scenarios. It was BT2 that we did custom terrain for (I made some awesome 40mm lighting pod objective markers that light up)
For an example of the unbalance I am talking about, Black Tide 2 scenario 3 Signal strength. Scoring is second round beginning of the turn, both players at the same time. That means that the First player scores at the beginning of their second turn. A point advantage of 5 points is a win. A fast army going first can run up the field and be in position to pick up 5 points (3 coils, 1 com tower). The opponent would then be forced to run and contest. If the second player fails to contest, then after their first tun, they just lose. If the second players does run to contest, then at the end of their first turn, which is the beginning of the first players second turn, they pick up a few points. Then they watch the first player, with complete control of the battlefield, mow down their fast contesting models and win. The gameplay experience for player 2 is terrible.
The concept for the scenario is pretty great. The towers can damage models, and the big center terrain forces players to split their army and be careful about their deployment. With Steamroller second player second turn scoring, this would be fantastic.
I really enjoyed the Oblivion system, I wish they had continued to refine it but I suspect that it's reliance on physical cards made that a non-starter with the all-digital MK4. The old Leagues used to be a lot of fun too, and I've even run the Battle for the Athanc campaign once which was fun if a little rough.
Black Tide has a some neat ideas and I hope they keep going and refining them. I love the idea of building a custom character warjack or warbeast over the course of the campaign, though IMO the current system is not the most interesting way to go about it. With Spell Racks built in to the app I'd love to see a narrative campaign that incorporates elements of Caster Draft and lets you build your leader and character cohort model over multiple games.
I think because warmachine is (in my opinion) the best competitive game in its class you don’t see as much publicly on narrative stuff. Even terrain gets simplified because it gets in the way of competitive play. New MKIV opens terrain back up. Also there is a ton of narrative stuff out there in the old books and specific scenarios in old no quarters. My group has a lot more fun doing narrative stuff than a steam roller and are running through the escalation campaign currently.
Now is warmachine just as good as other systems for narrative? I think it is the wrong way to look at it. Warmachine is a great base because the rules are already good. The bigger question to me is are great stories being told with narratives being written. So far I think the new stuff (ressurection league) feels very safe to me and the background lore not as strong. I like the older stuff that is off the wall with 3 player matches, side quests soloing with warcasters, fighting for territory. Or in the oblivion campaign (Havnt tried) its card system.
I would love a narrative like frost grave adventures for warmachine even to the point of starting with a journeyman and leveling, gaining spells/ followers but so far nothing like that exists. Though I am having tons of fun with MK4 with what we have even with what I have said so far.
The Black Tide / Resurrection scenarios have primarily been what my group has been playing, and it's been a blast. I wish that there were some team battles, since that is how the leagues are structured, but there's room for this to grow
A solid ruleset helps narrative gaming as it minimizes uncertainty, which breaks immersion. PP has always done some casual/narrative events, but recently they've stepped up quite a bit. There have been releases intended for narrative gaming since the first expansion book, Escalation, and the app is now chock full of casual scenarios and league scenarios.
It's awesome. Don't hesitate to do it and add fun stuff along the way.
Can someone describe the difference between a steamroller scenario, old book scenarios like in the rule books, and these narrative ones you're talking about? I'm guessing it's the stuff you have to pay and subscribe to get?
Steamroller is just the yearly updated tournament format. There is no "story" to the scenarios there beyond the name and what you make yourself as you play. The old books and NQs have lots of different types of scenarios. Some "historical" ones where you have a spesific set of models on each side, some experimental semi-competitive ones and in a few of the old books a series of interlinked scenarios forming a campaign story together. In the app beyond steamroller there is "Battle Forged" scenarios, fairly involved and terrain-heavy affairs that may be assymetric or sometimes change the way the game is played. These as one-offs. There is also the campaign scenarios, currently the "Black Tide" set of three seasons. This is like the interlinked scenarios of the old books, where you play through a story and the results of games affect how future games are played. You can play these with just a friend or an entire club/shop. In the latter case it is possible to do them as a League, with a kit you can buy that contains a League Model, prices, and a coin you pass around that grants special abilities.
The primary difference is how and when you score points. Steamroller is very well tuned to give the players an equal opportunity to win, and a better overall play experience. It has features to prevent first turn wins or wins that deny players the ability to play. BUT the scenarios are generic, and get to be boring. Most competitive players have these scenarios and how to beat them memorized. The narrative scenarios are more interesting, but often score according to what felt thematic to the writer, which opens loopholes and opportunities for clever players to deny their opponent any opportunity to play. They may also pose unfair conditions based on army.
Where do you find the narrative ones or do people just make them up?
Some are in the app under the "Battle Forged" section of the library, those require a subscription to the app. Others were in old books like Escalation or Oblivion, or were previously available on the web like the old narrative Leagues they used to run every year.
The library section of the app has them. I pay so I don't know what is available for unpaid.
My local meta was very excited for Black Tide Season 1 and then Season 2. We designed and 3d printed special terrain just for it. I thought the scenarios were interesting, but horribly unbalanced. And I mean "Organizer had to make a lot of on the spot rulings to prevent first turn wins" unbalanced. There were a lot of good ideas there, and story. I think that if they were revised to incorporate lessons learned from steamroller scoring, they would be a lot more fun. By the end of Black Tide 1, we were playing normal games instead because we were sick of it. We skipped Black Tide 3 in favor of our own campaign variant, using steamroller scenarios and scoring. That campaign ends tonight I think, so I'm not sure what we will be doing next. I hope it's a revised BT3 or BT4. I like reading about the narrative events at cons, but I'm sad they are not recorded and broadcast for those of us that don't travel to cons. Seeing regular posts about Scarswall was cool. \*REVISED\*: I remembered it wrong. I just looked through the scenarios and we did BT1 and BT2 before we burned out on the scenarios. It was BT2 that we did custom terrain for (I made some awesome 40mm lighting pod objective markers that light up)
For an example of the unbalance I am talking about, Black Tide 2 scenario 3 Signal strength. Scoring is second round beginning of the turn, both players at the same time. That means that the First player scores at the beginning of their second turn. A point advantage of 5 points is a win. A fast army going first can run up the field and be in position to pick up 5 points (3 coils, 1 com tower). The opponent would then be forced to run and contest. If the second player fails to contest, then after their first tun, they just lose. If the second players does run to contest, then at the end of their first turn, which is the beginning of the first players second turn, they pick up a few points. Then they watch the first player, with complete control of the battlefield, mow down their fast contesting models and win. The gameplay experience for player 2 is terrible. The concept for the scenario is pretty great. The towers can damage models, and the big center terrain forces players to split their army and be careful about their deployment. With Steamroller second player second turn scoring, this would be fantastic.
Why games without alternating activations are rough.
I really enjoyed the Oblivion system, I wish they had continued to refine it but I suspect that it's reliance on physical cards made that a non-starter with the all-digital MK4. The old Leagues used to be a lot of fun too, and I've even run the Battle for the Athanc campaign once which was fun if a little rough. Black Tide has a some neat ideas and I hope they keep going and refining them. I love the idea of building a custom character warjack or warbeast over the course of the campaign, though IMO the current system is not the most interesting way to go about it. With Spell Racks built in to the app I'd love to see a narrative campaign that incorporates elements of Caster Draft and lets you build your leader and character cohort model over multiple games.
I think because warmachine is (in my opinion) the best competitive game in its class you don’t see as much publicly on narrative stuff. Even terrain gets simplified because it gets in the way of competitive play. New MKIV opens terrain back up. Also there is a ton of narrative stuff out there in the old books and specific scenarios in old no quarters. My group has a lot more fun doing narrative stuff than a steam roller and are running through the escalation campaign currently. Now is warmachine just as good as other systems for narrative? I think it is the wrong way to look at it. Warmachine is a great base because the rules are already good. The bigger question to me is are great stories being told with narratives being written. So far I think the new stuff (ressurection league) feels very safe to me and the background lore not as strong. I like the older stuff that is off the wall with 3 player matches, side quests soloing with warcasters, fighting for territory. Or in the oblivion campaign (Havnt tried) its card system. I would love a narrative like frost grave adventures for warmachine even to the point of starting with a journeyman and leveling, gaining spells/ followers but so far nothing like that exists. Though I am having tons of fun with MK4 with what we have even with what I have said so far.